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The Aftershocks of History. Laurent Dubois. New York: Metropolitan Books/ Henry Holt, 2012. 434 pp. (Cloth US$ 32.00)
The Aftershocks of History is a beautifully written book on Haiti's predicament. It seeks to explain why Haiti has remained economically poor, politically unstable, and socially divided since its independence in 1804. Unlike many accounts that blame the country's problems on its allegedly backward African roots, it cogently makes the case that the weight of history is responsible for Haiti's travails. Rejecting quasi-racist cultural explanations, Laurent Dubois argues convincingly that
the true causes of Haiti's poverty and instability are not mysterious, and they have nothing to do with any inherent shortcomings on the part of the Haitians themselves. Rather, Haiti's present is the product of its history: of the nation's founding by enslaved people who overthrew their masters and freed themselves; of the hostility that this revolution generated among the colonial powers surrounding the country; and of the intense struggle within Haiti itself to define that freedom and realize its promise. (p. 4)
Dubois thus writes about the most critical moments in Haiti's history. He explains how and why slaves organized, fought, and won their liberty and independence at the turn of the nineteenth century. He analyzes the contradictions of this victory and shows how the legacy of the plantation economy rooted in slave labor in the age of colonial racism undermined Haiti's newly gained freedoms. Confronted with the harsh reality that their country's economy was thoroughly dependent on sugar, Haiti's founding fathers sought to maintain the plantation type of production and compel former slaves to accept a form of forced labor. But the return to the plantation system proved impossible once enslaved people had broken their chains. The attempt to curb people's freedoms led to popular resistance and to the development of the Lakou system whereby peasants living in households around a common yard maintained their autonomy and secured their access to land ownership. The rural majority continued to be excluded, however, from the moral community of the nation, which was firmly kept under the exploitative control of a predominantly city-based minority.
Since the nation's independence in 1804, peasant autonomy has always co-existed uneasily with a form of predatory rule. Dubois demonstrates that...