The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe

Historian Daut (Awakening the Ashes) offers a powerful biography of Henry Christophe (1767-1820), who fought for, defected from, and ultimately ruled over Haiti. She first sketches out Christophe’s sensational life story—born in Grenada, he went from a radical in search of a revolution (fighting briefly in the American one) to a commander of Haiti’s revolutionary forces who crowned himself king—then pokes holes in the myth. Often presented as a cautionary example of revolutionaries’ penchant for turning into dictators, Christophe instead emerges in Daut’s telling as a complex figure in a world gripped by radical transformation. The dramatic hook of her narrative is Christophe’s 1802 defection, when he was briefly wooed by Napoleon’s promise that Haiti would be spared from reenslavement if it rejoined the empire. Because of Christophe’s lapse (“a single bad decision, ricocheting like scattershot,” Daut calls it), France was able to pursue a “war of extermination,” committing atrocities on a scale “it might be hard for the modern reader to contemplate.” The violence, however, reunified the revolutionaries, hardening their resolve. Moreover, according to Daut, as much as Christophe’s kinghood was a betrayal of the revolution’s principles, it was also a safeguard of independence in an era of revanchist monarchy; by facing down the restored Bourbon monarch king-to-king, Christophe proved that Haitians were not “playthings.” The result is an expertly told and richly detailed reexamination of the revolutionary period. (Jan.)