The Cost of Liberation: A Powerful Conversation with Prof. Marlene Daut on Henry Christophe, King of Haiti

The Cost of Liberation: A Conversation with Prof. Marlene Daut on her book – “The First and Last King of Haiti – The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe”

Topic: King Henry of the Hayti Revolution
Date: Sunday, March 30, 2025
Time: 3 PM EST
Platforms: @EziliDanto on YouTube, Twitter | FreeHaitiMovement on Facebook

Key Èzili Dantò FreeHaytiMovement Discussion Topics

Christophe, Dessalines, Suzanne Louverture & Coidavid Families

Henry Christophe’s Family Tragedy: What happened to his first-born son, François Ferdinand, in Paris and his guardian, Tante Marie? Does this reflect how colonial powers weaponized education? Denis Decrès, the French Minister of the Marines, stated that the education Ferdinand’s parents sought for him was unsuitable and that his future should be restricted to agricultural and mechanical work (Daut, p. 201).

Rémy Clervaux, François Ferdinand Christophe & Colonial Indoctrination: After Dessalines’ victory over the French, there was no strategic reason for France to keep General Christophe’s son, François Ferdinand, and General Augustin Clervaux’s young son, Louis-Rémy, at their elite Collège de la Marche school (Daut, p. 200)—an institution designed to train Black soldiers and intellectuals to serve the empire. What does their exclusion reveal about the French-Western strategy for controlling Black leadership? How does this reflect broader French racial policies after Hayti’s independence?

Black Women & Colonial Terror: Toussaint Louverture’s wife, First Lady Suzanne Simone Baptiste Louverture, was chained, imprisoned, and tortured while the French detained her husband in a dungeon at Fort de Joux. He died there on April 7, 1803, after months of harsh treatment, isolation, and neglect. Even after his death, Suzanne (circa 1742 – 1816) and her family were held hostage. Her 13-year-old son, Saint-Jean (1791–1804), died in captivity in France, as did Christophe’s 11-year-old son, François Ferdinand, and Clervaux’s young son, Louis-Rémy—all in retaliation for Hayti abolishing slavery and securing independence.

Daut’s book (p. 205) cites The Political and Commercial Gazette of Haiti, the state-run newspaper under Dessalines, which reported:

“When under interrogation she claimed to know nothing about the 300,000 pounds that the French accused Toussaint of having hidden somewhere in Saint-Domingue, the French subjected her to ‘instruments of torture… while in a state of pregnancy… which resulted in a premature labor,’ causing the baby to be stillborn.”

How did Suzanne Louverture become pregnant at 60 years old and suffer a stillbirth while being tortured by the French? Who impregnated her? Was she raped by the French as torture methods? Or, was the baby she lost in captivity Toussaint’s child?

The Dessalines Family & Ferdinand Comparison: A few individuals with the surname “Dessalines,” presumably related to Emperor Dessalines, are mentioned in a cursory manner in Daut’s book, including his son, Jacques Bien-Aimé. Why didn’t General Dessalines send Jacques Bien-Aimé to Paris for schooling in September 1802 as Generals Christophe and Clervaux did with their sons? (Daut, p 326, notes that children adopted by Marie-Claire Heureuse Dessalines included Célimène, Jacques Bien-Aimé, and Célestine.)

Who were Baron de Joseph Dessalines (Daut, p. 418) and Baron de Dessalines (Daut, p. 456, referred to as Dessalines’s son) in Christophe’s Kingdom? What was their relationship to Emperor Dessalines when he was alive? If they were his sons, who were their mothers?

Given that Pétion, Gérin, and Boyer orchestrated Emperor Dessalines’s assassination, why would King Henry Christophe send Dessalines’s son—Baron de Dessalines—on a diplomatic mission to Boyer’s South in 1818 to propose unifying the North and South under the Kingdom after Pétion’s death (Daut, p. 456)? Wouldn’t that have been politically unwise or diplomatically provocative?

Lastly, what can you tell us about Rosillesse and Marie Jeanne Dessalines, who lived with Marie-Claire Heureuse Dessalines in Okap on the same street as Marie Bunel in 1803 (Daut, p. 444)?

Death of Kapwa Lamò – A Closer Look

The Execution of Kapwa Lamò, Christophe’s Admission & Political Calculations: The traditional Haytian understanding is that General Henry Christophe executed Kapwa Lamò to consolidate power in the North and prevent retaliation for Emperor Dessalines’s assassination.
In his Political Gazette, Christophe himself admitted to being part of the Pétion/Gérin/Férou plot to kill Dessalines, a revelation that raises questions about his cunning motivations and justifications (Daut, p. 317-321).

Baron Vastey’s Retraction & the Shifting Narrative: Baron Vastey, Christophe’s secretary and loyal apologist, initially supported this version of events. However, he later recanted, claiming that Dessalines had distanced himself from Christophe in his final months (Daut, p. 322). If Christophe falsely took responsibility for Dessalines’s assassination in his Political Gazette, could his October letters claiming—that Dessalines personally ordered Kapwa Lamò’s execution just days before his own assassination—also have been a strategic lie?

Governance Models: Empire, Monarchy, or Republic?

How did governance under Desalin’s Empire, Christophe’s hereditary monarchy, and Pétion’s republic differ in structure, vision, and policies?

Christophe’s Inner Circle & the Fall of the Kingdom

Trusted Confidants and Betrayal from Within: Most of Christophe’s top-ranking ministers were either white or mixed-race, including Jean Gabriel Peltier, Corneille Brelle, Jean De Dieu Gonzales, Duncan Stewart, Joseph Bunel, General Jean Pierre Richard, Julien Prévost, Baron Alexis Dupuy, and Juste Chanlatte. How did some of these key figures contribute to Christophe’s downfall? Does this reflect a colonial template that persists today, where a Black majority is ruled—either overtly or in the shadows—by non-Black elites, preventing the nation from developing its own majority-led indigenous identity at its roots and achieving authentic governance that serves Hayti’s local interests?

Elite Alliances & Colonial Strategy: Historically, what does it mean for Hayti that the mulatto (meaning, lighter-skinned to passing as European white or biracial) elites of the North aligned with their Southern counterparts to overthrow the Black King, Henry Christophe, at a politically opportune moment? Is this same, colonial divide-and-rule strategy still in play today, with white racialized elites—such as the Syrian Lebanese oligarchy—working against the Black Haytian majority’s interests?

Land Ownership & the Post-Independence Struggle

Did Hayti’s triumphant Independence Warriors refuse to allow white planter/colonists to own land in Hayti because the white colonists’ General Toussaint Louverture allowed to return to Hayti later joined Leclerc/Rochambeau’s genocidal war?

The Royal Dahomèts – King Henry’s Elite Guards

Who were King Henry’s elite bodyguards (Daut, p. 462) and, what was their role in the Kingdom? Where did he recruit the Royal Dahomèts (Haytian Amazons Daut, p. 481) from?

Colonial Classifications & the Reconstruction of Racial Hierarchies

“Men of Color” in 1791 Hayti: Not the Same as “People of Color” Today : How were these terms legally defined before the Revolution? In his instructions to his French spies in Hayti, Baron de Malouet, the French Minister of the Marines, wrote that gens de couleur – like Pétion- ranked just below whites but above free Blacks. He spelled out how France’s goal was to “re-create the racial caste system operative in the colony before 1789.” Daut p. 401. Did the mixed-race Petion/Boyer and their republic re-create the French racial caste system as France hoped? (Daut p. 331 on Pétion purge of Black generals and officers who opposed him.) Isn’t the lack of racial identification a problem, given that the world was not colorblind in 1791 or 2025? In 1804 Hayti, “Men of Color” meant those of African and European descent, unlike today, where it includes Latinos, Indians, Arabs, and other non-Black groups. Doesn’t this shift create confusion?

Post-Independence Retaliation & Misrepresentation

Why were the Southern Mulattoes and others like Clervaux compelled to avenge their lost family members and retaliate against the French post-Independence? How is this wartime return-offensive wrongly mostly attributed as Desalin’s massacres? Napoleon and Rochambeau seemed to hold very personal grudges against the mixed-race class, which they ferociously exercised in a war of total extermination in Hayti in 1802, 1803. Could this be because of Jérémie’s Alexandre Dumas, Guadeloupe’s Joseph Bologne, and other mixed-race men being much preferred by their white women and surpassing most privileged whites in talent and achievements in Paris, France, at that time in history?

Recall how Leclerc attempted “to convince Dessalines to eliminate the “men of color,” which is to say the people of mixed race, Dessalines underscored that “the execution of that atrocious project” was “proposed to me without any embarrassment, and had already been begun by the French.” (Daut, p 200)

French Involvement in Hayti’s Political Assassinations

How involved was France in Pétion/Gérin/Férou’s plot to assassinate Desalin? Did France play a role in Boyer’s later coup against Christophe, as they did in supporting Rigaud’s 1811 return to the South?

Afrikan Presence in Christophe’s Kingdom

Were there any high-ranking Afrikan-born officials in Christophe’s government, Royal Court, or Council of State? Are there no surviving archives or Gazette records of the weekly audiences commoners had with the King?

Join us for this deep dive into Hayti’s revolutionary history and its modern implications!

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