Polish Soldiers in the Haitian Revolution
For:
Students, Faculty, and Staff
Location:
Join the Department of European and Eurasian Studies for a research talk on Polish Soldiers in the Haitian Revolution during International Education Week.
In 1802, Napoleon sent around 5000 Polish soldiers to Saint-Domingue as part of his attempt to reinstate slavery on the island. Not only did he fail, but around 400 of these Polish soldiers chose to stay in the newly independent Haiti, where Jean-Jacques Dessalines gave them land and citizenship. To this day, the descendants of these soldiers in Haiti are called Polonés. This presentation traces the cultural afterlives of this joint Haitian and Polish history, highlighting the ways literature, cinema and opera have been mobilized to fill the gaps of history and have sparked controversies around the Polish soldiers' motives, their actions, and the significance of their involvement in the Haitian Revolution for nationalist discourses both in Poland and in Haiti.