Join us on Wednesday 28 April at 4pm for an online event with Dr Jack Webb (Newcastle University) about his book, Haiti in the British Imagination: Imperial Worlds, 1847-1915 (Liverpool University Press, 2020).
This event will feature a public lecture followed by Q&A and is sponsored by Race, Roots & Resistance in partnership with the University of Manchester History Department.
The event will run online via Zoom. It is free to attend, but advanced booking is required. Please note that the Zoom details will be send out to registered attendees on the day of the event.
Author Bio: Dr Jack Webb is a Research Associate in Postcolonial Print Cultures in the School of English, Newcastle University. He is the author of Haiti in the British Imagination, 1847-1915, which explores cultural and political relations between the Black sovereign state of Haiti and the British Empire. His current research is on the print culture of Black British neighbourhoods in the twentieth century.
Book Summary: In 1804, Haiti declared its independence from France to become the world’s first ‘black’ nation state. Throughout the nineteenth century, Haiti maintained its independence, consolidating and expanding its national and, at times, imperial projects. In doing so, Haiti joined a host of other nation states and empires that were emerging and expanding across the Atlantic World. The largest and, in many ways, most powerful of these empires was that of Britain. Haiti in the British Imagination is the first book to focus on the diplomatic relations and cultural interactions between Haiti and Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century. As well as a story of British imperial aggression and Haitian ‘resistance’, it is also one of a more complicated set of relations: of rivalry, cultural exchange and intellectual dialogue. At particular moments in the Victorian period, ideas about Haiti had wide-reaching relevancies for British anxieties over the quality of British imperial administration, over what should be the relations between ‘the British’ and people of African descent, and defining the limits of black sovereignty. Haitians were key in formulating, disseminating and correcting ideas about Haiti. Through acts of dialogue, Britons and Haitians impacted on the worldviews of one another, and with that changed the political and cultural landscapes of the Atlantic World.