-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Kirwin R. Shaffer, Matthew J. Smith. Red and Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict, and Political Change, 1934–1957. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2009. Pp. xi, 278. Cloth $59.95, paper $24.95, The American Historical Review, Volume 115, Issue 3, June 2010, Pages 871–872, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.115.3.871-a
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
The study of radicalism in Latin American and Caribbean history has evolved in the past decades. Historians have tended to approach the study of radicalism from three sometimes overlapping approaches: a focus on cultural and counter-hegemonic resistance, a focus limited to radicalism in one country for a given time, and a newer trend that does not reject the first two but places local and national radicalism into larger transnational perspective.
Matthew J. Smith's book is largely a political history, set in Port-au-Prince, that also incorporates transnational and cultural resistance approaches to illustrate the relations between two different radical movements following the end of U.S. occupation: Marxists and noiristes (black consciousness proponents). While historians tend to deal superficially with this era between U.S. occupation and the Duvalier regime, Smith's book delves into the political maneuverings of the era's governments, the rise of socialist, communist, and noiriste activists, and the broader context of the U.S. Good Neighbor policy and the Cold War. Smith argues “that radicalism in postoccupation Haiti was much more fractured and heterodox than scholars have appreciated” and that while various radicals frequently referenced “color” in their rhetoric and programs, “political allegiances among radicals .… were not necessarily based on ideological sympathies or color consciousness. Access to state power was quite often the central objective” (p. 6).
