The Armorial of Haiti: Symbols of Nobility in the Reign of Henry Christophe

The Armorial of Haiti: Symbols of Nobility in the Reign of Henry Christophe. Edited by Clive Cheesman. London: The College of Arms, 2007. ISBN 978-0-9506980-2-1. 216 pages. £45 (U.S. price) Clive Cheesman proposes to his readers that, once upon a time, the king had clothes, and that his clothes were resplendent. These were the heady days soon after independence which now, in retrospect, seem to have been a Golden Age for Haiti, since-for peoples of color at least-hope seemed justified. The quest for survival, the search for respect internationally, had led Haiti into two empires and one kingdom, and a plethora of republics-nine of which established a life-term presidency praised notably by Simon Bolivar. Opening here a parenthesis, only two other Latin American nations besides Haiti toyed with empires, Mexico followed by Brazil. Domestic stability was also the leitmotif of successive early Haitian governments. Under severe ostracism and immense fear that colonization and slavery would be re-established, the new country managed-tant bien que mal-to create shaky national institutions based upon the inheritance provided by colonialism. In reality, the only lesson the slaveowner can give his slave is how to be a better slave! Indeed, these state institutions were to be a re-creation of European forms transplanted to the tropics, not a re-adaptation of indigenous and traditional West and Central African formulae of statecraft, as was the case with neo-African maroon societies as exhibited in the palenques and quilombos. The models were unabashedly European, as if to say that only modernderived-read European- institutions would suffice to keep European armies at bay in the reconquest of Hayti. This became the main thrust of Haitian sociopolitical and philosophical thought throughout the Haitian nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century with the advent of Negritude. The reality of these governmental forms, however, was immensely more complex and complicated. And though Haiti acquired its independence very early in the nineteenth century, it already had produced a full-fledged creole culture in every sense of that word. Hence, what King Henry I unwittingly did was both apish mimicry of European royalty-partly for international acceptance and consumption-and patterns of leadership reminiscent of older West African political systems, minus the accountability normally extant in the latter. The book raises most indirectly, at least to my mind, substantial issues concerning leadership and tyranny, fact and folklore, and historical circumstance within its most obdurate context. Clive Cheesman, Rouge Dragon Pursuivant of the Royal College of Arms in London, has produced this book as a labor of love. The Haitian-born Governor General of Canada, Michaelle Jean, herself the Head of the Canadian Heraldic Authority, provides a brief preface to the text. Haiti preceded Canada into independent life as a nation. We are told that the King's models were Frederick the Great of Prussia, and George III of Great Britain and Ireland. And that in 1776, Christophe had volunteered to join the Chasseurs Volontaires, under the command of Count d'Estaing, to fight in the American war of independence, notably at the battle of Savannah, Georgia in 1779. His meteoric rise in politics and military affairs in colonial Saint-Domingue, made of him one of the signal heroes in the Haitian Revolution of 1791 and in the subsequent protracted and successful war of independence that ended in 1804. The historian Marie-Lucie Vendryes provides a somewhat detailed descriptive chronology of Henry Christophe's ascent to power. Her chapter is a helpful compendium of Christophe's actions over the course of his life, for both foreigners and Haitians. It was good to be reminded of his domestic efforts, and the international relations he maintained with European powers and with foreigners that were or could be of assistance to the fledging state. …

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