Democracy After Slavery: Black Publics and Peasant Radicalism in Haiti and Jamaica.

Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, (2000). Octavo, navy blue boards (hardcover), gilt letters, xv + 270 pp. Near-Fine. From Preface: Democracy After Slavery is an important comparative study of Jamaica and Haiti at a critical period in their histories. Sheller focuses on two moments in post-emancipation Haiti and Jamaica: the Piquet Rebellion of 1844 and the 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion. Both rebellions highlight the popular movements for democratization which characterized the two societies after the abolition of slavery. For Sheller, ex-slaves (truncated) in Haiti and in Jamaica ‘did not simply retreat into a world of peasant subsistence and conservative values. They turned their collective energies toward changing structures of domination wherever they could.’ However, in each case, former slaves met with resistence: elites were reluctant to move toward real democratization, resulting in the two major rebellions Sheller describes. Despite the efforts of freedmen and freedwomen, there was a significant retreat from democracy in Haiti in Jamaica during the nineteenth century. Sheller places the Jamaican and Haitian situation in the context of other societies emerging from slavery. She sees similar patterns elsewhere, especially in the American South, but also in other parts of the Caribbean and Latin America, and this comparative perspective adds considerably to the importance of her book. She is also aware of the signficance of Haiti in the Americas, not only because of the Haitian Revolution, but also because of the image of Haiti in the century which followed. Planters never forgot Haiti, but neither did slaves and freed people. The anti-slavery and anti-colonial stance of the Haitian Republic stood out in the nineteenth century. Sheller’s nuanced account of peasant radicalism adds significantly to our understanding of resistance after emancipation. She rightly devotes considerable attention to the role of women in resistance, and she concludes with a fascinating discussion of the personal and political ties between Haitians and Jamaicans in the mid-nineteenth century. Yet it was more than these personal contacts which makes her comparison so intriguing; there was also an overlap in the ‘conceptual worlds’ of former slaves in these two societies. In highlighthing that shared ideology,m Sheller has provided a new perspective on the world after slavery ended. (Inventory #: 61166bd)