“Haitian/Haitianist Thinkers in the Public Space: An Interview Series”
“Haiti Then and Now” Interviews Paul Clammer
Conducted by Dr. Celucien L. Joseph
September 8, 2023
“Even when Christophe becomes king and the state building project evolves into something grander, that fear of Haiti losing its freedom never goes away. The Code Henry formalizes the plantation economy, but it is also as crucial part of his state building as the creation of the nobility: Christophe aspires to create an ordered society from the ruins of the revolution. His motto is Je renais de mes cendres after all – I am reborn from my ashes. That is why he wants to bring in education and smallpox vaccination, that’s why Sans Souci is so important as a model for what Haiti should be aspiring to.”
–Paul Clammer
HTN: Tell us about yourself, your background, education, upbringing, connection to Haiti, etc. Who is Paul Clammer?
PC: I am originally from just outside Cambridge in the UK. I studied zoology at university – I am not an academic historian; my first career was in molecular biology! After an extended period of travelling in South and Central Asia I fell int the adventure travel industry, working as a tour guide. I wrote a website about my experiences travelling in Afghanistan before 9/11, which opened a door to write for Lonely Planet Publications, which I did from 2003 right up until the pandemic.
An old joke at LP was that I would travel to places that no one wanted to go on vacation to as well as being sent back to Kabul, I went to Lagos, Karachi, all sorts of places. In 2007 I was offered the chance to go to Port-au-Prince. I loved it but at the start Haiti was just somewhere in the roster of interesting places I got paid to go to. The earthquake changed that. I went back in the aftermath as a freelance writer, and then again when the cholera outbreak started. In 2011 I pitched a dedicated guidebook to Haiti to Bradt Travel Guides, assuming that a lot of people who bought it would be aid workers, with perhaps a few hardy tourists and members of the diaspora. I lived in Port-au-Prince for a year to research and write it. I learned a lot in that year – not least how little I really knew about Haiti.
HTN: Many people who are familiar with your work know you as a prolific travel writer and guide author. You published travel books on countries in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and the Caribbean, and in particular, you have authored the first and only standalone guidebook on Haiti in 2017. Your new book, Black Crown: Henry Christophe, the Haitian Revolution and the Caribbean’s Forgotten Kingdom, published in March this year by Hurst Publishers, is a radical departure from your typical writing genre or previous writings.
Why is the shift? What has prompted you to write a biography on one of the most fascinating historical figures and national heroes in Haitian national history, Henry Christophe, or King Henry I of Haiti—or “the slave who became the king.”
PC: At the start of my Christophe project, I joked a lot that it was a travel book gone wrong. Especially on my first Haiti trips, I was really struck by the landscape and its history, how Bois Caiman and Vertières were just a few miles apart from each other, how the Citadelle Henry loomed over everything, and how the heroes of the Revolution remained such a part of the discourse. I really wanted to write something about that as a travel writer, but I could never find the right hook.
The more I worked through ideas, the more Christophe seemed to speak to me, the more powerful his story became. I got pretty frustrated that so many books about the Haitian Revolution seemed to end on January 1st, 1804 – I just needed to know more about what happened next.
A couple of key things then happened. In 2015 I was invited to present at the After Revolution: Versions and Re-visions of Haiti conference held organised by the Institute of Black Atlantic Research at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK. My paper was about tracing historic travel guides to Haiti through the 19th and 20th centuries, but it was really my introduction to Haitian Studies and making so many academic friends and contacts.
The following year I was working for Lonely Planet in Jamaica, and on a whim, I went to the National Library in Kingston because someone had told me there might be some papers related to Christophe there. It was the first time I had been in an archive, and it was a real Damascene moment. I suddenly knew I was going to have to write his life story.
Fortunately for me, there is a lot of material here in the UK to get my teeth into. The fact that ty job involved a lot of travel so over the following years I was able to get to lots of archives that would otherwise have been prohibitively expensive for me as a freelancer. I did not get any research grants! But it was a special pleasure to be able research in Haiti itself – to visit Sans Souci, the Citadelle, Crête-à-Piérrot and other sites and then do archive work at MUPANAH, ISPAN and the Archives Nationales d’Haïti, or libraries like the Bibliothèque de Saint-Louis-de-Gonzague.
HTN: What do we know historically about Christophe’s place of birth, upbringing, his early life, and his family?
PC: Unpicking Christophe’s early life is probably the biggest challenge any biographer is going to face! There are simply no primary written sources. There is material written during his life (some of it contradictory) and there are many oral traditions.
In the Kingdom of Haiti’s Gazette Royale, it is stated that he was born on October 6th, 1767. Official accounts printed during his rule also tell us he was born in Grenada. And that is about it.
Piecing together different accounts – some well-known, some obscure – as well as unpublished letters and we can start to get a better picture. Christophe told a Royal Navy officer than his father had been taken from Africa and survived the Middle Passage. We do not know his name, and even less about his mother. He was almost certainly enslaved and taken from Grenada in 1779 by the French when they captured the island and continued on to Saint-Domingue and then to fight the British in Georgia. Again, official accounts state that he was wounded at the Battle of Savannah, a statement accepted as true even by his harshest critics at the time. The muster rolls have not survived but there are other accounts of enslaved people from Saint-Domingue having been manumitted as a result of their service at Savannah.
Christophe worked in some capacity at La Couronne in Cap Français. He did not own it, nor did the family of future wife, Marie-Louise Coidavid. He probably lived in the Petite Guinée district of the city. It had once been known as the area where people from Saint-Christophe (St Kitts) had lived when the island had been captured by the British, so it’s possible that as someone born on a different island he could have acquired his surname by association in this way, unwittingly giving rise to the tradition that he was born in St Kitts.
HTN: This well-written and well-researched biographical narrative on Henry Christophe, a central figure of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), transcends the subject matter itself. Inarguably, it is a story about the formation of a nation and the people who created it. Black Crown is also a book about a black revolution and the emancipation of formerly-enslaved people and their entrance into modernity through the lens of the leadership, history, and governance of the first Black King in the Western world.
According to your interpretation, for many European and British thinkers and leaders in the early nineteenth-century, such as the abolitionists William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, King Christophe “was the model of an Enlightenment monarch” [modernity] (p.7). Can you discuss this claim?
PC: Christophe’s monarchy was a real gift to the British abolitionists. The first thing is that Christophe was very vocally anglophile in his leanings and flattered them by asking for their advice. This was not a done deal – Christophe approached the French republican Abbé Grégoire for support and been rejected before he ever contacted Wilberforce; likewise, Pétion tried to sign Wilberforce as a supporter.
But to a patriotic Englishman like Wilberforce, having a king write to you for advice and claim George III as a spiritual if not temporal brother, that is pushing at an open door. Because what Christophe offers is a good example of what might happen if slavery was abolished, and the people of the Caribbean can move towards civilisation. There’s order in the kingdom, there are laws, there is morality, and everyone knows their place.
It is no accident that Wilberforce is keen on getting Methodist missionaries to the Kingdom of Haiti. He was a true evangelist – this was the time he was also trying to get the East India Company to accept missionaries to India. He would have fitted in well with many of the modern missionaries and other do-gooders having their grand plans for Haiti today. And Christophe is exceptionally good at telling him what he wants to hear. He wants Wilberforce as a supporter – it is a great PR coup – but he takes what he needs and ignores all the preaching.
Clarkson, I think is a different sort of figure – there is a much more of a meeting of minds. In his letters you get much more sense of Christophe valuing his opinion on matters, even if he does not always draw the same conclusion. He is much more of a genuine supporter of the Kingdom on its own terms, rather than Wilberforce who sees it more of an opportunity to prove a point. And of course, Clarkson is the one that follows through both by acting on Christophe’s behalf in terms of his French policy, and then he and his wife opening their home to Christophe’s wife Marie-Louise and his daughters Améthyste and Athénaïre when they are sent into exile in England.
HTN: You opened the first chapter of the book (“Beginnings”) by introducing the work and ideas of Haiti’s most important postcolonial writer and public intellectual in the first half of the nineteenth-century, Baron de Vastey, who served as secretary to King Christophe and tutor to the Prince Royal. What is the significance of de Vastey in Haitian history? And what is his enduring impact on the northern kingdom?
PC: The first thing here is that I want to give due recognition to Marlene Daut, who has done so much to recover Vastey from relative obscurity. Her scholarship is inspiring, and I am very much looking forward to her forthcoming book Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution, which is going to tell us so much more.
Vastey was a key voice in the kingdom, and it was especially important that I included his writings in my book as much as possible. There was an extraordinary print culture in the early years of Haitian independence that has been under-appreciated. It is the sound of the revolution talking back to anyone who would naysay it.
Vastey gives the kingdom an enormous intellectual heft. Internally, he plays a key role in drawing up the Code Henry that applies order to the kingdom. But it is his voice to the wider world that really sings loudest.
He grabs control of Haiti’s narrative. He writes a history of the Haitian Revolution, he writes a series of pamphlets replying to those of the French colonial lobby, using his pen as a real weapon in the project of national defense. And he produces The Colonial System Unveiled, cataloguing the French crimes against humanity in colonial Haiti and puncturing the intellectual bankruptcy of the European Enlightenment that has racism at its core. Vastey explicitly draws a line from the civilizations of Africa – Egypt and Carthage – to the aspirations of the Kingdom.
‘After having established our rights by the sword, we acquire a new lustre in the eyes of the world, when we defend them by the pen,’ he writes, ‘Our reputation becomes greater and more glorious, and we include ourselves, in reality, in the number of civilised states.’ What a line! He is an incredible figure.
HTN: In chapters four through seven, with vivid imagery and captivating prose, you analyze the major events and the actions of the actors of the Haitian Revolution. In particular, you highlight the heroic courage, actions, and resistance of the revolutionaries Toussaint Louverture, Moyse, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Alexandre Pétion, and Henry Christophe. You reproduce an excerpt from Christophe’s letter response to the French General Leclerc, who brought with him to Saint-Domingue an army of 21,000 soldiers to invade Saint-Domingue and re-enslave the people there. You highlight General Christophe’s model of revolutionary resistance and disobedience to Lecler’s command to surrender:
You say that the French Government has sent to Saint-Domingue forces capable of subduing the rebels, if any such to be found; it is your coming, and the hostile intentions you manifest, that alone could create them among a peaceable people, in perfect submission to France. The very mention of rebellion is an argument for our resistance (p. 94).
By consequence, I would like you to underscore some of the major contributions Christophe made to the achievement of the abolition of slavery, the Haitian Revolution, and the creation of the nation of Haiti.
PC: Christophe mostly sat out the first couple years of the revolution, but when he went in, he really went all in. His ascent seems to be pretty meteoric: he rises up the ranks under Toussaint Louverture, he gets praised by all and sundry. Even the US consul in Le Cap seems charmed by him.
He is a good battlefield commander, but not a brilliant one like Dessalines. His skill is as an organiser. It is no mistake that he is put in charge of Le Cap – his letters throughout his life show him as a master organiser of men and systems. He brings a real rigour to everything he does; he is a details man.
There is a great account of his regiments on the eve of the War of the Knives by a British agent who is impressed by just how good his troops are. They are the best equipped, the best dressed and have the best logistical support down to the train of ammunition and salt herring and pork they need to operate. Logistics are not glamorous, but they help win wars and that is what Christophe brings to the table.
In the north he does a tremendous job in wearing the French down and pinning them into Le Cap and depriving them of supplies. He is supremely confident in his own abilities and has a low opinion of anyone who does not meet his own standards.
There is a great moment in the aftermath of the Battle of Vertières (during which he plays a key role bombarding the French forces, though he does not get much glory for it). Rochambeau drags his heels evacuating his forces for days on end, until Christophe finally runs out of patience and tells him if he doesn’t get on with it, he’ll fire on the French ships with red hot shot so they can’t be taken into British captivity and will have to take their chances with him. The French start to evacuate Le Cap the very next day. That is Christophe’s character – that is what he brings to the revolution and that is why he is the second signatory of the declaration of independence after Dessalines.
HTN: To move forward, one of the most sensitive issues in Haitian history pertains to the death of Jean-Jacques Dessalines (or Emperor Jacques I), the father of the Haitian nation. After you discussed Dessalines’ political vision for the new nation and his radical agricultural reform, you introduced the opposing ideas of certain powerful individuals in society, such as those of General Etienne Elie Gérin and General Alexandre Pétion who opposed his leadership style (despotism). You agree with the general perspective or consensus that Gérin and Pétion conspired to murder the emperor. However, in your careful analysis you seem to indicate that Christophe played no part in the death of Dessalines as is often suggested. Is there any credible historical evidence that justifies that Henry Christophe was actively involved in the premature death of the Emperor in October 1806?
PC: I do not believe that Christophe had any knowledge of the plot to assassinate Dessalines, even though Pétion and Gérin were quick to proclaim his president to win his support. He was loyal to Dessalines.
History gets written by the victors. In this case it was Thomas Madiou and Beaubrun Ardouin, who set the popular traditions of Haitian history. If you take the line that the murder of Dessalines was something like the original sin of the early years of Haitian independence, it makes sense that everyone should have their hands dipped in the bloody – especially Christophe who they absolutely hated.
But when you look at the letters we have and the actions that followed, it seems clear that Pétion and Gérin acted without reference to Christophe. Christophe and Pétion were effectively estranged; Christophe’s letters in the run-up to Pont Rouge are banal in how mundane they are and the lack of military instruction you might expect in the run up to a conspiracy. He even writes to Dessalines to advise him to be on his guard when travelling in the south. His letter of condolence to Dessalines’ widow is heartfelt, while Pétion’s equivalent is cold and full of self-justification.
In the following months, it is clear that Christophe did not trust anything that Pétion was up to. He sees it as a southern power grab. And pointed, his reaction to being proclaimed president is not to travel to Port-au-Prince – it is to order Pétion’s envoy to visit him in the Citadelle, it is to marshal his troops and gather Dessalines’ closest supporters to him. These are not the actions of someone who was in on a conspiracy – they are the actions of someone trying to protect a political system that he was heavily invested in and that he sees as being under threat from his enemies.
Christophe was not involved in the killing of Dessalines at Pont Rouge.
HTN: On March 26, 1811, Henry Christophe was proclaimed as King of Haiti in Fort Liberté, a city located in the northern part of Haiti. Given that he had previously served as President of Haiti, from 1807 to 1811, can you discuss the causes or reasons that prompted Christophe’s desire to be crowned as Haiti’s first and last King?
PC: Not long after the announcement of the creation of the monarchy, the State Council published a long justification for Christophe’s nomination for the throne.
It is a fascinating read – they work their way through different political models, examining and rejecting each in turn, including Toussaint Louverture’s title as Governor-General and Dessalines’ imperial crown. Perhaps most fascinating is the rejection of republicanism. They explicitly draw a parallel between Haiti winning its independence from a colonial power and the USA. There was actually a lot of admiration of George Washington among the Haitian leadership – there are numerous accounts of prints of him being on public display. But they reject the American presidential model: ‘though we appear in the same hypothetical situation as the Americans, being a new people, still we possess the wants, the manners, the virtues, and we will add, the vices of the old states.’
Although today we think of republics as a natural political system, that was by no means the case in the early 19th century. Most European states were monarchies; Napoleon had up ended the French revolution by claiming a crown. But just as importantly, there were African polities that would have felt just as relevant for a nation whose people had undergone the Middle Passage – not least the Kingdom of Kongo. A monarchy was something that was instantly understandable, and when you are in the business of nation-building I do not think the power of symbols like that should be underestimated.
Finally, in the official account of Christophe’s coronation, Julien Prévost cites the example of Enrique, the hereditary Taíno chief who had fought the Spanish in the 15th century. The connection between Henry and Enrique was far too good to pass by. In drawing on these roots, the monarchy becomes instantly tied to the deep roots of the island, with Christophe playing the part of the once and future king.
HTN: What would you say are Henry Christophe’ main contributions and legacy as King of Haiti?
PC: There’s a line I love from Aimé Césaire’s La Tragédie du roi Christophe: “For this people brought to its knees, a monument was needed to make it stand up.”
He is talking about the Citadelle of course, and if you are looking for the most visible legacy of Christophe then that is obviously your first stop. I mean, it is the biggest fortress in the Americas – it is so impressive that racist foreigners in the 19th century insisted it could not have been built by Haitians. As a capstone of the achievements of the Haitian Revolution, it is a hard one to beat.
Stones are stones of course. The Palace of Sans Souci is almost as impressive, but it is very obviously a ruin – you can put whatever conclusions into that depending on what your view of the kingdom was. But as symbols of aspiration for a new nation they are just incredible. Just take the royal chapel with its great dome at Sans Souci. The French were going to build something similar in Guadeloupe in 1820 then gave up because they said it was too complicated. But it was the second such structure that Christophe built!
Travelling on the Plaine du Nord today you often come across the broken remains of French colonial canals. And when you do, invariably a farmer will turn up on the scene and tell you that it is a secret tunnel back to Sans Souci, built so that Christophe could spy on his workers. It is a common phenomenon. Two centuries after his death, which speaks a lot to his legacy, how even though his rule was relatively short, he still remade the north in his image.
HTN: You close your excellent biography with a paradoxical statement about the character of King Christophe: “He is both the defender of liberty and the man who forced his free people to labour defending it” (p. 310). What does this declaration reveal about Christophe’s character as the champion of Haitian freedom and his leadership style as monarch?
PC: Christophe’s story embodies the big tension inherent in the early period of Haitian independence: what does freedom mean in a world of imperial slavery?
Christophe, Toussaint Louverture and Dessalines all knew the evil of slavery first-hand and never wavered in their defence of freedom. When Leclerc arrived with his French armada in 1802, Christophe accused him of betraying the cause of liberty, rightly surmising that they were there to put the people back into chains.
But given the titanic struggle to win that freedom, they believed that freedom meant nothing without the means to defend it. This is why they were invested in the plantation system, because of the equation that sugar and coffee equals gunpowder equal a free Haiti. Of course, if you are a foot soldier of the revolution then your perspective is going to be rather different: you just want to be left alone completely, to till your own plot or otherwise make your own way in life free of these governing strictures. This is what Jean Casimir dubbed the Counter Plantation movement. The tension between these two positions is a running theme in the early independence period.
Even when Christophe becomes king and the state building project evolves into something grander, that fear of Haiti losing its freedom never goes away. The French are still plotting, and Christophe has to keep his plans for national defense fresh. The Code Henry formalizes the plantation economy, but it is also as crucial part of his state building as the creation of the nobility: Christophe aspires to create an ordered society from the ruins of the revolution. His motto is Je renais de mes cendres after all – I am reborn from my ashes. That is why he wants to bring in education and smallpox vaccination, that’s why Sans Souci is so important as a model for what Haiti should be aspiring to.
There is a bust of Christophe outside the Université Roi Henri Christophe on Place d’Armes in Cap-Haïtien and on the epigram it says ‘Liberator. Builder. King.’ Of course, history made the ultimate intervention regarding his rule, but there is plenty of space to encompass all these different visions of who he was.
HTN: We thank you for your time, your enormous contributions to Haitian history and the field of Haitian Studies, and of course, for your excellent biography on Roi Henri Christophe.
Haiti Then and Now (HTN) 