Gaffield, Julia — Haitian Connections in the Atlantic World: Recognition after Revolution (2015) Source Information

Gaffield, Julia — Haitian Connections in the Atlantic World: Recognition after Revolution (2015) Source Information Author: Julia Gaffield Full Title: Haitian Connections in the Atlantic World: Recognition after Revolution Publisher: University of North Carolina Press Year: 2015 Type: Secondary Source — Diplomatic and legal history of Haiti's international recognition struggle, 1804–1825 Location in vault: research/secondary-sources/ EPUB: ~/dev/rasin/data/sources/secondary_sources/annas_archive_new/gaffield-haitian-connections-atlantic-world.epub Status Text extracted: Yes (EPUB, April 2026) Review pass: Full extraction — Introduction, Chapters 1–5, Conclusion Chapter notes: gaffield haitian connections atlantic world ch notes Overview Gaffield's core argument is a direct challenge to the "isolation thesis" — the long-standing scholarly consensus that the international community collectively isolated Haiti after 1804 because of racial fear and the revolutionary example. She argues instead that diplomatic non-recognition and economic engagement were separable, that foreign governments consistently extended layered, partial, or implicit recognition of Haiti's independence through commercial contact and admiralty law even while withholding formal diplomatic recognition, and that this economic engagement was what actually sustained Haitian independence in the precarious first decade. Her framework: recognition in the early nineteenth-century Atlantic was not a binary — recognized or not — but a spectrum including commercial contact, admiralty court rulings, informal agent correspondence, and eventually formal diplomatic acknowledgment.