Vulgar History - Connecting the French Revolution and the Haitian Revolution

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast. My name is 0.73

00:00:16.300 Anne Foster and this season we've been looking at revolutions. We've been looking at the

00:00:20.880 American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution. And it's occurred

00:00:25.500 to me as we've been having all these discussions over the past year or so, how these revolutions

00:00:29.980 all intersect with each other, how the events of the American Revolution in many ways inspired

00:00:35.520 part of what happened in the Haitian Revolution, what happened at the French Revolution,

00:00:38.760 and how they were all inspired by ancient Rome and just the connections between all of them.

00:00:44.880 They are often, almost always, I think, spoken about like the American Revolution is this like

00:00:49.780 specific thing that happened. The French Revolution is this specific thing. The Haitian

00:00:53.120 Revolution, this specific thing. But there's so much overlap between them. Like there's some

00:00:59.520 soldiers were involved in all three. They all happen in such a time period that there are all

00:01:06.980 these connections. And I was thinking about all these connections. And then as when I happened

00:01:10.940 upon the work of today's guest, who is Zoe Sivak. And Zoe is the author of a novel called

00:01:16.340 Mademoiselle Revolution, which tells the fictional story of an heiress who was growing up in Saint

00:01:22.100 Domingue, later known as Haiti. She went to America and then she went to France during the

00:01:27.300 French Revolution. And the book really explains in its fictional narrative, kind of the connection,

00:01:33.720 some of the connections between the Haitian Revolution and the French Revolution. And Zoe

00:01:36.920 herself is so passionate about this topic of these intersecting revolutions and what they have in

00:01:43.840 common with each other and how they all each led to each other and how in many ways the Haitian

00:01:48.740 Revolution led to other events like the American Civil War. So I was just so excited to just nerd

00:01:53.480 out with her to talk about, to talk about all of this, the revolutions of it all. And this,

00:01:58.440 I think is the perfect way to sort of explain that it's all part of this age of revolutions,

00:02:04.360 everything, you know, we all didn't just follow the coconut tree. Everything is a part of

00:02:09.280 everything else. Anyway, Zoe is such a fun person to talk to. Her book is called Mademoiselle

00:02:13.800 Revolution. And I bet after you hear her talk with me about this topic, you're going to want

00:02:18.720 to go and buy a copy of her book. It is available. It's called Mademoiselle Revolution. It's

00:02:22.980 available hardcover and paperback. And here's my conversation with Zoe Sivak.

00:02:32.200 Okay. So I'm so happy today to be joined by Zoe Sivak, who is here to fill in some blanks for us.

00:02:38.800 So, well, I mean, I don't want to be like talking about you without you, but like you wrote a book

00:02:43.300 called Mademoiselle Revolution that is a novel that incorporates the Haitian Revolution and the

00:02:47.300 French Revolution. And then just like seeing your website and stuff, you're like that intersection

00:02:51.360 is really what you're interested in.

00:02:53.300 So I was like, this is what I need to have on the podcast

00:02:55.300 because it seems, it's felt like so separate.

00:02:57.700 We've been talking about like,

00:02:58.520 here's what's happening in Haiti

00:02:59.420 and here's what's happening in France

00:03:01.100 and here's what's happening in America.

00:03:02.560 And like every now and then a person moves around,

00:03:05.660 but it's like these situations directly led to each other.

00:03:09.240 To an extreme sense, actually.

00:03:12.480 Anyway, I don't know if I should jump in or what.

00:03:14.520 No, please, please jump in.

00:03:15.440 Like I just, I'm just like, teach me things.

00:03:17.500 So the first thing, I'm really big on nomenclature, right? Like the words that we use to describe these things happening. We say, for example, if we're talking about the war between the United States or at the time with the colonies and England or Great Britain, we wouldn't call it the American rebellion, right? We don't call it that. We call it the American Revolution. We call it the French Revolution. We don't call it a French rebellion. For a very long time, it was the Haitian rebellion, right?

00:03:47.500 or the mutiny, or slave revolt, right? But it was a revolution in the same way that the American

00:03:53.720 Revolution and the French Revolution overturned their governments, using the foundations of the

00:03:58.180 Enlightenment principles, right? So it is absolutely the same. And you obviously use 0.66

00:04:01.900 Haitian revolution, but I also just like to call it out when people say it, that is the right way

00:04:05.840 to think about this, is that it is, in fact, a revolution of minds, as well as of violence,

00:04:12.560 which was no different than when it was not in a state of revolution. It is the continuation of

00:04:17.160 violence, but, um, it was a revolutionary thought, um, in action. So I just like to call that.

00:04:22.020 Yeah, no. And that's really important to say too, because just as I've been doing this season,

00:04:25.540 that's about just like various, I'm calling it like age of revolution or something this season.

00:04:29.200 I don't know. I keep changing the name of the season, but it's just because when I started

00:04:32.660 researching, I'm like, we're going to talk about, I was working backwards. I'm like,

00:04:35.240 we're going to talk about Marie Antoinette, but then I'm like, well, then I have to talk about

00:04:37.860 the French revolution. And then it's like, well, then I have to talk about what caused the French

00:04:40.740 revolution. And then it's like, well, and that was kind of inspired by the American revolution.

00:04:44.600 So I need to look at the American Revolution.

00:04:46.240 And then in the midst of the research, I'm like, oh my gosh, and the Haitian Revolution.

00:04:49.560 So I always try to say like these three major events and they were so intersecting with

00:04:54.380 each other.

00:04:54.920 And there's probably some soldiers, like some British or French soldiers were like fighting

00:04:58.960 in all three, like, because they were really close in time.

00:05:03.460 And, but also like you said, like, I think that's really interesting.

00:05:06.720 The episode that you haven't heard because it hasn't aired yet, but, but the listeners

00:05:11.460 just heard it where we were talking about um desaline where where we did talk about yeah like

00:05:16.280 the i think with the haitian revolution like as a late comer to learning about it sometimes it's

00:05:22.200 it was kind of i don't know i sort of had the sense of like oh it was kind of like a slave

00:05:27.120 revolt or something it's like no this is exactly the french revolution it's like yeah so it's just

00:05:32.820 sort of felt like not knowing anything about the haitian revolution i just sort of assumed

00:05:37.320 assumed incorrectly that it was sort of some small scale thing where like some enslaved people

00:05:40.900 reacted. And then when I started learning about it, I'm like, just like, no, this is exactly like

00:05:44.120 the French revolution, the American revolution. They're talking about like, these were the

00:05:47.540 principles of Rome. Like this is the enlightenment. Like it was just as philosophical. It was just

00:05:52.200 as, um, I would say more so organized in terms of like the way that they became a military.

00:05:57.620 Like it was, it wasn't just a bunch of haphazard things. Like it was just as much of a thing as

00:06:02.760 any other revolution. It was, it was incredibly organized. And I think it used the same instruments

00:06:10.060 of violence, uh, as well as education. I think, you know, the Haitian revolution is fundamentally

00:06:16.660 different because whereas in the French revolution and even a bit in the American revolution, we used

00:06:21.620 a lot of language of enslavement, right? We use language like liberty and freedom and shackles

00:06:27.040 enslave, right? Whereas in Haiti or Aiti, which is the kind of initial word that they pulled from 0.53

00:06:35.020 the local indigenous people, that's why we call it Haiti. But in this place, you know, they had

00:06:40.180 real slavery, right? Real enslavement, real shackles. These are not psychological. It's not

00:06:45.640 kind of too high of a tax burden. And that's not to minimize what was frustrating and eventually

00:06:53.720 kind of breaching the threshold of what the people would tolerate in, say, America and

00:06:58.780 France.

00:07:00.080 But a lot of it was on principle and a lot of it, you know, real economic disagreements

00:07:07.660 about how the country should be run, legitimate, right, about representation and making sure

00:07:12.580 that more people were at the table.

00:07:14.440 I mean, the things where, and I really don't want to repeat maybe some of the things that,

00:07:19.000 you know, previous speakers and experts have talked about.

00:07:21.740 But the numbers in terms of the amount of death that happened in Haiti, it is distinct in the fact that it was race-based.

00:07:31.380 There's arguments that it is a genocide. 1.00

00:07:33.460 I don't think that's wrong.

00:07:35.400 I don't think that's an incorrect way to think about it.

00:07:37.260 I don't think it's a dirty word because it was definitely based on race.

00:07:41.860 Desanine himself said that, you know, how can you consider yourself free if there's a white man, you know, on, you know, Haitian soil?

00:07:49.380 though he, of course, made carve-outs, like for the Poles, Polish people, for a variety of people,

00:07:54.580 he made carve-outs. But at the end of the day, the people very much felt that they could not

00:07:58.660 be truly free if white people lived on Haitian soil. And so the number of deaths in, say, France,

00:08:07.780 I mean, the tens of thousands, I mean, the number of people, I mean, I know we think of Paris and

00:08:11.740 we think of the guillotine, you know, the guillotine was used throughout France. Lyon was

00:08:16.400 actually much more violent. And I think we forget, you know, because we see, oh, you know,

00:08:23.000 thousands of people died in Haiti at the hands of enslaved, you know, people, you know, they went,

00:08:27.620 wow, they were savage. The images of death would look very similar, even if in a different

00:08:33.780 environment, was very similar and say, I'm more familiar with, you know, the Parisian violence,

00:08:38.640 but there would be piles of bodies, you know, you would see just, I mean, trauma for an entire

00:08:45.480 generation of people seeing a city burn and seeing a city, you know, innocent or guilty.

00:08:53.020 And then, you know, who defines what that meant?

00:08:55.740 So I just also like to make sure we discuss that there is parody in terms of the degrees

00:09:01.020 of violence and that they were not special for the violence that they, you know, perpetuated,

00:09:06.420 perpetuated.

00:09:07.220 The only other thing I'll mention as well, because I like to, before we get even deeper 0.99

00:09:11.120 into the conversation, which I hope we will, is that the violence that was happening to Black people 0.85

00:09:16.680 before, because I'm not interested in the, is it justified? I'm not really interested in that 0.97

00:09:22.240 conversation. I know some people might be. I don't know if it gets us anywhere. I think the

00:09:28.620 thing that I think about is I think about what was done to Black people before. So some things,

00:09:33.540 and I'll just list them quickly, and we don't need to get into them too quickly, but some things that

00:09:37.000 they would do is they would put you into a box filled with nails and push it down a hill

00:09:40.600 that you would be eaten by dogs, you would be disavowed, you would be eaten by insects.

00:09:46.320 The cruelty, it sounds almost villainous. It almost sounds silly, right? The things that 0.98

00:09:50.980 people did. But this was common and well-known. So that is where that rage comes from in the same

00:09:57.060 way that the poverty and starvation and classism that was breaking France apart drove white people 0.67

00:10:05.580 to violence. So I just, I like to think about those things. So it's, I think the best lesson 0.97

00:10:11.840 is that slavery is wrong and that slavery is bad. And that's the easiest conclusion to come to

00:10:18.000 and set up. I think who was more justified? Was France justified in the violence that it executed?

00:10:22.100 You know, were the Americans justified in tarring and feathering? You know, were the Maroons and 0.98

00:10:27.360 free Black people, were they justified in the slaughter of men, women, and children that were 0.96

00:10:32.020 white in Haiti. These are things that you have to think about and talk about and explore. But I 0.71

00:10:37.020 don't think you're ever going to be able to say, you know, oh, they were justified or oh, they

00:10:40.080 weren't. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's something that I always find interesting to try to do on

00:10:45.420 my podcast. I'm looking at some ancient civilization where it's just kind of like, okay,

00:10:50.160 in the context of me talking about what this person did, it's like, that's incredibly likely

00:10:54.760 you're saying it's almost like cartoonish level villain, but it's like, but this is what the

00:10:58.300 society was and if if you didn't do that then you would be killed so it's kind of like what are

00:11:04.660 people doing around you and what is your reaction to that like for us to look back and try to imagine

00:11:08.720 it but i was just thinking when you were talking about just the way that the haitian revolution is

00:11:12.400 remembered versus the american revolution which is like we're all heroes liberated ourselves right

00:11:18.220 and in france like i don't i keep coming back to this but it was so interesting because i was

00:11:21.880 researching this while the olympics were happening last year and the french opening ceremonies were

00:11:26.460 like they had like the beheaded Marie Antoinette singing this heavy metal song and everyone's like 0.96

00:11:30.920 fuck yeah it's like they're celebrating their history of like incredible violence as this cool 0.91

00:11:36.080 thing so to so it's like okay and the Haitian revolution also it's not so it's just kind of 0.99

00:11:42.220 like because it was all white people it's kind of like yeah that that was cool but it's like oh but 0.92

00:11:46.960 it was black people it's like oh that was scary like it's like it was all part of the same 1.00

00:11:50.920 revolutionary time period yeah language and I don't mean it literally it was the same language 1.00

00:11:56.100 of violence and the same tools that they had in their toolkit. I side-eye, like personally,

00:12:00.900 professionally, I side-eye the French Revolution all the time. If you read the book, like it is

00:12:04.360 very critical of the French Revolution. I do believe that the only good thing to come out 1.00

00:12:08.800 of the French Revolution was the metric system. And then people will respond with, well, liberty

00:12:13.000 and freedom, like those things existed. They already existed. That commentary existed. They

00:12:17.820 didn't invent it. The French didn't invent it, right? This was, and just like in any culture, 1.00

00:12:22.440 in any society. And we've seen this elsewhere throughout the world in the global South and

00:12:26.580 in the global West. You know, when people are frustrated, you know, they go to extremes. And

00:12:32.460 oftentimes, even within the right side of history, there are extremists that exploit, right? White 0.94

00:12:39.540 guy's got a white guy. They're going to, you know, they become dictators. They become like 0.96

00:12:43.400 maniacs. You know, Robespierre is incredibly complicated. I think it's all complicated.

00:12:48.120 And so I can never look at something like the French Revolution and simply say like,

00:12:51.140 oh, well, they were the good guys, like piles of like bodies that have been stripped and

00:12:55.760 bayoneted, like in the street, like on the set. And like, could you imagine, like, could you

00:12:59.460 imagine walking down France and your neighbors being pulled from their homes? And I suppose

00:13:04.200 many listeners can imagine because they have real memories of seeing that paralleled in modern life

00:13:09.080 where friends and family are being, you know, pulled from homes unexpectedly and without real

00:13:13.780 process. So it's like, it was violent. And it, yeah, it's just incredibly complicated. It's

00:13:20.940 always very hard to say there are heroes versus villains, because it's very easy to be sympathetic

00:13:25.540 to someone like, say, Marie Antoinette, who was an avid reader and a huge supporter of Rousseau

00:13:30.020 and the Enlightenment thought, and yet she was killed and murdered, one could say. Who's right

00:13:35.980 and who's wrong? I'm not the person to say. It's so complicated, too. And what I've been learning,

00:13:40.320 like i never really studied the french revolution until i've been doing this series and so that's

00:13:43.960 why i'm doing it all kind of like baby steps to because it's like this is so incredibly complicated

00:13:48.740 and the aftermath of it where it's kind of like hell like the american revolution happened

00:13:52.960 and ever since then there's not been a king in america but the french revolution happened and

00:13:58.460 like a couple years later it's like now we have an emperor now he's overthrown okay restoring

00:14:02.720 restoring the king it's like now he's overthrown again now it's another napoleon oh no he's an

00:14:07.200 emperor like the french revolution wasn't like one and done no it was like a thing that happened

00:14:11.980 and then there was like five more revolutions in the next hundred years like it didn't it kept

00:14:16.620 going on and that's just like i can't even get into anything post 1800 because i'm just i'm like

00:14:22.280 i need to understand the 1790s yeah every week every week of that decade was just like wait

00:14:28.940 who's in church now like what's happening now yeah and the and the system the bureaucracy right

00:14:34.300 the system of communes and, you know, the arrondissements that are, you know, much fewer

00:14:39.800 than we have now. But just the structure of how they govern themselves, even despite this chaotic

00:14:44.880 time, this was a, it was a period of personalities, right? Like I think of these men, I think of the

00:14:51.440 men that were, that were in power and had an insignificant influence, you know, whether they

00:14:56.000 were political leaders or artists, right? We know, of course, Murat, you know, the famous in the

00:15:01.440 bathtub. These are figures that were celebrity level men, where women would send locks of hair

00:15:08.560 to Robespierre and would ask for his hand in marriage very regularly. And there are complaints

00:15:13.880 that many other, like Danton, would be very annoyed because women would be screaming from 1.00

00:15:19.420 the rafters on the upper, like while they were having political debates, there would be women

00:15:24.600 because, and the women supported Robespierre so much, one could argue that that's actually how

00:15:29.000 he rose to power was obviously he was popular, but women adored him. And it was women who were

00:15:36.720 very pro-Republican, right, in France, little R, not big R. And they were in huge support of

00:15:44.440 Robespierre. And men were scared because if they went against Robespierre, the women would come 0.84

00:15:49.740 after them. So it's just kind of fascinating about how, where does the power really lie

00:15:55.960 in these in these spaces and i was kind of like personally just like learning about the french

00:16:00.920 revolution in a real way for the first time myself like i like what i vibe with is just the like 0.98

00:16:07.580 an angry mob on the street who's just like fuck the billionaires i want to kill i'm just like yes 0.99

00:16:13.520 i'm there with you but then it's like but that was such a brief moment before it was like okay 1.00

00:16:17.080 here's a bunch of men and we're going to do paperwork and like you're the minister of foreign

00:16:20.700 affairs i'm like there's a minister there's an ambassador like are we not in the terror right 0.79

00:16:25.040 now and they're like yes but we need to like have like civil debate i'm like no where's the women in

00:16:29.620 the street throwing throwing the stones i miss them that was the part i like where it's just 0.77

00:16:34.240 kind of like men take over i'm like god damn it like i know and it's like think of the best deal

00:16:38.460 that was women led that was what storming the best deal was women led and i think about just 0.91

00:16:43.000 think about how different the world was we we in learning about that in school right you hear about 0.61

00:16:47.280 oh it's during the best deal um and then you know there was like the reign of terror and that like

00:16:51.860 it happens one after there's years right there's there's there's huge stretches of time in terms of

00:16:56.840 like you know revolution it's a very long amount of time a year is a huge amount of time and so

00:17:01.420 it's just we're beat to beat like you were saying it's like every other week there was something

00:17:05.620 seismic and i like know how i feel living in the united states now and how exhausted i am

00:17:11.020 with the news reel that seems continuous you know people coming together people breaking apart

00:17:16.540 what evil is coming upon us now? Or will the Supreme Court say yes or no? Who knows?

00:17:23.800 And it's, can you imagine that? But like the stakes, it's hard to say because I know we have

00:17:28.800 so many things at stake, but it's like the things at stake are your very lives in a different way

00:17:33.900 than I think that what we're dealing with right now, though eventually it very well may be our

00:17:37.900 lives. But at least looking at it at this present moment and looking back, it's just incredibly,

00:17:43.400 how did anybody keep up? And literacy rates had gone very high and the number of newspapers,

00:17:49.240 there were so many. Oh my gosh. And this is in your book too. And we'll talk about your book

00:17:52.860 more later, but my research, I'm just like another newspaper. He started a newspaper and I'm just

00:17:57.500 like, how many newspapers? Just imagine, just imagine how much, like the access, like paper

00:18:03.440 was cheaper. You're just, they're literally, it's confetti, political confetti where people were

00:18:08.280 able to publish and write and just, you know, share information. I mean, people even in Haiti,

00:18:14.200 you know, or Saint-Domingue, you know, before it was Haiti, I mean, they were receiving,

00:18:18.460 you know, their newspapers from France. And so they wanted to engage in the debates as well.

00:18:24.220 I mean, it's just people were able to participate in a way that they haven't before. You know,

00:18:29.420 of course, women can't vote, but women can raise money, women can threaten, women can kill, 1.00

00:18:35.360 and women can gather. And so there were a lot of women that were participating in basically all

00:18:40.700 the, the, the, the filling, right. The mortar to the brick of a political system. And it's just, 1.00

00:18:47.020 it's just very, it's just very cool how people found agency, even in times of great chaos.

00:18:52.240 And that, that's the thing too. Like when I started this season, which was like last year,

00:18:55.440 I was just like, Oh, ha ha. I read something about, Oh, you know, this astrological thing

00:18:59.800 is happening. And it's like, and this hasn't happened since 1770 and all these revolutions

00:19:04.020 happen. I'm like, oh, that's great. I can tie that into my podcast theme. And then it happened. I'm

00:19:07.840 just like, oh my gosh, this is like, astrology is real. This is like that. Oh my God. I don't know

00:19:16.320 the parallels. I'm just like, I would prefer if there's less parallels. I mean, for all of us in

00:19:21.700 society right now. It was a little surreal. Like when I was writing this book back, it was during

00:19:26.420 Black Lives Matter. And so I was where my apartment was, is near Main Street. And the

00:19:33.920 Coast Guard had like military vehicles, you know, bringing them in and seeing that while I'm

00:19:38.820 literally editing the book. It was just very, it was just very surreal, right? Yeah. We all feel

00:19:44.040 like we're living through something so seismic all the time. And so now we're all really, really

00:19:47.900 fucking tired. Yeah. And it's really gotten people talking about the French Revolution and the 0.91

00:19:53.820 Haitian revolution, um, in a way that they hadn't like the memification of the French revolution.

00:19:58.580 But what I keep appreciating is whenever someone is like, Oh my God, this is just like the French

00:20:02.900 revolution. There's always somebody like, I feel like I curate a good social media feed. I follow

00:20:06.960 a lot of like really good people. And there's always someone being like, uh, actually the

00:20:12.360 Haitian revolution was actually the successful revolution. Yeah. And they, they abolished

00:20:17.900 slavery. It was a successful, to a true democracy right after. Yeah, it's a little, it's a little

00:20:23.700 insane what they managed to achieve on this island. There were a lot of things working in

00:20:28.720 their favor, but it's, it's a little nuts when, you know, people are always, you know, thinking of

00:20:32.860 any, the success of the French Revolution under any, I don't know, like under what objectives you

00:20:37.200 would call it successful. No, exactly. Exactly. It's like people just see like, oh, they're like,

00:20:41.480 hey, did you know, like women went down the street with like heads on pikes and they, 0.75

00:20:45.740 they beheaded some rich people and everyone's like, great, let's do that too. It's like, 0.74

00:20:48.880 but that's not the end of that story. People just have rage and that's what happens,

00:20:54.680 right? You have a bunch of people with rage and then those who want to take advantage of that

00:20:59.240 rage. And then we have no end goal, right? What ends up happening is big feelings, big disaster

00:21:06.160 and a breakdown of society. And then someone comes back because eventually people are exhausted,

00:21:11.540 they're burnt out and then they're much more generous in terms of who they'll allow to come

00:21:16.320 back in and then we have a guy uh who is has a little bit of a part uh in a way to uh in the

00:21:22.000 book that napoleon bonaparte took advantage of that he was very very good friends with ropster's

00:21:26.200 brother uh they were actually besties uh in italy and so uh everyone's connected people people find

00:21:33.020 life uh finds a way yeah yeah it's weird it's also just sort of in um so for instance the

00:21:41.860 American Revolution I think like as a Canadian I never learned about it except for against my will

00:21:47.380 when people had like a very special episode of Full House and they're like talking about Thomas

00:21:50.800 Jefferson and I'm just like okay or like Sesame Street talks about it I'm like okay I'm learning

00:21:54.000 this but I was like okay like the American Revolution it's like you have George Washington

00:21:58.600 for instance and he's like a charismatic leader and people follow him and that was

00:22:03.020 part of the success of that the french revolution there wasn't one guy that's when i started learning

00:22:08.200 about the french revolution i'm like who was the george washington it's like there kind of wasn't

00:22:11.120 one and that power vacuum is where napoleon was able to be like i think everyone wants one person

00:22:16.140 to be in charge so i'll just do that like everyone wants a leader people want to be told what to do

00:22:21.080 yeah dark but you know especially in these kind of dark times like the french revolution but

00:22:26.340 getting back to the haitian revolution what i found interesting in the episode that everyone

00:22:30.120 just heard that you haven't heard yet we were talking about dissolving but we were talking

00:22:33.920 about like how um when the haitian revolution began right where i was like so impressed that

00:22:43.380 i mean like any revolution it's like decades in the making right of just like people until

00:22:47.660 finally all the pieces are in place and it just kind of like that spark hits and it takes off

00:22:52.260 but like hits which was part oh a hurricane hit no that's uh they saw that as a good omen

00:22:58.560 they uh many of them were voodoo practitioners uh traditional voodoo v-o-u-d-o-u that voodoo

00:23:04.440 uh and so that was actually that there was this big hurricane that struck a few days before and

00:23:09.040 they took that as a good omen but that they needed to act them not sorry i just when you said it's

00:23:13.400 like everything aligns and a hurricane it did no and that's perfect and you know what i have i have

00:23:18.100 a bingo sheet for this season of the podcast because there's the instead of a drinking game

00:23:22.940 but it's just like there's things that happen and one of them is like weird weather because there 0.83

00:23:26.700 was weird weather everywhere france had these like horrible winters like the crops were fucked up

00:23:30.960 like everywhere it's just like like now like everyone just feels like oh like something

00:23:38.520 pretentious is happening but i was just gonna say like in haiti i was like and this is what i

00:23:41.900 talked to my last guest about a bit was like how were there all of these enslaved people with so

00:23:47.580 much military tactical knowledge and know-how. And a lot of that was because a lot of them had

00:23:52.500 been sent to America to fight in the American revolution and picked up this training and this

00:23:57.700 skill. So it's not just like a bunch of people who don't have any, you know, with a lot of good

00:24:01.880 intentions and like, let's do this together. It's like, no, there's people there who are like,

00:24:05.560 okay, this is how military works. This is how you do an operation. This is like a land battle.

00:24:09.260 And I'm like, oh, these guys have these skills because, so again, like the connection back to

00:24:12.860 the American revolution. Exactly. Yeah. It's, it's all a little, nothing happens in a vacuum.

00:24:19.420 Everything is connected. We have been a globalized society for hundreds and hundreds of years to some

00:24:26.500 degree, thousands of years. What am I saying? Thousands of years. Um, we've never been

00:24:30.920 disconnected. People find a way to spread ideas and to spread skill sets. And Jean Desselin was

00:24:36.940 an incredible teacher, uh, an incredible educator, and he knew how to systematically arm and train

00:24:43.660 these men. Um, and he was very successful and whether or not I know Haiti has, and I'm very

00:24:49.560 curious to kind of know what your, your previous, uh, experts kind of opinion on John de Sanine is

00:24:53.920 because for most of his history, you know, he's seen as a dictator, which he was, I think

00:24:58.000 objectively. Um, but I know that right now, Haiti is a little bit more there. They kind of, they're

00:25:02.580 starting to like him again. And I think it's just representative more of what's going on

00:25:07.400 culturally. Are people hurting? Are people angry? Are they disenfranchised? Because then that

00:25:12.700 dictator starts to look a lot more appealing. You know, yes, he freed them. They very successfully,

00:25:18.080 you know, threw off their shackles. But then at what cost? Though, of course, you could say,

00:25:23.540 you know, the ends justify the means, which I think is, that's how a lot of revolutions,

00:25:27.780 that's what a lot of revolutions say. And for example, we know that he truly did,

00:25:31.980 Robespierre really did coin the phrase, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.

00:25:36.540 He didn't, did he?

00:25:37.720 No, that is actually factually true. He said you have to break a few eggs. You have to break a few

00:25:42.400 eggs. It sounds so silly. That's where it's like, I almost didn't know. He literally said you have 0.99

00:25:47.260 to break a few eggs. Of course, a French person said that. 0.85

00:25:53.840 Right, right. An omelette.

00:25:55.900 But, but guess who gets to keep the, you know, let them eat cake, you know, or who didn't actually say it. But Robespierre, who really did say we have to break a few eggs is still kind of idolized as this, you know, which arguably he was, it's just, he was not a balanced man. Anyhow, I'll let you, I tell me where, where we should be going next in this journey.

00:26:17.560 Where we should be going on this journey is I think this is where you've kind of led us, which is so at the beginning of your book, which again, listeners, is a novel, but like based in the history.

00:26:27.020 So it starts off in this period of time that I find so incredibly interesting, which is like Haiti, Saint-Domingue, pre-revolution, where it's just kind of like Bridgerton, IRL, just like black people, beautiful gowns, like living this like fantasy.

00:26:46.720 yeah like these castles being built like i had um one of the first guests i had on the podcast

00:26:51.580 talking about this era was vanessa riley the novelist she writes a lot of like regency

00:26:56.200 yeah yeah she writes like regency england books but like with black people and like with people

00:27:00.600 of color and then she has these more historical fiction books that she writes and one of them

00:27:04.880 was about marie christophe yeah and so that also started and i was she was the first person who

00:27:10.540 really like her books i'm like wait i need to learn more about this because reading that book

00:27:13.860 I was like, wait, what happened?

00:27:15.620 And I think she was the one who made the connection.

00:27:16.980 She's like, Bridgerton.

00:27:17.740 She's like, why didn't they set it in Haiti? 1.00

00:27:18.980 Because it's like, then you could have Black people

00:27:20.760 and it would be, they actually were. 1.00

00:27:22.100 And they were throwing these balls

00:27:23.120 and they had these palaces.

00:27:24.960 And that's where your book begins, where it was,

00:27:28.100 I mean, just talk about that period of time,

00:27:30.100 this kind of like brief time where they were,

00:27:33.820 it wasn't Haiti yet, it was still Saint-Domingue,

00:27:35.720 but they were just kind of trying to be like,

00:27:37.040 we are like France, we are like England.

00:27:39.040 Look, we have an elite, we have wealthy people.

00:27:41.680 Yeah, everything you're saying is right.

00:27:42.920 So Haiti, or Saint-Domingue at the time, what is Haiti was Saint-Domingue, and then the greater island was called Hispaniola, and it was a French colony. It was run by the Code Noir, so the Black Code, and it was the first kind of legal document that expressly discusses and codifies slavery in that way.

00:28:06.100 And I would argue that the reason that Haiti falls, and this does tie to your question, 0.53

00:28:11.500 I promise you, is that they did something very different. 0.68

00:28:14.900 So while technically, you're right, so I'm mixed, you guys can't see me, I'm just now

00:28:19.760 realizing this, I am mixed, right?

00:28:21.280 I'm half black, and then I am half, I mean, half white, but like Jewish and Czech and

00:28:25.420 all that good stuff.

00:28:27.100 So culturally, I would get in, you know, in hit the law was that I got my basically

00:28:34.360 citizenship, my legal rights derive from my mother, right? So let's imagine my mother is not

00:28:40.280 Black, but imagine my mother is Black, as was almost universally the case for a variety of

00:28:45.100 reasons that I'm sure you can deduce, was almost always a Black woman. So you got your, and this

00:28:50.880 is the same in the United States, right? You got your citizenship, your rights come from your mom. 0.57

00:28:57.160 Haiti did something different. Whereas, yes, that was the law, that wasn't the culture. And that's 0.98

00:29:01.420 So you have to always be very careful if you look at something as a law and say, oh, people

00:29:04.080 were doing this.

00:29:04.720 That's not necessarily the case.

00:29:06.340 What was actually happening was that it was extremely normalized for the father and the

00:29:11.760 enslaver to free their child.

00:29:15.600 That was not the case in the United States.

00:29:17.720 The fathers almost always owned their children, right?

00:29:20.840 And so what does that create?

00:29:23.520 That creates an incredibly empowered class of free mixed race people.

00:29:28.420 And that is called the enfranchis. And that's where you get Bridgerton. Bridgerton with enslaved. So imagine a situation where you have this inordinately wealthy group that still enslaves black people. That doesn't change. You know, they very well may have, you know, their own family members were enslaved. The disconnect. Imagine that. The dissonance that you must feel to comfortably own people of your own race and maybe even your own family.

00:29:55.540 and yet it's fine because you're not franchi they had their own cultural norms uh there were very 0.95

00:30:02.440 very specific sumptuary laws that uh mixed race women were not allowed to wear certain types of

00:30:08.440 clothing they found ways around that they you are not going to find better dressed better food 0.93

00:30:13.880 better entertainment better parties it worked the light-skinned folks no one's better at being white 0.82

00:30:18.860 than a light-skinned black person who wants to be white right and so that's what they did and that's 0.50

00:30:25.040 why there was a lot of tension during the revolution, specifically the Haitian one,

00:30:29.720 because you think black people were, you think they trusted them? You think that there was

00:30:35.940 goodwill? You had to prove yourself and you proved yourself burning down plantations and by murdering

00:30:42.300 and by killing. And so it's very, very complicated. And so Sylvie is misraced. She is an

00:30:48.660 affranchi that literally means like a freed person. And she is half white and half black. 0.93

00:30:53.500 Her mother is an enslaved woman. 0.99

00:30:55.080 She is dead, buried in a mass grave.

00:30:57.040 Well, she's actually not in a mass grave. 0.99

00:30:58.200 She was spoiled with an actual grave on the side of the house.

00:31:02.700 And this is kind of, you will see this across plantations, across North America, including

00:31:06.900 the Caribbean, is most graves are going to be in kind of a mass grave situation, but

00:31:11.820 special slaves will get a special little gravestone. 0.87

00:31:15.520 And her mom had one.

00:31:17.420 And she was very disconnected to that part of herself because she didn't want to engage

00:31:23.480 with it because that doesn't sound that fun. You know, we all like to think that we wouldn't

00:31:27.640 participate in enslavement and in this type of system. Of course we would. That's why it's so

00:31:32.780 sustainable is that people are very willing to sacrifice those types of things for comfort and

00:31:37.020 wealth and power. And she would have been a woman that looked just like me. And she lived in a big, 0.99

00:31:42.660 beautiful mansion on beautiful indigo plantations and beautiful coffee fields. Her father was a

00:31:49.080 coffee grower. Haiti has excellent coffee because of the mountainous hills. You want to grow coffee

00:31:53.580 on hills and mountains because of the way the sun will hit. And she very quickly realizes

00:31:59.560 that what she's living is a lie. She witnesses a very public execution of a man named Vincent

00:32:07.600 Auger. And he is very famous. Anyone who's kind of studies the Haitian revolution, that's a very

00:32:13.520 significant pinpoint. He was a light-skinned man of great education and who was fighting the good

00:32:20.620 fight for abolition and for specifically the freedom of Haiti and the independence of Haiti

00:32:25.480 from France. And they broke him on the wheel, which is exactly what it sounds like. It is like

00:32:30.780 a giant carriage wheel. They break your bones and they let you sit out there until you die from

00:32:34.460 exposure. And she sees that and sees how men like her father hated this man. And it kind of

00:32:43.280 starts this cascade of realizing that how, how, how am I not, I'm the child of rape, right? Because

00:32:51.040 an enslaved person can't consent. Her just kind of realizing how her father could love her and 0.96

00:32:57.380 claim to love her. And yet the people that make up her blood, you know, feed the soil and rot in 0.98

00:33:05.140 it. And she's like, I can't do this. She's also not a very nice person. She, she's, you know,

00:33:11.960 she means the best, but she's really struggles to, you know, she's classist as heck, uh, as a 1.00

00:33:17.600 lot of light skin and froshies were. And, uh, she has to, but she has to flee. I think she would 1.00

00:33:22.640 have stayed in Haiti if she could that, you know, people are very disappointed that we didn't stay

00:33:26.860 in Haiti. But the thing that I say is that if they had stayed, if they did not become emigre,

00:33:31.740 we'd have a very short story. Um, it would have ended very, uh, something that I don't like to 1.00

00:33:36.660 right? And that's what it would have turned into. So they intend to go to France. They go to

00:33:42.080 Charleston because I had to throw Charleston in there because how the United States is so connected

00:33:47.740 to Haiti because we give them their food. They don't grow food on Haiti, right? Just like they

00:33:52.840 don't grow food in Hawaii. The food that they grow is for our consumption, right? They don't grow

00:33:58.980 things to sustain the people. And we still see this now, which isn't that insane. There's no

00:34:03.980 space for food. So they have to get rice from somewhere. It's the Carolinas. Uh, and that's

00:34:08.600 also where you sell slaves. Uh, and, uh, you know, it's always been the story of Charleston,

00:34:13.440 a beautiful city, but very difficult to navigate without kind of seeing exactly what it was.

00:34:17.840 Uh, and so she goes there and, and that's where she's like, I can't do this. Uh, and there's that

00:34:22.820 big falling out. Uh, and she and her brother flee to France because they know they, A, they have

00:34:28.120 family there and B, they, they're looking for some stability, uh, because she doesn't want to be

00:34:32.220 in the United States, where it is a society, again, built upon the backs of slaves. So

00:34:37.340 she flees and with the best of intentions, she flees with the best of intentions.

00:34:43.660 Well, and then France, and we talked about this, I did an episode, two episodes about Sally Hemmings.

00:34:49.360 And so the whole deal, like she was like, and as I recall, from what I read about her, it's like

00:34:54.940 in France, like you couldn't own black slaves, but like you say in your book, but like people

00:34:59.920 did. And now for a quick advertising break. The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were 0.95

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00:37:46.080 And we're back.

00:37:47.640 So I really love that you brought that up.

00:37:49.780 That's actually such a great, thank you.

00:37:51.600 That was like an awesome segue.

00:37:53.200 So there are no slaves in France.

00:37:56.360 I have an epigraph over one of the chapters because I just love those.

00:38:00.980 they said they they're vibey and they help like set tones for each chapter right one is a very

00:38:05.540 very old medieval i think expression there are no slaves in france and that was something that

00:38:12.280 you would have heard and you would have believed uh but just like you know just like we always have

00:38:16.760 to drive with our seat belt and you know you're not allowed to jaywalk uh france was it kind of

00:38:21.560 took it more as a guideline than an actual rule um so not only did people bring their slaves all

00:38:26.460 the time. Um, but they actually, what they did is they created a work camp, um, because they didn't

00:38:31.020 want men to be without their valets on their way back home to the Island. So what you would do is

00:38:35.740 you would bring your enslaved person and then you would drop them off at a work camp and then you 0.97

00:38:39.860 would go where you wanted to go. And then you pick, you pick him up on the way back. And that 0.94

00:38:44.040 is what you did. Um, and the psychology of it all of Sally Hemings technically being free while she

00:38:49.640 was in, you know, in France, bear in mind, she was a child, uh, when she, when, uh, he's took her,

00:38:56.820 uh, for no better word. Um, she was 13, I think when they met. Um, and then, you know,

00:39:02.060 she was also mixed race as well. Um, and he took her to, you know, France and that's your entire

00:39:07.220 world, um, is your entire worldview is like, you know, how much you're worth, you know,

00:39:14.320 Sylvie has that kind of epiphany of knowing how to value your own skin, right? To value your own

00:39:22.280 flesh. Like I know how much I cost. Like that's a- Yeah, she sees like a ledger of, yeah.

00:39:29.040 You would know. You would know how much you were valued, right? So a light skin, I mean,

00:39:34.920 we're talking like $30,000, like a light skin, like a child. So that would have been called a 0.95

00:39:40.340 fancy in the United States. So that would have been a girl who had light skin, skin lighter than 1.00

00:39:45.600 think of like a lunch bag, like a cardboard, like lighter than cardboard. You were called a fancy 0.93

00:39:50.320 and you were sold as a child and you were worth 30,000, $40,000 and you were sold for only one

00:39:56.400 reason. Um, so these are all the things that are in your head and are in your, you learn this

00:40:04.460 language from birth, it's not that easy to just run away. Like that's your whole, your whole life

00:40:11.940 and livelihood and identity is, is entangled in property. Uh, and it's not as easy though people

00:40:16.960 did do it. We have, you know, these free maroon colonies, like the great dismal swamp in North 1.00

00:40:21.000 Carolina. Um, I mean, it's in South Carolina, actually, maybe it, I think it actually might 1.00

00:40:25.940 spread, but it, um, I mean, it's absolutely incredible how people manage to, to create

00:40:31.140 agency and society, you know, within a greater one. So Sally Hemmings, you know, this kid who

00:40:37.900 went back and forth between France and the United States and was freed when she was in France. It's

00:40:42.420 like, what does that really mean? Are there no slaves? Well, and then also like the whole,

00:40:46.240 her whole life, like there's so many sort of like sliding doors moments of it, but it's like,

00:40:49.680 if she had made this courageous decision to stay in France, it's like, she would have been cut off

00:40:54.320 from her entire family who were so important to her. So it's like, why would she, and, and she

00:40:57.720 probably would have died in the french revolution so yeah right you no one wins no one wins in in

00:41:04.220 18th century france like you it is such a complicated slavery is really complicated it

00:41:09.660 is psychological as well as physical um and i think that speaks to how haiti reacted the way

00:41:15.680 that it did is generational trauma building up over and over and over again layer by layer by

00:41:23.060 until it is just unbearable anymore. And it just, it all breaks. You're, you give them the tools of

00:41:27.860 language or the tool of, uh, of like the language of, of freedom and enlightenment. You get, you

00:41:34.660 know, they are literate and brilliant and engaged in, in parliament. Um, and at these, like these

00:41:41.700 professional kind of, uh, these, um, kind of political spheres where these enfranchis would

00:41:46.700 go and speak and make claim to what they believed they were owed. Um, they never wanted to

00:41:52.960 free the the bossal that's the word for a bossal is somebody who you would almost call like fresh

00:41:58.240 off the boat as dark as that sounds it would be you know a person who worked in the field right

00:42:02.340 dark and coarse and that's still slang in Haiti now but they saw themselves as very distinct so

00:42:08.280 they wanted to make the argument like no no no like you know keep them but like free us like

00:42:12.720 let us vote you know it's it's weird people are nuts it's weird and just like and as your book

00:42:19.160 so it's like she's going between Haiti and then the U.S. and then France but it's kind of like

00:42:22.480 I mean the revolution happened so like the way of life that she had was unsustainable but also

00:42:27.120 she was starting to question it herself obviously but then to go to France it's kind of like at

00:42:33.020 least in Haiti if before she her eyes were open about things it's like okay well this is like you

00:42:38.140 know mixed race people and like this is how you can succeed and this is a good marriage I can get 1.00

00:42:41.100 and you go to France and it's kind of like you have so many less options for like what a mixed

00:42:44.720 race person can do. So it's kind of like you're being raised to believe that what's possible.

00:42:49.140 So you have this kind of like the, where are they? The enfranchise? To sort of like be living

00:42:53.460 in this wealthy world. But then if you go to any other country, you can't do that anymore.

00:43:00.980 Then why would you want to dismantle slavery if you wouldn't have any other space where you could

00:43:05.240 be free and rich and powerful? Why would you? Why would you? Right? That was the fantasy of it,

00:43:13.060 Right. That's what I mean. It's a fantasy. It's not real. It's you have to keep slit. The only way that a free person of color could live well is if there were other people of color who didn't. That was that was how that's how it works. And that's why I mean, honestly, I won't go into it. But like that kind of is the root of a lot of the way the American political system is like when you remove black men and women from that tier system.

00:43:36.560 Right. It really caused a crumble within the conservative movement, because when you don't have that, you have to find other places to play blame. Right. And it's just it's just incredibly. 0.66

00:43:48.920 And then you have, you know, um, intersectionality of being a, both a black and a woman.

00:43:54.820 So it's like, which is just another layered, complicated, terrible system.

00:43:59.340 But yeah, she, she didn't want to live in the United States because she knew slavery 1.00

00:44:03.000 would cause the demise of any society that it existed in. 1.00

00:44:06.760 That's basically what she saw, you know, when she, you know, not so elegant a way. 0.99

00:44:10.720 And she was like, well, the shit is going to hit the van and I will not be here for 0.99

00:44:13.700 it. 0.99

00:44:14.160 And so I'm going to go to France where everything is great and everything is fine and people

00:44:17.380 are civilized.

00:44:18.920 Right. And then she goes there. Or so I've heard. 1.00

00:44:23.600 You know, she has this fantasy of what France looks like. Because there's no, because there's

00:44:29.520 no, you know, enslavement, that means that people aren't disenfranchised in the same way. And she

00:44:33.360 just thinks that people, you know, that she'll be safe there. It's just the point is that it's that

00:44:37.960 no one is safe from white supremacy and how it can dysregulate any society. You know, it hurts

00:44:45.900 everyone suffers in the patriarchy, right? Like everybody will suffer. People will end up dead

00:44:51.540 and disenfranchised and angry and your head will be on a pike. Like that's what, that's how it 1.00

00:44:57.720 always ends. And then the cycle begins again. Yeah. And people get upset again. What I wanted

00:45:02.980 to talk to you about as well, and you mentioned this, I think it's in your, the afterword,

00:45:08.640 but the connection between, well, just to place that for you. I've had episodes about Henri

00:45:13.880 christophe we talked about desaline those stories end when those men die but like what happened so

00:45:19.960 like haiti the louisiana purchase and then the connection to the civil war can you just kind of

00:45:24.500 like give everybody kind of like so where we last left off listeners was like so desaline was was

00:45:31.780 murdered christophe becomes the king and then we've got this at like a second sort of british 0.63

00:45:35.840 and era of like elite black people throwing balls and parties marie christophe is like this hostess 0.81

00:45:42.680 like this is all happening and it's kind of like, okay. And they're trying to show 0.83

00:45:45.900 like, it's now called Haiti. Um, there's a King and they're trying to be like, we are like other

00:45:50.920 countries with Kings. Like we want to do international trade, like put us on par with

00:45:54.600 England, with, with the United States. That does not happen. What happens?

00:45:59.660 So the issue, um, you know, the way that I tie, you know, Haiti in this period, right. With the

00:46:07.000 United States is that a lot of historians, and I very much believe this, I'm an amateur historian

00:46:13.400 in the sense that like, you know, I have to read a lot. Um, and I very much believe this is that

00:46:18.780 there's a, one of the, our favorite questions is when was the civil war inevitable? And you can

00:46:25.280 make that any, when was the American revolution inevitable? When was this inevitable? When was

00:46:28.500 the French revolution inevitable? That's a great question. Think, remember like AP history. Like

00:46:32.640 that's a great question and the best one is when was the civil war inevitable the civil war was 0.97

00:46:38.200 inevitable from the haitian revolution right so once those people became successful once we get

00:46:43.820 to that part where we have a king and they have a democracy of some kind and they have or i guess

00:46:48.740 it's a democratic constitutional monarchy and so they're doing it so it creates two two realities

00:46:57.700 that's what happens that was that's when it started and that's also i'd argue you have you

00:47:02.320 can start to see kind of modern political parties in this place as well, because again, reactionary,

00:47:09.420 right? So these black people, now imagine I am a wealthy slave owner in the United States. 0.97

00:47:15.680 And just to set the stage quickly in the United States up until that point, it was a moral 1.00

00:47:19.100 question. Slavery was a moral question and it had a moral answer. People knew that it was bad,

00:47:24.040 but they recognized that it was better to enslave people and get rich and then eventually

00:47:28.720 free them all. That's what they wanted to do. That was what Jefferson was going to do. That's what

00:47:32.900 all of these men firmly believed when they signed the Declaration of Independence, when they wrote

00:47:38.720 the Constitution. These men truly believed that slavery had a timeline and they were at the end

00:47:44.920 of it. They really did believe that. A few things happened. First thing, cotton gin. We all remember

00:47:51.120 the cotton gin. We all learned about it and how that revolutionized cotton picking made it too 0.99

00:47:56.680 easy, right? A second thing happened, the Haitian Revolution, okay? The problem is it was successful. 0.99

00:48:02.300 The problem is, is that black people successfully overthrew a white majority government, 0.97

00:48:08.220 killed them all, and successfully put up a democracy of a kind, right? Okay. So they executed 0.99

00:48:13.560 these Enlightenment ideals. So what, as a slave-owning person, as a white enslaver, what does 0.88

00:48:20.300 that tell me? So I'm going to react to that as, they're going to kill me if I let them. 0.99

00:48:24.780 well and i think i think the connection there too is i had an episode ages ago but a bit ago

00:48:31.220 with a woman who wrote a book called brooding over bloody revenge and it was about enslaved

00:48:35.960 black women and their consistent revolutionary acts which were like you do what you can like

00:48:42.760 it's not going to be like i'm going to burn and a lot of it was burning down plantations 1.00

00:48:45.980 yeah no that's a hundred that's what you do they're going to burn me they're going to burn 0.99

00:48:49.680 my plantation up they're gonna they're gonna kill me they're gonna kill my wife they're gonna kill 1.00

00:48:53.240 my kids. You can't let these people go. They are beasts, right? That is what, that's what you, 1.00

00:48:58.120 and you were right, right? You're right. They did. That's what they did. That's what they did in

00:49:01.560 Haiti. And that's what they're constantly trying to do to you in America. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. 0.98

00:49:06.420 So that's what you see. You see you are validated, but then imagine you are not a slave owner. You're

00:49:11.700 an abolitionist, right? You want to fight for the, uh, the, the, uh, liberation of all black people

00:49:16.540 and persons of color. What do you see? They can do it. They can make black men. We're not talking

00:49:23.380 about women. Black men can successfully have a functioning government. Those two realities, 1.00

00:49:30.060 I'm putting my fist together for people who can't see me. They are diametrically opposed.

00:49:35.520 That does not compute. And yet they were both correct in their own realities. You now have

00:49:40.460 two realities that have a pretty good line right across them. Right across the middle of the United

00:49:47.180 States. Right across the middle of the United States. Now that again, that is not to say there

00:49:51.280 aren't abolitionists from the South and slave owners in the North. Please never, ever, ever

00:49:54.840 believe that. And don't think that just because people lived in the Northern United States,

00:49:57.780 they were all black loving, you know, hippie white folks. That is not the case. Right. One of our

00:50:03.240 favorite sayings, one of my favorite sayings, and it still holds true is in the South, you love the 0.88

00:50:06.840 individual, you hate the race. And the North, love the race, hate the individual. Like that is still

00:50:11.080 kind of the flavor of racism in the United States. And that is still the case. Okay. So we know that,

00:50:15.140 but now we have these two different realities. That civil war became inevitable and abolitionists

00:50:23.180 is never going to stop fighting to free black people because look what they can do. They can

00:50:28.020 participate in politics. And this is all very patronizing and condescending. I'm speaking as

00:50:32.260 somebody who would have been thinking at this time, but they're going to think they are capable

00:50:36.300 of governance and civility and functioning as higher, you know, men of action and grace and 0.62

00:50:44.060 Christianity, whereas someone who is a slave owner is going to think they are going to destroy the 0.58

00:50:50.540 white race, right? They can't be trusted. So how do you reconcile that? You can't. There is no 0.98

00:50:59.560 reconciliation. You have a war and it destroys both sides. And, but one is, one is morally right

00:51:07.660 and they win. And so now we don't have slavery in the United States. So it was truly, there's

00:51:13.580 always going to be arguments for maybe different political beats or a certain individual or closer,

00:51:19.780 you know, to the Haitian revolution. Oh, nope. Further back. You know, um, some people make the

00:51:24.900 argument, uh, and this is, I think is thinking a little too small, but they make the argument that

00:51:29.140 the civil war was inevitable the minute that, you know, in the 1630s, when the first African

00:51:33.240 slaves and indentured servants were brought to the United or the colonies, you can make that, 0.90

00:51:38.360 you can make that argument. I don't think that's untrue, but I like that one the best. I think the 1.00

00:51:43.360 Haitian revolution really, really speaks to it, to creating two parallel realities and they cannot

00:51:50.580 be reconciled and you're going to have a war and fight about it. That's really, like you had that 0.97

00:51:56.200 in your in the afterward in your book and i was just like oh my god so i'd never because like to

00:52:01.220 me just like when i read about history i just kind of like it's like a pocket and it's like well this

00:52:05.200 is this event that happened in this time in this decade and then it's like we'll turn the page now

00:52:09.320 it's the 1800s and when i think about the american civil war i'm like well that feels to me

00:52:13.280 completely separate to what happened 100 years before but it's like no because people are still

00:52:18.400 alive who are alive then like this is like you had people who had fought in the american

00:52:23.820 Revolutionary War during the Civil War. Yeah, it's not that far apart in time, but it feels to me

00:52:31.100 so, I don't know why. I'm just like, well, one thing is like, you know, Hamilton, and then this

00:52:36.740 is Gone with the Wind, and those are not the same thing. Right. No, it feels like they are so

00:52:43.560 separate. The ideas were absolutely the same. These men were the same, right? The only difference is

00:52:49.960 that we now have a generation of men who had not been born in England, did not share their

00:52:56.680 father's moral ideals about enslavement, and they had only seen, they are now much richer.

00:53:03.340 These are now incredibly richer men. That is a hard thing. People, these Englishmen, these,

00:53:09.340 you know, because that's what they were until they were Americans, they had known life before

00:53:13.820 slavery. They had known societies that did not found themselves on the backs of enslaved people.

00:53:19.460 So it's much easier to, to imagine a world where it doesn't exist because you know what it looks

00:53:24.680 like. The men during this, their sons and their grandsons, they don't remember. They only know

00:53:30.900 this. You're going to give it up for something you don't know? No, no, you're not. You're going

00:53:36.580 to keep it. You're going to be willing to die. Sorry. And I was just thinking about in one of 0.99

00:53:40.600 the classes I took in my history undergraduate degree, um, was one of my teachers, I don't think

00:53:47.140 this isn't even what he was talking about but he just mentioned he's like yeah i think like 100

00:53:50.380 years from now historians are not going to say world war one world war two because the one so

00:53:54.980 dramatically like world war one set up the conditions to make world war two happen he's

00:53:59.320 like i think they're just going to call it the great war because it was but you know but we're

00:54:03.420 taught that's what it was called yeah just to keep calling it that i think that it was that

00:54:07.500 and it never stopped and i just feel like the stuff like these revolutions like they started

00:54:11.020 in the mid 1700s and they went to right into the early 1900s really and it's just kind of like they

00:54:17.440 were all involving each other and it's like well this was this like the Haitian revolution so you

00:54:22.580 can say began here ended here but it's like yeah but the repercussions like we're still living with

00:54:27.780 it actually that's something else I want you to just explain to everybody who may not know

00:54:30.900 including including myself why Haiti they were cut off from what was it it's like there France

00:54:38.460 was like well you removed all of our slaves who were our property you have to pay us back for that 0.91

00:54:44.760 and that's where like where haiti just cut yeah where they like became preparations the country 0.99

00:54:51.240 that we're looking at like haiti now it's not bridgerton like it's so decimated it's so poverty

00:54:57.540 stricken and like how did that pivot happen and how is thomas jefferson kind of to blame um so

00:55:04.220 You actually could tell me how Thomas Jefferson is to blame, because that I may not know.

00:55:09.120 But I do know why we have reparations.

00:55:13.340 It would not surprise me if he was the one who gave the idea.

00:55:16.820 That would not surprise me, just given as someone who has enslaved people his own life and only freed them upon his death.

00:55:23.620 So France was poor, cash poor.

00:55:26.400 and when it lost Haiti as a colony, they demanded the right to repair that loss, right? Like if

00:55:36.120 you're thinking in like law school, I went to law school, it's impossible not to think of it this

00:55:40.140 way, but it's like you injured me, right? And I need to be made whole again. How do you do that?

00:55:44.900 I lost all these people. And so they have reparations. Haiti finally stopped paying those

00:55:51.720 reparations in 1945, I think. I think it was the 40s, 1940s. So it was an insurmountable,

00:55:59.620 unimaginable amount of money is what France was saying. You need to send us. And then other

00:56:03.440 countries also stopped importing food to them or they stopped taking their, like, they were just

00:56:09.340 cut off, right? They were completely isolated economically. They were without friends. They were

00:56:15.220 punished, right? And so when you look at a place like Haiti and you're questioning, like, well,

00:56:20.900 why are they so poor? Why are there gangs? Why is there gang violence? Why are they?

00:56:24.940 And for a lot of people, especially racist people, you're going to think, well, it's because it's a 0.94

00:56:28.340 black country. Like they're not capable of doing this, right? That's how you think about it. You 0.95

00:56:31.900 think that's why all these countries are poor and struggling. And it's like, well, no, it's because

00:56:36.920 they were fundamentally set up for failure because of their enslavers once shirked off,

00:56:43.960 ensured that, ensured either that they were completely reliant on them in some way, like

00:56:49.140 almost like the equivalent of a sharecropper situation, uh, or, uh, that they had to pay

00:56:53.680 them back, right. They call their debts, right. Or make them take out loans and have it be from

00:57:00.220 their original and say that, you know, the motherland and have them be the one who sources

00:57:04.260 the loans. Then you completely own the country. You own the country, just not, just not on paper.

00:57:08.660 So it's, you know, but I would love to know, I did not realize this. What was Thomas Jefferson's

00:57:14.160 role in doing this? This is awful. I did not. Well, he was the one with the Louisiana,

00:57:19.140 and a purchase um so part of the thing with him god okay this is like someone told me this many

00:57:25.180 episodes ago oh i know what you're saying sorry but don't tell me yeah yeah so but it was because

00:57:29.580 he was the president at the time and he he was like we're not going to do trade with haiti was

00:57:33.680 like one of the things he did because haiti was like hey tomas jefferson you also have ideals of

00:57:37.680 like the enlightenment and like we want to be like rome and like you're cool with this and he

00:57:43.080 was just kind of like actually no and what i can do um is this napoleon guy yeah like because

00:57:50.100 france was cut off from haiti they and desperate for money they needed money um so then they were

00:57:54.920 like so we're gonna so then they sold off like france had the the louisiana purchase louisiana

00:58:00.240 like that that part of america was owned by france yeah what was it 15 million dollars i don't know

00:58:06.120 like it was yeah it was a steal even then like i i need everyone listening please know that it was

00:58:12.080 like kicking them when they were down. Like he came by and you're on the, you know, you're

00:58:17.180 desperate, hand out begging for money. And he was like, oh sure, I'll give you 50 mil for your

00:58:22.080 entire house. Like, you know, and just imagine the amount that France would be worth had this

00:58:27.440 not happened. So it's a little, I had never exactly made that connection, but I see exactly

00:58:32.660 what you mean in kind of tying why, you know, Haiti is in partially this condition, you know,

00:58:38.660 maybe France would have been a much more open to engaging with them as, as a trade partner

00:58:44.840 and as a political partner. Um, but you're not going to do that, especially in the United States

00:58:49.920 is not going to do that with Haiti because then France will be frustrated and might be less

00:58:53.380 inclined to sell the land to you. So it's all at the end of the day, politics and what people

00:58:57.780 valued and they value old white men a whole lot more than they're going to value this young,

00:59:05.180 trying to thrive black democracy uh which the world had never seen before or since i would say

00:59:11.580 and but it just really kneecapped them because they were just like okay we're gonna like we

00:59:16.420 are our own monarchy this is our king like we're doing it like we have castles like look at us

00:59:21.860 like and they implemented the same sort of like ranks of army and the same sort of like ranks of

00:59:26.020 like lords and ladies like they duplicated kind of how like high society was in france and england

00:59:31.520 to be like we're like that too but just with like melanin and they but just like no one

00:59:38.980 took it seriously or it was so scary i guess that if they accepted that that like no one could

00:59:47.040 accept this as a country and then just like economically devastated them and isn't isn't

00:59:52.240 that so fascinating though that you have these free black people and that's and that was their

00:59:56.300 first concern is how do we get accepted by the white elite? It never leaves you, right? White

01:00:04.260 supremacy is pervasive. It is a cancer that you cannot carve out, right? You have to radiate the 1.00

01:00:11.640 shit out of something to get it out. And they did what they thought would basically make them 0.95

01:00:17.640 more pleasing is like, well, let's wear the skin of white society and white culture. Let's add 0.86

01:00:24.600 lords. And that's absurd. It's absurd. Like to suddenly, you know, I'll put up a castle and,

01:00:30.380 and maybe they'll, you know, partner with me. And it's just so frustrating because they're desperate

01:00:34.820 because they're desperate. If racism were an issue, if suddenly France realized their error

01:00:40.320 of their ways, they simply would have traded with them like they would any other colony.

01:00:44.400 But no. And it's just, it just breaks your heart and you just realize how futile it all was.

01:00:50.460 and that there is, I mean, the only meaningful way that you repair this place is to give them

01:00:54.700 the money that they are owed. You return that money. You return that money. But France won't

01:01:00.280 do that. No. Well, I mean, there's lots of countries that won't even return, you know,

01:01:06.220 many museum objects. Just a few, just a few priceless, you know,

01:01:12.020 but let alone returning money to them. It's, yeah, it's just, it was such an interesting

01:01:19.020 thing like i've been really fascinated to learn for the first time really all this stuff about

01:01:22.840 haiti that i've been doing just in my research um and through talking with you because growing up

01:01:28.660 all i ever knew was just like oh this poor poverty-stricken country black people live there

01:01:33.380 that's just a poor country you know yeah exactly just like these disasters keep happening and

01:01:39.880 they're so poor that's that's so sad but just like the reason that that happened is because

01:01:44.800 they were so successful yes and they were so threatening to white supremacy that they were

01:01:49.620 cut down and now this is where they're i want to also mention um that i find this very i don't know

01:01:55.800 i don't know what your thoughts are about this the new pope pope leo oh bob yeah bob yeah from

01:02:01.400 we he's from an area very close to where we live so he's pope bobby well when he when it was sort

01:02:08.200 of people like when he was named and people like wait a minute what's his surname wait a minute

01:02:13.580 and then like amateur like genealogists started being and they're like wait a minute that's a

01:02:17.840 creole name wait a minute he could go to haiti and then like so many cultures like haitian people

01:02:22.700 are so excited like he's from here like he's not but but but it's that just shows how people 0.69

01:02:30.980 people be having sex right and and super super oftentimes unconsensual ways um and that

01:02:38.720 enslavement. I have like a whole thing about this in the book. It's like where, where slavery goes,

01:02:44.300 you know, Brown babies will follow. Like you will just end up with these kids. And Louisiana 1.00

01:02:49.340 basically then became like the definition of that, where you get all of these mixed race children

01:02:55.380 who then have families with each other and you kind of maintain that. And so they're Creole, 0.78

01:03:00.760 like that, that is what you end up with. You get end up with a Creole kid. And then you get this 1.00

01:03:04.760 incredible culture that was born out of these free people of color who have mixed blood who

01:03:10.620 felt ostracized and so they created an entire culture and you end up with you know great

01:03:15.820 grandparents that are creole from louisiana and you know put bob in uh in a beyonce song man like

01:03:23.740 like just do just do it i you know i i think that's absolutely incredible isn't that just

01:03:30.120 how everything comes back in some way it was yeah it was so interesting like that was happening

01:03:36.320 simultaneous to i think when there was so much discussion still happening like sinners was still

01:03:40.460 in the theater for the first time and the like the whole thing with hailee steinfeld's character

01:03:44.500 and like passing and white skin versus passing and then pope bob came out and i'm just like this

01:03:49.440 is so i'm learning so much about just like yes octoroons quadroons yeah a lot of we don't use

01:03:57.480 these words anymore but that was like it was a science no you had to know your fractions well

01:04:02.680 and for me for this podcast i was just like this is so like it's helpful for me just as a person

01:04:06.920 um to and to be able to picture what did these people maybe look like if this was their percentage

01:04:11.860 of how far back was their one black ancestor but i'm like pope bob it's like his mother was creole 0.53

01:04:17.100 like yeah no you can tell and i'm looking at him i'm like obviously you're not gonna it's nowadays

01:04:23.000 is like he could have easily been latino like i don't know but like i knew he was spicy white

01:04:27.220 yeah no and that's what i was saying too and then like hailey steinfeld and sinners like the fact

01:04:32.300 it's like i was like okay so now that this is somebody like her grandfather is half black and

01:04:35.900 so when i'm trying to picture somebody like sally hemming's children i'm like okay they would have

01:04:40.480 looked white hailey steinfeld is my visual i'm like that this is somebody with that same proportion

01:04:45.100 so just for me to try to picture it i'm like having these people in the cultural conversation

01:04:48.840 who we know this is their genetics i'm like so when you're picturing something about like and

01:04:53.380 this is i don't know i'll just say it because i keep coming back to this fact to myself because

01:04:57.100 it's mind-blowing like thomas jefferson's household was an example of this but so many

01:05:01.260 other households in like virginia and all the slave owning places like there have been so many 0.97

01:05:06.320 generations of enslavers having children with their increasingly mixed race enslaved women 0.90

01:05:12.480 that by the time like you would have enslaved people who would look exactly like the children 0.53

01:05:16.940 of that same man and it's like and they'd all look like hayley steinfeld like yeah it's like

01:05:23.360 but this person is enslaved because that's who their mother was even though you would never like

01:05:26.600 i we would never think to look at that like hayley steinfeld i'm like i'm just yeah so just

01:05:32.080 an entire you have an entire landowning powerful political action group that looked like hayley

01:05:37.680 steinfeld well that and that was haiti like that is exactly so then that's why i say that was

01:05:42.940 france's downfall it was raping their merchandise it was it was it was it was an entire system 0.98

01:05:50.240 based on the assault of black women that then created mixed-skinned boy babies who thought 1.00

01:05:56.820 they were owed shit and then they wanted it and then they took it yeah yeah it's right it's it 0.99

01:06:04.540 happens slowly but surely that's exactly what happens it starts getting blurry right race

01:06:08.440 starts getting really blurry when you get to it starts being just really like yeah it's like you

01:06:13.400 can't tell with your eyes so it has to be like oh but this is on paper this this person is this

01:06:18.820 status and this person is not even though they both look like pope bob and it's like and that's

01:06:22.600 why we and that's why we say a thousand times over race is a construct because it is exactly what it

01:06:28.260 is it's not we don't like i don't say you know race isn't real because we made it real so it is

01:06:32.600 real like it's not i can't that's silly people who would say that i i think are disconnected from the

01:06:37.680 culture um but like black folks are black folks and white folks are white folks but like eventually 0.82

01:06:41.820 things start getting you know like they start getting really messy when you start trying to

01:06:47.220 define who can vote who can own property who can get married it gets really messy when someone

01:06:53.220 starts looking like hailee steinfeld and you can just go to a different town who doesn't know who

01:06:58.100 your mama is right no and this happens so often i don't know if you ever watched um finding your

01:07:03.960 roots with henry lewis gates jr the show where like he talks to celebrities he talks to celebrities

01:07:08.560 and he like reveals yes yeah all the time all the time it's great and how many times there's

01:07:13.760 someone on there and he's like but i was always told my family was italian it's like that's a

01:07:17.600 black person that's a black person yeah who like switched cities and said they were italian and 0.92

01:07:22.980 like that's your like it happens so many times on that show because race is that messy like people 0.71

01:07:28.360 will say and even and white supremacy doesn't stop with black folks right like you say you know

01:07:33.560 even if you're, you know, a Spanish speaker, you'll be real quick to say you're from Spain

01:07:39.180 and not from Mexico, right? Or somebody who comes over and they're from Eastern Europe,

01:07:43.860 they're going to lie and say they're from Germany, right? It doesn't stop. It doesn't

01:07:48.460 stop with black people. It never has. White supremacy gets in the water. And once it's in 1.00

01:07:54.300 there, you can't, it is really, really tough to get it out. Um, because you end up with a place

01:07:59.400 like Haiti, which had every, it had all of, I mean, I mean, that soil could grow anything.

01:08:07.340 I mean, what an incredible place. And it was, their future was stolen from them. It was stolen

01:08:12.820 from them the minute they were stolen, you know? And it's just really, it's really, really tough

01:08:17.520 because, you know, there's nothing, I can't say like, oh, Haiti's going to make it.

01:08:21.520 I don't know. Like, you know, what do you, what do you do? Is the right thing to take control of

01:08:26.340 it again. That feels wrong. Doesn't that feel wrong? Because it's their land and they've fought

01:08:31.880 so hard for it. But it's like, oh, is it that they're incapable of running it? No, we know

01:08:35.900 that's not true. We know that's not true. Power vacuums leave big scars. And it's just really,

01:08:42.540 really challenging. But the best thing that we can do is what we're doing right here, which is

01:08:45.820 we read and we talk. And if people are looking for a book to read, do you have a novel you've

01:08:51.880 written that you would suggest that they read? I would suggest that you read the book Mademoiselle

01:08:57.160 Revolution by Zoe Sivak, anywhere where books are sold, uh, which I do encourage, uh, your local

01:09:03.480 black indie, if such one exists, uh, I would highly, highly recommend it. But there's lots

01:09:08.580 of stories, just like you said, Vanessa Riley, um, is an ex-Sadiqa Johnson, uh, wrote The Yellow 0.75

01:09:13.500 Wife. Um, you know, there are a lot of books that explore, and I am also writing another book that

01:09:19.420 will explore this. I can't disclose it yet, but very shortly. But I am personally very fascinated

01:09:25.960 in race relations, like, but specifically with women, because light-skinned black girls have

01:09:32.560 been with white men for a very, very long time. And it is a messy business. It is a messy business 0.95

01:09:39.500 and race relations in the United States, especially when you can look back and you

01:09:43.780 realize you have a half black grandfather identity gets really weird right yeah anyway and you're 0.63

01:09:50.080 super cool for being a super white nova scotian canadian no that's like your little self i don't 0.58

01:09:56.980 know how much ambiguity is in your blood but we love an ally we love an ally we really do

01:10:01.840 thank you so much um i'm i will say that my grandmother was from mexico but i'm like i'm

01:10:08.020 pretty sure she was like a white person from mexico but i'm not entirely sure and it's like

01:10:12.200 was she on paper? Yeah. I mean, she could have been an immigrant. We know that a lot of Germans

01:10:18.720 went there for various reasons. Um, you know, we know that a lot of folks have, I mean, we have

01:10:23.740 Kenyans in Mexico. Look at Lupita Nyong'o. Um, I mean, Mexico is a melting pot. Just the United 0.95

01:10:28.600 States says, girl, get that, get that blood test. Let's know. Let's not, are we a proud Latina? I 1.00

01:10:33.740 don't know. I love that, Anne. That's so cool. Yeah. That's that. So I'm, I'm, I'm my own brand

01:10:40.020 of spicy white. We love it. Slightly sunburned in Nova Scotia. We love it. It's the set of our

01:10:49.000 Stanley Cup. I love it. Well, thank you so much for talking with me today. This was, I was so

01:10:54.740 excited to talk to you. And this really helps really sort of like, because we were talking

01:10:58.320 about Haiti in the podcast and we're going to be pivoting back to France, but like, it was really

01:11:01.840 important to me to like connect those dots. And this is, you're, you're exactly the person to do

01:11:05.860 I really appreciate that. And I promise that this isn't the only place where you can do that. You can connect just about anything. When you start reading enough and you start learning enough about the stories and the experiences that people have, you're like the same thing happened in Neolithic Afghanistan. Like, I don't know.

01:11:23.020 you start making these connections and the world seems so the same, you know, I find that actually

01:11:30.780 really, really reassuring. Like, that's why I like historical fiction. Then I swear I'm going to

01:11:34.380 stop talking. I love how people have always been people. People don't change. And I don't mean that

01:11:39.180 in like a really sad way. I mean that people are always people, whether it's, you know, 1492 or

01:11:46.380 it's 1867 or 1945, people, you can kind of know, you know people because people have always been

01:11:54.940 exactly who they are. And you can just see these really incredible stories and tragedies and how

01:12:00.380 they're related or maybe not. But I just, I absolutely love that. So I think having these

01:12:04.640 types of conversations are just absolutely the key to being a wholer person, I guess. 0.95

01:12:10.960 It makes you feel a little less disconnected and isolated from the world because you're more

01:12:14.620 connected to the past absolutely and i i will say now um because clearly neither of us is able to

01:12:20.140 stop talking um i wanted to say the problem it's me i wanted to say um and this is where i love

01:12:29.140 historical fiction because like historical like there's so many good biographies too and that's

01:12:33.360 where you can like really get the interesting information about people um but i feel like

01:12:37.740 when you look at a portrait of a person you just imagine this like person standing still who's like

01:12:41.260 exactly comporting themselves so perfectly all the time and they're like a statue of a person 1.00

01:12:45.660 but it's like no people are like messy bitches like historical fiction like your book you have 0.99

01:12:51.680 like robespierre and i'm just like oh he was a guy like you know i've just kind of like robespierre 1.00

01:12:55.860 and he's just this guy and he's just like a signature on paperwork but i'm like oh no he

01:12:58.860 was he was a guy like he was a guy with like a common law wife and he wrote poetry wasn't very

01:13:04.700 good at it but he wrote romantic poetry like you wouldn't like what a weird guy like there's my

01:13:10.600 favorite quote from danton and then i'm favorite i'm done i swear he ended up killing danton so 0.99

01:13:14.520 anyway but danton said robespierre simply can't fuck and women scare the hide off of him that's 0.99

01:13:21.880 what he said can you imagine if somebody like dick cheney said uh george bush he can't fuck 1.00

01:13:27.280 could you imagine that's like what it was like these people it's so cunty i swear to god anyway 1.00

01:13:33.300 but yeah no honestly that's that's the tagline for the episode these people are so cunty 0.91

01:13:37.720 colon every man and every revolution like they're all just like these nightmare people and we're 0.99

01:13:44.420 being oh they were such famous wonderful people it's like no they were messy bitches and they 1.00

01:13:49.040 happened their side happened to win so now we're like they're heroes it's like no everyone's just 1.00

01:13:54.620 a person they were just flailing around like anybody else i don't know if you can lead a

01:13:59.700 revolution and be good that's what i think i'll say i don't think you can really i just i don't

01:14:04.960 know. It could be a good cause or there could be a good cause within it. I don't know if you can

01:14:09.060 lead a revolution like we're talking about. I don't know if you can be the good guy. I don't

01:14:12.840 know. No, you're not going to win if you're just like, I'm going to do everything moral and ethical.

01:14:16.040 It's like trying to win survivor. Like you can't, you got to get dirty. Oh my God. Oh my God. You're

01:14:23.840 great. Oh, you're great. I mean, you're great. I love talking to you. Thank you so much.

01:14:27.240 so zoe's book mademoiselle revolution we didn't even there's so much to talk about just with

01:14:37.660 the revolutions of it all we didn't get into the fact that her book is a queer story the main

01:14:44.220 character is a bisexual person who is in a bisexual love triangle there's a sapphic relationship in

01:14:50.120 it so as though you weren't already excited to read her book that's all going in in the book as

01:14:54.720 well. And just reminders for you about this podcast. I do want to just clarify that we are

01:15:01.260 still in a revolution season. Her book, Mademoiselle Revolution, is set in France during the revolution

01:15:07.080 for most of it. And the real life people are there. And then she kind of inserts her

01:15:11.500 fictional character into that. And some reminders for you, if you're still listening,

01:15:17.140 then you're a true fan of this show. So first of all, I'm having an in-person meetup Sunday,

01:15:22.440 July 20th in Toronto. For fans of this podcast, we're going to be meeting at a time and a location

01:15:27.820 that I will let you know about if you RSVP. And you can RSVP at vulgarhistory.com slash meetup.

01:15:33.280 Just leave your email address there and I will give you all the details about where we're going

01:15:36.960 to meet meeting and where we're going to be hanging out. And I look forward to that. Again,

01:15:39.560 that's Toronto on Sunday, July 20th, RSVP at vulgarhistory.com slash meetup. And I wrote a

01:15:46.540 book it's being published next february but you can order it now and it's really appreciated to

01:15:53.700 pre-order it now because this shows the enthusiasm for the book just so bookstores know that they

01:15:58.460 should get more copies of it um so that online retailers know like oh maybe we should feature it

01:16:02.880 like the pre-orders are so crucial that's why authors are always going on about them and as a

01:16:08.240 treat and everyone who pre-orders this book in canada and the u.s because that's what's available

01:16:14.100 to pre-order at the moment. If you send me a copy of your, like a picture of your receipt from the

01:16:19.500 pre-order, I'm going to send you some cool stuff. Stuff like a free membership to my Patreon,

01:16:25.500 a free membership or a free subscription to my sub stack for a year, and also a paper doll,

01:16:31.760 which is just a beautiful, fun thing that I think you all appreciate. Anyway, when you have pre-ordered

01:16:37.060 my book, go to rebeloftheregency.com. The book is again called Rebel of the Regency,

01:16:42.040 The Scandalous Saga of Carolina Brunswick, Britain's Uncroned Queen by me, Anne Foster.

01:16:46.920 You can add it on Goodreads. You can add it on Storygraph. All these things really matter to make

01:16:51.580 everybody see that this book is, people are enthusiastic about it, and that helps maybe

01:16:57.300 me be able to write a second book later on. Anyway, until next time, my friends,

01:17:02.540 keep your pants on and your tits out. 1.00

01:17:06.280 Vulgar History is researched, scripted, and hosted by Anne Foster. That's me. 1.00

01:17:10.700 editor is christina lumagi theme music is by the severin duo transcripts of this podcast are

01:17:16.880 available at vulgarhistory.com by aveline malik you can get early ad-free episodes of vulgar

01:17:22.360 history by becoming a paid member of our patreon for as low as one dollar a month at patreon.com

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01:17:37.980 Follow us on social media at vulgarhistorypod and get in touch with me via email at vulgarhistorypod at gmail.com.

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01:19:36.920 Do you ever watch a TV show set in a historical time period and think,

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01:20:06.920 Join us every other Monday on the NeferTV podcast as we discuss the real history behind Spartacus, blood, and sand.

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Vulgar History - June 26, 2025

Connecting the French Revolution and the Haitian Revolution

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