Thread by @HistPhilosophy

THREAD

The Baron de Vastey (1781-1820)

Author of Le Système Colonial Dévoilé (1841, "The Colonial System Unveiled")

His full name was Jean Louis Vastey and as Marlene Daut (@FictionsofHaiti) has discussed may also have published in France as a poet under a different name, Pompée Valentin Vastey.

researchgate.net/publication/23…

His writings respond to apologists for slavery, especially Pierre Victor Malouet and Mazères

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Vi…
gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt…

He wrote polemics on behalf of Henri Christophe, the ruler of Haiti, and justified the uprising that led to the Haitian Revolution by meticulously detailing the violence of the slave system.

Addressing the colonists, he wrote:

"I have nothing to hope from you; I can at the very least make you tremble by unveiling your misdeeds and recording your names on these pages, so that they might be held in abhorrence by your contemporaries and by generations to come.”

Doris Garraway has written, "“I read Vastey’s Colonial System as both a radicalization of the contemporary antislavery tract and a transformation of the slave narrrative into a form of public diplomacy defending the agency of an abolitionist state.”

The most important publication on Vastey is Daut's "Baron de Vastey and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism" (New York: 2017).

palgrave.com/gp/book/978134…

Also "Colonial System Unveiled" was translated by C. Bongie in 2016.

And @ChikeJeffers and I covered Vastey in the History of Africana Philosophy podcast, episode 38:

historyofphilosophy.net/baron-de-vastey

Also check out our interview with Garraway on Haiti:

historyofphilosophy.net/haiti-garraway