Builder of the Next World: The Rise and Fall of Haiti’s King Henry Christophe
October 16 @ 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
CSAAD Africa~Diaspora Forum Series
Dr. Marlene Daut
Yale University
Thursday, October 16, 2025
5:00 pm – 6:30 pm
20 Cooper SQ, 5th FL, Room 503
New York City, NY 10003
Zoom link: https://nyu.zoom.us/j/91031695364
Slave. Revolutionary. King. Taken together, these words describe only one man: Henry Christophe I of Haiti. Born in 1767 to an enslaved mother on the island of Grenada, he first fought to overthrow the British in North America, before helping enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was then called, to gain freedom from slavery. After the Revolution, he offered to lead independent Haiti and became the country’s first and only king. But it all came to a sudden and tragic end when after only thirteen years of ruling, Haiti’s King Henry I shot himself in the heart, some say with a silver bullet.
For accommodations, please contact the Program Manager for the Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora at ac8829@nyu.edu.
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Book Publication Site
Bio:
Marlene L. Daut is Professor of French, Black Studies, and History at Yale University. Her most recent book, The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe (Knopf, 2025), a finalist for the Cundill History Prize, explores the fascinating life of Haiti’s only king while delving into the complex history of a 19th-century Caribbean monarchy. Her other books include Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (Liverpool UP, 2015); Baron de Vastey and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism (Palgrave, 2017); and Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution (UNC Press, 2023), co-winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize.