La révolution haïtienne fut gagnée par un chœur, non par un solo
Opinion | Haiti’s Revolution Was Won by a Chorus, Not a Solo By Patrick Prézeau Stephenson ( Le Français suit ) My purpose today is explicit: to refute two resilient myths about Haiti’s foundational historian, Thomas Madiou. First, that Madiou is egregiously partial—an unabashed celebrant of one “favorite” forefather. Second, that the history he helped canonize justifies the deification of a single revolutionary titan. The data drawn from a systematic sentiment analysis of five tomes (covering 1789–1826) instead point to something far more intellectually interesting—and politically relevant. Haiti’s victory was polycentric: a distributed achievement of intersecting leaders, factions, geographies, and tactical repertoires. The Data Behind the Narrative Let us begin with the table. Using a modern French sentiment lexicon (FEEL) applied to thousands of text segments explicitly referencing four central revolutionary figures—Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Henri...