Central America And The Caribbean: Haiti

RP
San Francisco

A question about this place:
I don't know what it is, but every time I ask anyone about doing research in Haiti I never get any response. I've asked more than one person via email, and the question just lingers in the ether unanswered. If it is so bad, why don't they just say so?

Answers:

aemacivor
Fredericton

Sorry, I have not heard of anyone doing any research in Haiti. You might want to check with some universities to see if they have any involvement. Keep in mind that Haiti is a poor country and politics are not often stable there. It is not that it is a “bad” place… just not what one would see as an academic place.

RP
San Francisco

Thanks! I’ll keep trying . . .

Yes I know it seems unlikely, and I didn’t mean “bad,” to describe the place—just to describe a potentially really, really difficult research situation.

The only places that seem to have anything like colonial archives/records are institutions associated with religious orders (not national archives). There must be people who know about such things, though; I just can’t figure out how to connect with them.

RP
San Francisco

This is just a followup; I found something that helped me just now after I read your note. The following article offers a fairly comprehensive overview of where colonial and revolutionary sources are found:

Unexploited Sources for the History of the Haitian Revolution

David P. Geggus
Latin American Research Review, Vol. 18, No. 1. (1983), pp. 95-103.

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