This critical edition offers the first English translation of Baron de Vastey’s Le système colonial dévoilé, a trailblazing critique of colonialism and the transatlantic slave system that was originally published in Haiti in 1814. Jean-Louis Vastey was the best known Haitian writer to emerge in the years after that country’s world-historical revolution (1791-1804). Born in 1781, Vastey was the son of a white plantation owner and a free woman of color; by the time of his murder in 1820, he had authored over ten books and pamphlets, and had become one of the most influential members of the gover ... More

This critical edition offers the first English translation of Baron de Vastey’s Le système colonial dévoilé, a trailblazing critique of colonialism and the transatlantic slave system that was originally published in Haiti in 1814. Jean-Louis Vastey was the best known Haitian writer to emerge in the years after that country’s world-historical revolution (1791-1804). Born in 1781, Vastey was the son of a white plantation owner and a free woman of color; by the time of his murder in 1820, he had authored over ten books and pamphlets, and had become one of the most influential members of the government of King Henry Christophe. His first and most incendiary work, Colonial System Unveiled, provides a moving invocation of the horrors of slavery in pre-revolutionary Saint-Domingue, as well as an unrelenting denunciation of racial hierarchies and colonial rule that anticipates by over a hundred years the anticolonial politics (and poetics) of Césaire, Fanon, and Sartre. Featuring an extensive Introduction and critical apparatus that provides historical and ideological contextualization for Vastey’s book, this edition also includes four supplementary essays on Colonial System written by scholars on the cutting edge of Haitian Revolutionary Studies.