The Memoirs of Toussaint Louverture, First Black Memorialist, 1743-1803

FAIN: FA-53882-08

Daniel Desormeaux
University of Kentucky (Lexington, KY 40506-0001)

The first black general of the French army, Toussaint Louverture, who died in captivity in 1803 in France, is, like many great lords and army generals, an "author" of authentic memoirs. This document is by all means the first memoirs ever written by a former slave and black statesman of the modern Western world. My project is to complete and publish a scholarly edition of his memoirs. Louverture is a major "postcolonial" author, his memoirs, if well edited, can help to establish the very foundation of the black postcolonial discourse. His personal account of the slave uprising and the Napoleonic campaign in Saint-Domingue is a vital document of military history of slaves. His memoirs should figure centrally in the histories of the Haitian and French Revolutions, of the economics of the slave trade, and colonial identities, ethic, and political theory.