This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Marcus Rainsford was a soldier who served for many years with the British Army in the British West Indies. He visited Haiti in 1799, where he became an admirer of Toussaint L'Ouverture, the former slave who led Haiti's revolution and struggle to end slavery. This book is Rainsford's account of the slave uprising that began in August 1791 and the subsequent fighting that, at different times, involved French, Spanish, and British troops and various factions in Haiti. The book includes the first known representations of Toussaint, which were engravings made from Rainsford's sketches and descriptions. Also included are extensive documentation of the revolution and Rainsford's disturbing accounts of the brutal treatment of the slave population by their French masters, as well as of the atrocities committed by all sides in the course of the struggle. Toussaint died in Paris in April 1803, after having been seized by French forces acting under orders from Napoleon Bonaparte, who in 1802 sent an army to Haiti in attempt to reassert French control. Rainsford's wholly admiring account of Toussaint appears in chapter 5 of the work.--Provided by Library of Congress.

Experience the tumultuous history of Haiti firsthand in this gripping historical account by Marcus Rainsford. This book covers the rise and fall of the black empire of Haiti, including the epic struggle against French colonial rule and the subsequent revolution that established Haiti as a free nation. Rainsford skillfully weaves together firsthand accounts, primary sources, and historical analyses to create a vivid and engaging narrative. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

With the Ta-Nehisi Coates-authored Black Panther comic book series (2016); recent films Django Unchained (2012) and The Birth of a Nation (2016); Nate Parker's cinematic imagining of the Nat Turner rebellion; and screen adaptations of Marvel's Luke Cage (2016) and Black Panther (2018); violent black redeemers have rarely been so present in mainstream Western culture. Grégory Pierrot argues, however, that the black avenger has always been with us: the trope has fired the news and imaginations of the United States and the larger Atlantic World for three centuries. The black avenger channeled fresh anxieties about slave uprisings and racial belonging occasioned by European colonization in the Americas. Even as he is portrayed as a heathen and a barbarian, his values-honor, loyalty, love-reflect his ties to the West. Yet being racially different, he cannot belong, and his qualities in turn make him an anomaly among black people. The black avenger is thus a liminal figure defining racial borders. Where his body lies, lies the color line. Regularly throughout the modern era and to this day, variations on the trope have contributed to defining race in the Atlantic World and thwarting the constitution of a black polity. Pierrot's The Black Avenger in Atlantic Culture studies this cultural history, examining a multicultural and cross-historical network of print material including fiction, drama, poetry, news, and historical writing as well as visual culture. It tracks the black avenger trope from its inception in the seventeenth century to the U.S. occupation of Haiti in 1915. Pierrot argues that this Western archetype plays an essential role in helping exclusive, hostile understandings of racial belonging become normalized in the collective consciousness of Atlantic nations. His study follows important articulations of the figure and how it has shifted based on historical and cultural contexts.