The Irritated Genie

Race vindication has long been a prominent issue in the minds of African-Americans in the United States… The Haitian Revolution was viewed as a manifestation of race redemption in early conceptualizations of this consciousness in the second decade of the nineteenth century… In his acceptance speech for the office of Governor General for Life of the newly Independent Black Nation, Haiti’s liberator, Jean Jacques Dessalines, referring to a possible invasion of Haiti, asserted that “The irritated genie of Haiti looming out of the bosom of the sea appears, his menacing face rouses the waves, stirs up storms and his might hand smashes or scatters their ships.”