A handsome copy of one of the earliest Italian accounts of the Haitian Revolution and the revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture (1743-1803).
Carlo Mantegazza, a Milanese adventurer, had already travelled through Turkey and Russia when he made this visit. The text comprises a series of letters beginning with him in Lyon on 28 January 1802, arriving at Basse-Terre Guadeloupe on 10 May and then Cap-Français in the same month. Mantegazza’s wide-ranging observations include: the island’s geography; the cultivation of rice, coffee, and sugar; reflections on slavery, the social structure of the island, details about plantations and the slave trade; plus the colony’s economy.
Of great interest are his notes on Toussaint Louverture, clearly written while the revolutionary leader was still alive, whom Mantegazza describes as an “immortal among the people of his colour, and whose talents will be admired by posterity.” Commencing on page 105, there is a brief, entirely positive, biographical sketch of Louverture, after which he adds that “Toussaint may be recognized as the first authority of the colony: all the qualities which constitute the head of a nation are united in him: his wisdom and good conduct has made him the arbiter of the heatrs of all inhabitants.”
1802 was the year that Napoleon reinstated slavery in the French colonies in the hope of quashing the Haitian Revolution. It was also the year of the burning of Cap Français, and in June Louveture and his family were captured by the French. He died the following April at Fort Joux.
Rare: OCLC locates copies at the Seminary of the Southwest, National Library of Chile, Rovereto Civica, Torino, and 2 in Germany.
Sabin, 44397.
