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Dr. Shrout said once in class that the hardest thing for a historian to determine is intent. Sara C. Fanning attempts to do just this in “The Roots of Early Black Nationalism: Northern African Americans’ Invocations of Haiti in the Early Nineteenth Century”. Fanning’s thesis is basically that freed black men and women in the north were inspired by the success that Haiti had as an independent black nation after their violent revolution. Fanning uses examples of this success in Haiti as evidence to further her point. By doing so though, she must try to determine the intentions of many people.
Fanning dedicates a section to analyzing why Thomas Jefferson cut ties with Haiti. She surmises that it may have been done to secure Louisiana and Florida from Napoleon or because he was upset that the Haitians shared his same republican ideologies and philosophical outlook. It is really impossible to ever know for sure. Yet, Fanning’s detailed thought process is shown and is fairly convincing.
Throughout the rest of the article, Fanning makes statements that imply that she is determining intent. She says, “they hoped…” and “African Americans who learned of the freedom afforded to black men would have looked upon Haiti as…”. Some of her conclusions about intentions are more reasonable than others. When she discusses how many of the African Americans who immigrated to Haiti returned home, she argues that it was because of cultural differences and problems with Haiti. While this reasoning is fairly sound, it struck me as a little bit of her trying to reason and justify her argument, as opposed to a more concrete answer or evidence.
Fanning does a thorough job of pointing out what made Haiti appealing to African Americans, but I felt that she lacked any real evidence of African Americans noting how they were inspired by Haiti. While I understand that the basis of her argument was that the African Americans surely noticed what was going on in Haiti, it may have been helpful if she had found more concrete sources backing this up. Overall, Fanning’s article is an excellent hypothesis with great details and ideas. It just contained a little bit too much assuming for me. Then again, without some assumptions a historian would struggle to write much of anything. So, in the end, I guess I’ll give Fanning my stamp of approval (whatever that may mean to her).
Hank Updegrave (New York State) raises some interesting questions in his post. His point about Fanning not paying enough attention to the early instability in Haiti is very valid. He brings up the issues of those who returned after going to Haiti and the inevitable tension between black people and those of a mixed race. This is a solid point that I had not thought about. Fanning definitely should have attempted to explain how African Americans would have seen these issues as she did about so many other things. So now, after reading Henry’s blog, I’m back on the fence about Fanning.