It is an understatement to say that the past two decades have witnessed a burgeoning interest in the field of Atlantic History. Each year, the number of studies published on the Atlantic world grows while a greater number of universities offer courses with “Atlantic” or “Trans-Atlantic” in their titles. This increased interest in the Atlantic world and its history has not only contributed to expanding the geographic parameters of early modern and modern history but has equally served to shed new light on many of the key events in Western history such as the French and American Revolutions. The Haitian Revolution has received a great deal of attention in both respects, underscoring the importance of the country’s emancipatory struggle against slavery within the context of the global Enlightenment as well as its impact on the debates over citizenship and equality central to the Age of Revolution. In The Haitian Revolution: A Documentary History, David Geggus has chronicled the event through an array of documents and sources ranging from memoirs and newspaper articles to official archival resources. Over the past decade, historians such as Laurent Dubois and Jeremey Popkin have published works on the Haitian Revolution centred upon primary sources and eyewitness testimonials. Yet Geggus’s book arguably stands out among these. It is far more comprehensive in comparison and keenly sensitive to the complexities that shaped the development of modern Haiti and its path to independence. At times, it presents a panoramic view of events that not only demonstrates Geggus’s broad knowledge of the subject, but also the impossibility of restricting the Haitian Revolution to a single, simplified narrative of emancipation against institutionalized slavery or black liberty against colonial racism.

As a volume intended primarily for students taking courses on Atlantic and revolutionary history, the book works well on many levels. Geggus sets out the events chronologically in a concise and well-organised introduction. In conveying the general story of the Haitian Revolution, he indicates how the documentary sources he has included in this volume relate to their proper historical context. The introduction is followed by ten sections spanning from the mid-eighteenth century when Haiti was the profitable French sugar colony of Saint Domingue to the declaration of Haitian independence in 1804 and the establishment of the first post-emancipation republic. Through these documents, Geggus paints a multifaceted picture of French colonial society on the eve of revolution and the violence which would ultimately come to disrupt and transform it. In the two sections covering Saint Domingue and slave resistance, Geggus is mindful of the subtleties and variations endemic to a society in which slavery provided the backbone of the plantation economy and a great deal of racial inter-mixing occurred. In drawing together accounts of slave traders, reports on urban slavery and commentaries on work songs heard on plantations, Geggus brings into relief the subtle forms that slave resistance could assume and the gradations that characterised colonial racial hierarchies. The intricacies embedded within French colonial society set the stage for the upheavals that roiled the island between 1791 and 1804 and the fierce fighting that took place between competing groups of slaves, colonists, mixed gens de couleur, colonial authorities and foreign powers.

Geggus equally gives attention to the debates surrounding colonial autonomy and demands for racial equality that played out during the French Revolution. In drawing upon sources from Saint Domingue and the French National Assembly, the book reveals the extent to which the French and Haitian Revolutions were intertwined. While this claim is hardly novel, the documents included in the volume will serve to give students an informed idea of how the tensions over race and citizenship originating in the Atlantic world became infused with revolutionary values and ideals. Relevant documents include standard texts, such as the transcripts from the national parliament in May 1791 and speeches by Abbé Grégoire, to more obscure sources drawn from the provincial Jacobin clubs in France.

The documentary history that Geggus has assembled and annotated is impressive in both its scope and breadth. Scholars and specialists looking for new insights or theoretical perspectives on the Haitian Revolution may find themselves a bit disappointed. Geggus treats the existing scholarship well but the volume is primarily intended to provide students and educators with a comprehensive set of texts that can be easily adopted in undergraduate and graduate courses. In this objective, the book largely succeeds. Yet, this does not imply that it has nothing to offer specialists either. Geggus has gathered a great deal of source material, some translated from the original French and Spanish and others culled from various archival repositories and libraries located in France, Spain and the United States. No doubt, many historians of the Atlantic world can appreciate the range of sources included in the volume as they convincing illustrate to what extent the eighteenth-century Caribbean was a crucible of empire.