He places deep and abiding faith in the resilience of Haiti’s disempowered populace to survive the earthquake, but catalogues a bitter litany of reasons why the descendants of a successful revolution have not achieved anything close to economically successful, stable, democratic independence. Glover (Editor), Nadève Ménard (Editor).more. Decades of absolute dictatorship by “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his feckless, brutal son, “Baby Doc” Duvalier left a looted, indebted nation whose civil institutions “had been largely dismantled or absorbed by the state.” Dubois does an admirable job of condensing turbulent political history into a narrative. What they could do, however, was channel and contain that push, surround and stifle it.” For more than a hundred years after its independence, Haiti’s political struggles, from presidential intrigues to outright revolution ushered in more than a dozen leaders-and nearly as many constitutions-creating a legacy of instability that left Haiti vulnerable to a 19-year occupation by U.S.

He is a specialist in the history and culture of France and the Caribbean, focusing mainly on Haiti. Throughout its struggle to take its place in the family of nations, the obstacles of giant debts imposed from without and political instability generated from within have created a ruling class that “realized they couldn’t rebuild the plantations or stop the country’s majority from pushing for land and autonomy. Laurent Dubois’ compelling book, Haiti the Aftershocks of History, traces the history of Haiti from pre-slavery days through the revolution, and the following eras up to this century. Urban areas, which saw an influx of residents over the course of the 20th century, also formed populist organizations that have repeatedly challenged the political and business elite to address their basic needs, including jobs, better housing and educational opportunities.Dubois (A Colony of Citizens) chronicles the “devastating set of authoritarian political habits” that have hamstrung the impoverished nation since its 1804 creation through the only successful slave revolt in modern history. Maligned and misunderstood, the nation has long been blamed by many for its own wretchedness. The system was driven by a sense that Haiti’s freedom was precarious and had to be defended continually against foreign and national elite interests. The local system is built around family and community ownership and cultivation of plots of land to produce food for local consumption and national and international markets. Sociologist Jean Casimir calls this a “counter-plantation system” - the antithesis of mass-production plantations that exploit workers and grow crops for export. Having carried out a successful anti-slavery revolution in the 1790s and winning independence from France in 1804, the Haitian population created a set of egalitarian and community-oriented social and cultural forms in the countryside. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Afro-American Studies, Harvard University, 1999. In Haiti, the state has always seemed fundamentally at odds with the people. Dubois was interviewed for the BBC Documentary 'Race Across Time,' January 2007.

Haiti by Laurent Dubois