Also known as: Haiti State Against Nation, Trouillot State Against Nation, Michel-Rolph Trouillot State Against Nation
Last updated: April 16, 2026
A systematic account of how the Haitian state came to stand against the Haitian nation — not as an accident or moral failure but as the structural outcome of a political economy set in motion at independence, tracing the arc from 1697 to 1988. Trouillot's central argument is that Duvalierism was not a rupture with Haitian history but its most extreme formalization, built on a state-nation split in which the governing class extracted from the peasant majority while noirisme, color politics, and U.S. support successively enabled and insulated authoritarian rule.
His 1990 monograph arguing that the Haitian state and the Haitian nation formed in chronic structural opposition.
haiti-state-against-nation — Michel-Rolph's study of the Haitian state; shared family intellectual formation
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Michel-Rolph Trouillot. "Haiti: State Against Nation: The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism." Monthly Review Press, 1990. Rasin.ai, https://rasin.ai/connections/sources/trouillot-haiti-state-against-nation. Accessed 2026-05-05.