"The land is as free as the arm that cultivates it": a study on the circulation of freedom and citizenship ideals in revolutionary Haiti.

• Grant number: 23/07290-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: February 01, 2024
• End date: February 28, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Modern and Contemporary History
• Principal Investigator: Raquel Gryszczenko Alves Gomes
• Grantee: João Vitor Valeriano
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research project aims to analyze the circulation of ideals of freedom and citizenship in Saint-Domingue - modern-day Haiti -, during the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), based on the reading of the journal Gazette de Saint-Domingue, politique, civile, économique et littéraire. The editions published between August 20th and November 19th of the year 1791 will be prioritized, since it is the period that coincides with the beginning of the revolutionary process. From elements provided by the analysis of the material, we aim to emphasize the experience and agency of black individuals, such as the enslaved, free and freed people, that had a fundamental role as vectors and receptors of the news of freedom in the Caribbean. Through the reading of the journal, we intend to grasp the political demands and interests of these subjects, considering that these characteristics were central to the irruption and strengthening of the revolutionary process. Furthermore, the study of the materiality of the journal will be essential for the understanding of the different meanings produced by the news published to those who appropriated them, bearing also in mind that the editors were part of the local elite. The theoretical framework that will base this project is a result of the efforts of a historiography of the late 1990s, that will emphasize the relation between black people and the western modernity and the cultural exchange between the subjects of the African diaspora. Therefore, it will be possible to localize the Haitian Revolution in all of its complexity and potentiality, resituating the History of Haiti in the molds of education and research in Brazil.