Haiti in Transition

Haiti's history has been, to use the polite term, "troubled" almost without interruption for more than two centuries. Lauinger is fortunate in having a small, but significant collection of rare books and manuscripts that concentrate on developments in the first two decades of the country's history. These were greatly enriched by our acquisition of the papers of a French merchant trader, Michel Marsaudon, active in St. Marc and Port-au-Prince in the years 1787-1793.

The hundred and some letters and documents in the collection give, as one would expect, good detail on Marsaudon's financial state (not often good), and, almost as expectedly, information on his love-life (unhappy ladies predominate). But there is also useful commentary on the slave revolts of 1791 that ushered in almost fifteen years of continual warfare. Like many other Europeans, Marsaudon left Haiti for more tranquil climes; his surviving papers give us an idea why.