INQUIRING MINDS

The ideas and experiences of enslaved people have long been erased from the history of plantation societies. History Professor John Garrigus seeks to change that by centering his research on their lived experiences. His recent work, “A Secret Among the Blacks”: Slave Resistance Before the Haitian Revolution, earned nods from The Chronicle of Higher Education and the Times Literary Supplement as one of the best scholarly books of 2023.


John Garrigus

on helping restore the voices of enslaved Haitian people


John Garrigus

Why did you decide to research the Haitian Revolution?

Although I went to graduate school to study the French Revolution, my graduate advisor pointed me toward revolutionary events in France’s biggest colony. The Haitian Revolution happened at the same time as the French Revolution and was the world’s only successful slave uprising. Scholars now recognize it as a major event in world history. I ended up writing my dissertation about French colonial racism, and a decade later, I won a Fulbright award to teach in Haiti. My students there encouraged me to write about enslaved people who fought for freedom.

What were some of the challenges you encountered during your research?

There is no shortage of primary sources on slavery, but most of them treat enslaved people as property rather than people. One amazing moment for me was when I began to find documents in French archives that contained testimony from enslaved people. It was important to me to be a historian who undoes some of the erasures—the archival silences—that enslavers created. I think my book restores the voices of people who fought against their own slavery, men and women who haven’t been known until now.

What made you want to dig deeper on this topic?

I started to look at documents about an African man named Makandal, who was famously executed for poisoning French colonists in colonial Haiti. But I realized that 90% of Makandal’s supposed victims were other enslaved people, which just didn’t make sense. By continuing to study his life, I discovered that he lived in an area with widespread anthrax—which can rapidly kill animals and people who eat infected meat. Colonists didn’t understand what it was until decades after they executed Makandal. Even then, they continued to believe that he was a poisoner, and scholars kept this myth alive.

What do you want your students to learn from this book?

“A Secret Among the Blacks”: Slave Resistance Before the Haitian Revolution is the book I’ve always wished I could assign to my students, because it is centered on the experiences of ordinary people whose courage helped destroy one of the world’s most profitable slave colonies. As I wrote this book, I was constantly thinking about my UTA students and how to tell these stories in a way that would bring these people to life for them.

I hope my book gets them to think about the millions of people who were trapped in slavery and what it was like for them to endure that and to fight back, even though the stories of their resistance were often erased from archival records.

The book shows the power of people building community. Most of those enslaved in colonial Haiti were from different parts of Africa and didn’t speak the same languages. They had to invent new communities. The book shows how people can find their way out of terrible situations by establishing bonds of trust with those who are in the same situation.

What are your hopes for the future of this research?

“A Secret Among the Blacks” is about the heroes whose names aren’t known, and my ultimate goal is to be a part of somehow getting their stories to an even wider audience.

 

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