I Have Avenged America: Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Haiti’s Fight for Freedom is a new biography by Professor Julia Gaffield of William & Mary. The book sheds light on the life and legacy of Haiti’s founder, Jean-Jacques Dessalines (1758?–1806), a significant yet misunderstood figure in world history. As Gaffield points out, Dessalines, the first ruler of independent Haiti, has not only been unjustly maligned in historical narratives but overshadowed by other more popular figures such as Toussaint Louverture. Throughout the book, Gaffield stresses how Dessalines should be remembered for the pivotal role he played in Haiti’s struggle for independence from colonial powers, serving as a military leader under French rule and later as emperor of independent Haiti.

But even though he founded the first modern state to permanently abolish slavery, Dessalines has been almost universally demonized in foreign narratives. His image has been tarnished by misconceptions and misinterpretations, including by Tucker Carlson when he was on Fox News, an example Gaffield highlights in the introduction to the book. The prevailing story of Dessalines’s life has unfortunately been shaped by overtly racist accounts and deeply colonialist perspectives (one of the most famous engravings of him depicts him with a saber in one hand while holding up a white woman’s head in the other), leading to Dessalines’s vilification and marginalization in mainstream historical and political discourse.

Gaffield hopes to change all of this. And, in her groundbreaking biography, she has succeeded in the vital mission of offering a faithful account of Dessalines’s life, while underscoring his immense contributions not simply to Haitian freedom, but to the transatlantic abolitionist movement.

Marlene L. Daut (MLD): First, can you talk about what inspired you to write this book, which I believe might be the first modern English-language biography of Jean-Jacques Dessalines?

Julia Gaffield (JG): Throughout my career, I have been interested in the period after Haiti’s Declaration of Independence. What happened after the revolution was over? How did Haiti remain independent in such a hostile world?

So, first, I focused on the Haitian state’s efforts to secure international diplomatic recognition. This was in my previous book, Haitian Connections in the Atlantic World: Recognition after Revolution (UNC, 2015). It was here I first began studying Dessalines’s life. While researching, I learned that Haiti was not completely isolated after independence, and that Dessalines and other heads of state negotiated to secure what I called “layers of recognition,” even if not full recognition.

In doing this research, I came to understand a much more complex version of Dessalines’s life and character than what both popular and academic publications had offered. In the international community, Dessalines is—and has been—poorly understood and often maligned. That’s why I became committed to studying his full life.

At the same time, I was struck by the fact that scholars kept writing biographies of Toussaint Louverture. The international community—especially in recent decades—has promoted Toussaint Louverture, Dessalines’s predecessor, as the hero of the Haitian Revolution. Emblematic of this is the fact that in the past 20 years, there have been five new biographies of Louverture published outside of Haiti.

So, why weren’t non-Haitian scholars turning more toward Dessalines? I learned that there was a longer history—one that began during Dessalines’s own life—of reducing him to a simplistic trope, rather than recognizing him as a complex person who had extensive life experience.

MLD: Speaking of his life experiences, what can you tell us about Dessalines’s early life? Some say that he was born in Africa, others say in Saint-Domingue? What is the story that your research tells?

JG: Dessalines’s early life is obscure, and he almost never discussed his time under slavery. But we know a little bit. The evidence supports what Haitian scholars have argued going back to the early 19th century: that he was born in Saint-Domingue. The debate about his place of birth stems from the fact that several writers in the early 19th century claimed that Dessalines was “African,” sometimes specifying that they meant he was born in Africa. But these claims were usually made in the context of racist character descriptions that framed Dessalines as “barbaric,” precisely because of his Africanness. But the archival evidence—some of it first uncovered by the French historian Jacques de Cauna—suggests that he was born in Grande Rivière du Nord in Saint-Domingue, around 1758.

For the next three decades, Dessalines was enslaved: by three or four people, on two different coffee plantations. During these years, Dessalines developed relationships with family and friends, which he sustained for the rest of his life. These included, most notably, a woman named Victoria (or Toya) Montou, whom he referred to as his aunt, and with his relative Joseph, who fought under his command during the revolution.

MLD: What would you say is the most surprising thing you learned while researching Dessalines’s life?

JG: This might sound minor, but what surprised me most was how often Dessalines got sick during the revolution.

I was surprised because most narratives of the revolution, and especially the war for independence, emphasize how many French people died of yellow fever. The Haitian revolutionaries used battle tactics that would maximize French deaths by exhausting them and making them fight in the mountains. Thousands of them died from yellow fevers, including, famously, French general Charles Leclerc.

But because of the emphasis on how often the French army got sick, few people talk about the Haitian revolutionaries and illness. Sometimes Dessalines was too sick to lead a battle charge or even to compose a letter. The illness is usually described simply as “fevers,” but he was bedridden on several occasions. Dessalines and other revolutionaries were not immune to illness.

MLD: Dessalines is part of the revolutionary group of freedom fighters who declared independence on January 1, 1804, and renamed the island Haiti. Dessalines pretty quickly after that is given the title Emperor Jacques I, and the country becomes the Empire of Haiti. But Dessalines is assassinated in October 1806, which is not long after Haiti issues its first constitution in May 1805.

Can you talk about why and how that assassination occurred? Did it reflect any kind of leadership failures on Dessalines’s part, either in perception or in reality? In other words, how should we view Dessalines as a leader and head of state, given that a large part of the country clearly grew dissatisfied enough with his rule to want to overthrow or even kill him?

JG: There are a few reasons why Dessalines was assassinated. He led a country at war and the French forced him to govern and rule as a military leader. He maintained the strict hierarchy that had served him well during the revolution, but that was not effective for sustaining the coalition that he had helped to build among the different military generals during the war for independence. He took the military hierarchy and tried to apply it to the state; and it didn’t really work, either for his political rivals or for the population more generally.

Also, because of the ongoing war with France, Dessalines tried to revive the plantation economy for international trade: foreign exchange helped build alliances and provided weapons. But most of the population did not want to labor on large plantations, and, consequently, he lost support as a state leader.

Finally, despite his efforts to secure foreign recognition of Haitian independence, France’s claims to dominion over their former colony held power on the international stage. Consequently, every other nation waited for France to extend diplomatic recognition before they did. So, Dessalines was not able to secure international recognition, and he did not secure support from some of his top generals and the laboring population more generally. If France had admitted defeat and not continued waging war, the story might have been different.

MLD: Speaking of his potential or perceived failures, what would you say were his greatest successes? Of course, there was declaring Haitian independence; but as a ruler and an emperor, what is his legacy or what should it be?

JG: Founding the nation of Haiti is central to his legacy, but the revolutionaries declared independence to secure the abolition of slavery. In Dessalines’s speech to the people of Haiti in the Declaration of Independence, he says “we must seize from the inhuman government that has for a long time kept us in the most humiliating torpor, all hope of re-enslaving us; we must then live independent or die.”

Independence and abolition went hand in hand. Securing the first permanent, universal, and immediate abolition of slavery was his greatest success and is his legacy.

MLD: So, on the back cover copy of the book, the publisher notes that Dessalines has been considered “A hero to Haitians for centuries,” but that he is “portrayed abroad as barbarous and violent.”

As a non-Haitian, is Dessalines a hero to you, too? And how did the extreme polarization in ideas about Dessalines influence how you approached writing this book? Did these extreme opinions make it hard to get to the bottom of who Dessalines was as a person?

JG: I do think Dessalines was heroic. Dessalines was forced to fight for his life and for his humanity, and he did so with great success. He founded the first nation to permanently ban slavery, and he was willing to risk his own life to do so.

This doesn’t make him beyond reproach. And yet, it was because he met violence with violence that Dessalines has been—and still is—a polarizing figure. This means that the available historical evidence about him is problematic (of course, all primary sources are problematic; but most written records about Dessalines were deeply hostile).

Celebratory accounts of Dessalines also often focus on violence: think about the phrase popularly associated with him, “koupe tet boule kay” (cut off heads, burn down houses). But I had first really been introduced to Dessalines by studying his diplomacy; so, in this book I wanted to get at the connections between his revolutionary violence and his diplomacy and his ideologies.

MLD: Do you think that what some have called “the Haitian turn” is now heading in the more biographical direction that you have adopted to tackle Haitian history?

JG: You and I recently participated in an academic panel about Haitian biographies, and I think we are in an exciting moment in the historiography. Obviously, readers should read your phenomenal biography of Henry Christophe, The First and Last King of Haiti (Knopf, 2025), but Robin Mitchell is writing a biography of Suzanne Simone Baptiste Louverture (under contract with Princeton University Press), and Kaiama L. Glover is writing an intellectual biography of René Depestre (under contract with Liveright). I think we’re going to see many more biographies of Haitian figures in the coming years, and I am excited to read them!

MLD: What is your broader take away after researching for so long, and, ultimately, writing a biography of Dessalines? What do you hope that the contemporary reader, in particular, will conclude after reading about his life story?

JG: My hope is that readers—especially those outside of Haiti—will gain a better understanding of him as a full person and of the world in which he lived, suffered, and fought. I learned that he was someone with a wry sense of humor who had lasting friendships, and that he was someone who was deeply loyal to people he respected.

But, most importantly, he was someone who challenged injustice and discrimination and he fought for and insisted on full equality and inclusion. He should be considered a central figure in the history of the modern word. 

Featured image courtesy of Julia Gaffield