Focusing on the influential life and works of the Haitian political writer and statesman Baron
de Vastey (1781-1820) in this book Marlene L. Daut examines the legacy of Vastey's extensive
writings as a form of what she calls black Atlantic humanism a discourse devoted to attacking
the enlightenment foundations of colonialism. Daut argues that Vastey the most important
secretary of Haiti's King Henry Christophe was a pioneer in a tradition of deconstructing
colonial racism and colonial slavery that is much more closely associated with
twentieth-century writers like W.E.B. Du Bois Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire. By expertly
forging exciting new historical and theoretical connections among Vastey and these later
twentieth-century writers as well as eighteenth- and nineteenth-century black Atlantic authors
such as Phillis Wheatley Olaudah Equiano William Wells Brown and Harriet Jacobs Daut proves
that any understanding of the genesis of Afro-diasporic thought must include Haiti's Baron de
Vastey.
