Freedom over democracy in post-revolutionary Haiti, c. 1804-1844

ABSTRACT This article considers Haitian nation-building in the nineteenth century and its connection to the wider development of democracy in the Americas. In the way that the Haitian Revolution has caused scholars to rethink the discourses around concepts like liberty or rights, the early decades of Haiti’s independence also offer the opportunity to consider the meaning of freedom. Full universal freedom was at the centre of building Haiti’s political future, and this article looks at where that sits in the context of how democratic ideas and practices took shape in the nineteenth century by considering three key moments: Jean-Jacques Dessalines’s constitution in 1805; the era of the two Haitis; and unification with Spanish Santo Domingo from 1822–44.