From Dessalines to Duvalier

In this lively, provocative, and well-documented history, David Nicholls discusses the impact of "color" on the political relationship between the black majority and the mulatto elite during almost two hundred years of Haitian history. The divisive factor impeding harmony in Haitian culture, argues Nicholls, has not been race, but color. Identifying themselves as non-white, blacks and mulattos acknowledge racial unity.