ARTICLE Haiti's connection to early America: Beyond the revolution Ronald Angelo Johnson Texas State University Correspondence Ronald Angelo Johnson, History, Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas, USA. Email: ronjohnson@txstate.edu Abstract Haiti's independence and development as a republic are important to the history of the early United States. The intellectual reconcep- tualization of the Haitian Revolution from a Caribbean slave revolt to a major Atlantic World event has led to a progressive change in the use of Haiti to enrich early U.S. historiography. This essay calls for more monograph‐length studies on the shared history of the early Haitian and American republics. The embrace of the rich historical literature by Haitian scholars, along with expanding research opportunities and analytical methods, can equip scholars based in North America to publish more books that illuminate the inextricable significance of Haiti's history, beyond its revolution, to the development of early American life and politics. 1 | INTRODUCTION Elizabeth Maddock Dillon and Michael J. Drexler (2016, p. 1) open their recent volume with a prescient argument: “It should no longer be possible to write a history of the early republic of the United States without mentioning Haiti, or St. Domingue.” In his Pulitzer Prize‐winning book The Internal Enemy, historian Alan Taylor (2014) pays substantial attention to the influences of the Haitian Revolution (1789–1804) on life in the early United States. He informs the reader how the revolt of enslaved people of Saint‐Domingue heightened racialized fears of the White population in slaveholding Virginia. For Thomas Jefferson, “The existence of a negro people in arms, occupying a country which it has soiled by the most criminal acts, is a horrible spectacle for all White nations” (Taylor, 2014, p. 103). The exis- tence of Haiti challenged White American notions of freedom for Black people. Taylor examines the causes, course, and consequences of enslaved people joining and helping the British in the War of 1812. To reveal the social complex- ities of slavery in the most prominent southern state from the American Revolution through Nat Turner's revolt, the author familiarizes readers with the concurrent history of Haiti. Taylor's analysis connects the lives and conditions of people in Virginia to the shared experiences of enslaved people and slaveholders in Haiti's colonial progenitor Saint‐Domingue. Located on the western third of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, the colony, through the cultivation of slave‐labor sugar and coffee, developed into France's most profitable imperial holding across the eighteenth century. By the late eighteenth‐century, Saint‐Domingue was home to half a million enslaved people of African descent. Slaveholders in the United States held roughly the same number of Black people in bondage. In 1791, the major military thrust of the Haitian Revolution began when thousands of DOI: 10.1111/hic3.12442 History Compass. 2018;16:e12442. https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12442 © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hic3 1 of 11