Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Preface: Baron de Vastey and Post/Revolutionary Haiti
- Jean Louis Vastey (1781–1820): A Biographical Sketch
- Introduction
- The Colonial System Unveiled
- Supplementary Essays
- 1 Monstrous Testimony: Baron de Vastey and the Politics of Black Memory
- 2 Abolition, Sentiment, and the Problem of Agency in Le système colonial dévoilé
- 3 Memories of Development: Le système colonial dévoilé and the Performance of Literacy
- 4 Afterword: Vastey and the System of Colonial Violence
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Memories of Development: Le système colonial dévoilé and the Performance of Literacy
from Supplementary Essays
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Preface: Baron de Vastey and Post/Revolutionary Haiti
- Jean Louis Vastey (1781–1820): A Biographical Sketch
- Introduction
- The Colonial System Unveiled
- Supplementary Essays
- 1 Monstrous Testimony: Baron de Vastey and the Politics of Black Memory
- 2 Abolition, Sentiment, and the Problem of Agency in Le système colonial dévoilé
- 3 Memories of Development: Le système colonial dévoilé and the Performance of Literacy
- 4 Afterword: Vastey and the System of Colonial Violence
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Mr. Jefferson's very severe remarks on us have been so extensively argued upon by men whose attainments in literature, I shall never be able to reach, that I would not have meddled with it, were it not to solicit each of my brethren, who has the spirit of a man, to buy a copy of Mr. Jefferson's ‘Notes on Virginia’, and put it in the hand of his son. For let no one of us suppose that the refutations which have been written by our white friends are enough—they are whites —we are blacks. We, and the world wish to see the charges of Mr. Jefferson refuted by the blacks themselves, according to their chance; for we must remember that what the whites have written respecting this subject, is other men's labours, and did not emanate from the blacks. I know well, that there are some talents and learning among the coloured people of this country, which we have not a chance to develope, in consequence of oppression; but our oppression ought not to hinder us from acquiring all we can. For we will have a chance to develope them by and by.
David Walker, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World(1829)I take as the starting point for my reading of Le système colonial dévoilé the obvious but scarcely commented upon fact that it is a text formally divided into two (unequal) halves: an opening section entitled Destruction of the first HAYTIANS. Origin of the Slave Trade. Monstrosity of this Traffic and a second, much longer one entitled Of the Colonial Regime, or the Horrors of Slavery! The binary structure of Colonial System provides a natural starting point for a consideration of its formal qualities, all the more so given that, with one exception, none of Vastey's other texts features any sort of formal division into titled sections or numbered chapters.
In a glowing 1818 article on Colonial System published in (significantly enough) The Antijacobin Review, the author implicitly signalled this binary structure when, in describing the book's contents, he chose simply to paraphrase its two section titles: ‘After dwelling on the distinction of the aboriginal Haytians, the origin of slavery, and the monstrosities in the traffic in human blood…
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- The Colonial System Unveiled , pp. 247 - 284Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2014