Haitian and Other Black Writers

1780-1814

• Documents: History of Haiti
• Translated texts on Saint-Domingue, including the Code Noir, sections from Père Labat, etc.

1804: Proclamation d'Indépendance d'Haïti

1804: Proclamation d'Indépendance d'Haïti (English)

1805: Constitution Haïtienne

1805: Constitution of Haiti

1815-1830

1816: Pompée-Valentin Vastey

• Réflexions sur une lettre de Mazères. Cap Henry: P. Roux, 1816.

1817: Pompée-Valentin Vastey

• Réflexions sur quelques ouvrages et journaux français conernant Hayti. 1817.

1818: Juste Chanlatte

• L’Entrée du roi en sa capitale, en janvier 1818, Le Nouveau Monde, 19 août, 1979, 6-12.

1819: Pompée-Valentin Vastey

• An Essay on the Causes of the Revolution and Civil Wars in Hayti (1819). Transl W.H.M.B. Exeter, 1823.

1824: Juste Chanlatte

• Histoire de la Catastrophe de Saint-Domingue. Paris: Librairie de Peytieux

1825: Jean-Baptiste Romane

• Hymne à l'indépendance (French)

1828: Excerpt from the Gazette des tribunaux

• Considération sur la condition noire à la Guadeloupe en 1828

1831-1848

1837: Victor Séjour

• "Le Mulâtre." Originally published in the Revue des colonies and reprinted in the Revue de Louisiane (1972). Translated in the Norton Anthology of African American Literature (1997).
• Video version
  

1845: "Lettre de Marie"

• A letter to the queen by a slave named Marie published by Victor Schoelcher in Histoire de l'esclavage pendant les deux dernières années as part of his campaign for immediate emancipation of the slaves.

1845: Les Cenelles

• Collection of poems by 16 writers of color from Louisiana including the best known, Victor Sejour. A bilingual edition has been published by Regine Latortue and Gleason R. W. Adams: Les Cenelles: A Collection of Poems by Creole Writers of the Early Nineteenth Century (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1979).

1849-1900

1849: D. Poléma (négresse de Martinique)

• "Appel à mes frères d'outremer" (Paris. 27 février 1849). This short document was written at the time of the emancipation of slaves in 1848. It appears to be a call to rally behind Schoelcher in the elections.

1859: Emeric Bergeaud

• Stella; discussed at length by Léon-François Hoffman in Essays on Haitian Literature (1984).

1863: Toussaint L'Ouverture

• Toussaint L'Ouverture: A Biography and Autobiography. This biography and autobiography discuss the life of Toussaint L'Ouverture. The autobiography is said to have been first mentioned by the venerable Abbé Grégoire, bishop of Blois, in his work entitled, De la littérature de nègres (1807).
• French version
• J. R. Beard (John Relly), 1800-1876 Toussaint L'Ouverture: A Biography and Autobiography

Miscellaneous

• Un auteur africain francophone du XIX e siècle face à la conquête coloniale : Léopold Panet et la Relation d'un voyage du Sénégal à Soueira (Mogador).
• Raphaël Berrou and Pradel Pompilus, Histoire de la littérature haïtienne (1975): contains texts by Haitian writers of the nineteenth century.