The Aesthetics of Postrevolutionary Haiti: Currency, Kingship, and Circum-Atlantic Numismatics

Abstract

This essay focuses on a British-made coin commissioned in 1811 by the first king of the northern part of the newly independent Haiti, Henry Christophe (1767–1820). The coin potently encapsulates the Kingdom of Hayti's central claims of racial equality, sovereignty and international recognition articulated in the wake of the Haitian Revolution. Here it is considered as the product of early nineteenth-century Anglo-Haitian relations, as an expression of Christophe's kingly ambitions, and as a striking entrant into the wider field of circum-Atlantic numismatics that can help illuminate the paradoxes of the postrevolutionary kingdom's aesthetic regime. Christophe's numismatic image both depends upon and overwrites conventional forms and meanings of European coins, medals, and cameos. At the same time, it demands interpretation in relation to distinctively Caribbean interpretations of Black kingship.