ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book was conceived in the immediate aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, a time of shock, mourning, and mutual support. I offer it up in the hope both that it will help illuminate the country’s present and spur further debate and research about Haiti’s history. In these pages I draw on the work of a remarkable group of scholars, many of whom I am deeply fortunate to have as both colleagues and friends.

Chief among them is Jean Casimir, whom I first met in 2004, and who had just arrived to spend a semester as a Mellon Visiting Professor at Duke at the beginning of January 2010. The first meeting of a class we taught together on twentieth-century Haiti took place just a few days after the disaster. Our conversations in class and outside of it, our work together on a short essay called “Reckoning in Haiti” for an SSRC forum, and his ability to channel the long history of Haiti into a meaningful interpretation of the present all deeply shaped the structure and analysis of this book.

I have also been delighted to work with my Duke colleague Deborah Jenson, with whom in September 2010 I began codirecting a Humanities Laboratory focused on Haiti, thanks to the imagination and generosity of Ian Baucom, director of the Franklin Humanities Center. I have learned much from her work, and collaborating with her on a range of Haiti-related projects has been an amazing experience. Working with the other faculty members of the Haiti Lab—Haitian linguist Jacques Pierre, Global Health faculty member Kathy Walmer, and Law School professor Guy Uriel-Charles—has been an inspiration as well. We were able to host a series of remarkable visitors in 2010 and 2011—including Edwidge Danticat, Edouard Duval-Carrié, and Erica James—whose work is a constant inspiration. I also thank Vincent Brown, my new colleague at Duke and a companion in thinking through Caribbean and Atlantic history, for all that he continues to teach me.

Duke has been a remarkable institution to be at during the past years because of its innovative support of Haitian and Caribbean studies. During that time, I have been blessed to work with an extraordinary group of graduate and undergraduate students. Julia Gaffield has already helped to transform the public’s understanding of Haiti’s history through her research on the early independence period. UNC graduate student Laura Wagner, who has written powerfully about the 2010 earthquake, has shared with me her deep understanding of the presence of the past in contemporary Haiti. Christy Mobley’s commitment to understanding Africa and Haiti has been an inspiration. And Andrew Walker, who as an undergraduate studied with me in the spring of 2010 and is now going on to graduate school, gave me invaluable help as a research assistant. He will soon be helping to change the way we think about twentieth-century Haitian and U.S. history.

These links are just one part of a larger web of connections that have sustained me for the past decades of work on Haiti. Mentors on Haiti and the Caribbean at Princeton (especially Barbara Browning, Colin Dayan, and Peter Johnson) and the University of Michigan (particularly Fernando Coronil, Simon Gikandi, and Rebecca Scott) illuminated the way forward, while Robert Fatton Jr. and Michel-Rolph Trouillot served as intellectual touchstones and encouraging colleagues.

Chantalle Verna, whom I began working with when I started my first teaching job at Michigan State University, has been as much a teacher as a student over the years. She is part of a generation of exceptional young scholars who are rewriting twentieth-century Haitian history, and their friendship and writing has been crucial in shaping the approach taken in this book. Millery Polyné and Thor Burnham have shared their insights with me, while Matthew Smith’s work and his participation in an April 2010 conference at Duke have been critical for me. As a leader of the Haitian Studies Association, which plays such a vital role in sustaining research and conversation in the field, he honored me with an invitation to give a keynote address to the group in November 2010. The event allowed me to test out key aspects of this work with a dauntingly expert audience. Kate Ramsey also joined us at Duke in April 2010 and returned for a lecture in the spring of 2011. She was kind enough to share with me chapters of her forthcoming book, which transformed my interpretation of religion and the U.S. occupation.

Part of the inspiration for this work came from the many conversations I have had about Haiti with journalists covering the 2010 earthquake. Among them, Damien Cave of the New York Times and Jeb Sharp of BBC’s The World have been particularly impassioned and committed to tying past to present. I thank both of them for their work and for the ways that their questions prodded me to articulate and interpret Haitian history.

The Triangle French Studies Workshop and the Haiti Lab Working Group both read drafts of early chapters of the book, and the comments of participants were a tremendous help. During our collective experience of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, conversations with Paul Gilroy, Achille Mbembe, Sarah Nutall, and Vron Ware provided direction and inspiration.

In Haiti, dialogues with Pierre Buteau, Fritz Deshommes, Michel Hector, Patrick Tardieu, Lyonel Trouillot, and students at the Université d’État helped shape my thinking on key issues. And though I know him only through his work, Claude Moïse has been a constant companion. His research and analysis have been fundamental for me in writing this book. So, too, has the work of Georges Anglade, who was among the hundreds of thousands who died on January 12, 2010, and who left behind an illuminating body of work that makes Haiti’s past live on. My ongoing friendship and dialogue with Erol Josué has also been crucial in framing my approach.

Honor and respect are due to my amazing editors at Metropolitan Books, Sara Bershtel and Grigory Tovbis, for tremendous patience and fortitude, keen and lucid critique, and endless intellectual generosity. It would simply have been impossible for me to write this book without them, and I feel undeservedly lucky to have had the chance to work with them. I am also grateful to my agent, Wendy Strothman, for helping me develop the project and shepherding it to the perfect place.

Finally, to my son, Anton Dubois—who has gotten used to having to interrupt me by asking, “Are you talking about Haiti again?”—and my coconspirator in all things, Katharine Brophy Dubois, I owe gratitude for all the sustenance that makes it possible to think and write.