Laurent Dubois: “Haiti, not the US or France, was where the assertion of human rights reached its defining climax in the Age of Revolution.”

“Stretching from 1791 to 1804, the Haitian Revolution was both a local and a global event, a true world-historical moment in ways that are increasingly acknowledged today. One useful way for us to think about the Haitian Revolution is as the most radical (and therefore one of the most important) assertions of the right to have rights in human history. Even more so than the American and French revolutions, with which it was intertwined, the Haitian Revolution posed a set of absolutely central political questions.”