Toussaint L'Ouverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines
The History and Legacy of the Haitian Revolution’s Most Famous Leaders
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Narrated by:
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Daniel Houle
About this listen
“I was born a slave, but nature gave me a soul of a free man....” - Toussaint L'Ouverture
The island of Hispaniola is the second largest island in the Antilles chain behind Cuba, and host to the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Haiti, however, covering the western third of the island, is a French-speaking territory, while the Dominican Republic, which occupies the other two thirds, is a Spanish-speaking territory. The Dominican Republic, although classified as a developing nation, has never been struck to the same degree by the malaise of poverty, corruption of its neighbor, languishing in the lower 10 percent of nations ahead only of some of the most conspicuous failed states in Africa. Many historians and analysts have posed the question of why, and the answer seems to lie in Haiti’s uniquely tortured history.
Hispaniola entered the European record in 1492 when Christopher Columbus made landfall on its southern shore during his first transatlantic voyage, and he named his discovery in honor of the Spanish Crown that had funded and sponsored the voyage. Leaving the crew of the wrecked Santa Maria on the island, he returned to Europe, leaving his men to establish the foundations of the settlement of La Navidad and the first beachhead of the European seizure of the Caribbean and the New World. Columbus would revisit the island three times, leading a vanguard of pioneer colonists to commence the exploitation of the New World.
The indigenous people of Hispaniola, the Tainos and Arawak, initially greeted the landing with ambivalence, but as more and more of them were enslaved, and as their country was occupied, they entered a period of precipitous decline. Through a combination of disease, the violence associated with enslavement and general assimilation, they had virtually disappeared from the landscape within a century. In the meanwhile, as the Spanish colonists looked around them, searching for a means to exploit this great discovery.
Toussaint L'Ouverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines: The History and Legacy of the Haitian Revolution’s Most Famous Leaders chronicles how the only successful slave uprising came about and examines the backgrounds of the men who led it.
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Story
The Caucasus mountains rise at the intersection of Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. A land of astonishing natural beauty and a dizzying array of ancient cultures, the Caucasus for most of the 20th century lay inside the Soviet Union, before movements of national liberation created newly independent countries and sparked the devastating war in Chechnya.
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fascinating story of a messy region
- By A. T. Howarth on 07-30-20
By: Charles King
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Indigenous Continent
- The Epic Contest for North America
- By: Pekka Hamalainen
- Narrated by: Kaipo Schwab
- Length: 18 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In Indigenous Continent, acclaimed historian Pekka Hämäläinen presents a sweeping counternarrative that shatters the most basic assumptions about American history. Shifting our perspective away from Jamestown, Plymouth Rock, the Revolution, and other well-trodden episodes on the conventional timeline, he depicts a sovereign world of Native nations whose members, far from helpless victims of colonial violence, dominated the continent for centuries after the first European arrivals.
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indigenous Continent
- By katherine on 07-09-23
By: Pekka Hamalainen
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A History of the Roman Republic
- By: Cyril Edward Robinson
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 19 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of the Roman Republic is the greatest epic in human history. Seen in the long perspective of time, it seems too fantastic to be real. From her modest beginnings as a convenient fording place on the Tiber to her eventual destiny as the mistress of the Mediterranean, Rome offers a strange tale of fate, sacrifice, and indomitable willpower. The stern realities of war shaped Rome's policies from the very beginning.
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Excellent overview
- By jaime on 05-14-15
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History of Mexico
- A Captivating Guide to Mexican History, Starting from the Rise of Tenochtitlan Through Maximilian's Empire to the Mexican Revolution and the Zapatista Indigenous Uprising
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Jason Zenobia
- Length: 3 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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This fascinating journey through Mexico’s history, from its amazing pre-Hispanic past to the end of the 20th century, will reveal more surprises than the listener can imagine. In the words of the self-proclaimed Mexican singer Chavela Vargas, “Mexico has magic. I looked for that magic, and I found it there.”
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Narration
- By LIzzy on 01-05-21
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The British Empire
- By: Stephen W. Sears
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 30 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is the story of how the English acquired their vast domain; how they ruled, maintained, and exploited it; and how, within decades, they presided over its dissolution. Here are Britain's triumphs and also her stinging defeats, her heroes and her scoundrels. It is a full and fascinating chronicle of the growth of the British Empire and its people and of the impact that empire had on the rest of the world.
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Great presentation of a broad historical narrative
- By MiamiMe on 03-27-18
By: Stephen W. Sears
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The Viking Heart
- How Scandinavians Conquered the World
- By: Arthur Herman
- Narrated by: Kiff VandenHeuvel
- Length: 18 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Scandinavia has always been a world apart. For millennia Norwegians, Danes, Finns, and Swedes lived a remote and rugged existence among the fjords and peaks of the land of the midnight sun. But when they finally left their homeland in search of opportunity, these wanderers — including the most famous, the Vikings — would reshape Europe and beyond.
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Confused and not worth the time and money
- By Jacob The Dane on 08-16-21
By: Arthur Herman
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American Nations
- A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America
- By: Colin Woodard
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 12 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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North America was settled by people with distinct religious, political, and ethnographic characteristics, creating regional cultures that have been at odds with one another ever since. Subsequent immigrants didn't confront or assimilate into an "American" or "Canadian" culture, but rather into one of the 11 distinct regional ones that spread over the continent each staking out mutually exclusive territory. In American Nations, Colin Woodard leads us on a journey through the history of our fractured continent....
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One of a Kind Masterpiece
- By Theo Horesh on 02-28-13
By: Colin Woodard
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The Greek Revolution
- 1821 and the Making of Modern Europe
- By: Mark Mazower
- Narrated by: John Lee, Mark Mazower
- Length: 20 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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As Mark Mazower shows us in his enthralling and definitive new account, myths about the Greek War of Independence outpaced the facts from the very beginning, and for good reason. This was an unlikely cause, against long odds, a disorganized collection of Greek patriots up against what was still one of the most storied empires in the world, the Ottomans. The revolutionaries needed all the help they could get.
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Excellent, had it not been for the narrator
- By Jean N on 05-15-22
By: Mark Mazower
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Inhuman Bondage
- The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World
- By: David Brion Davis
- Narrated by: Raymond Todd
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In Inhuman Bondage, David Brion Davis sums up a lifetime of insight. He looks at slavery in the American South; the rise of the Cotton Kingdom; the daily life of slaves; the destructive internal long-distance slave trade; the sexual exploitation of slaves; the emergence of an African-American culture; and much more. A definitive history by a writer deeply immersed in the subject, Inhuman Bondage links together the profits of slavery, the pain of the enslaved, and the legacy of racism.
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Very Useful Contribution
- By Biggar Thomas on 06-14-08
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The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire
- By: H. W. Crocker III
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Nothing offends liberals more than Western imperialism—it is racism, sexism, and chauvinism all in one. And of course the epitome of Western imperialism is the British Empire, covering at its height a quarter of the globe’s surface and ruling a quarter of the world’s population. Here, best-selling author H. W. Crocker III exposes how the British Empire was actually one of the greatest establishers and defenders of freedom in history.
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More Propaganda than History
- By Mike on 10-21-19
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1619
- Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy
- By: James Horn
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Along the banks of the James River, Virginia, during an oppressively hot spell in the middle of summer 1619, two events occurred within a few weeks of each other that would profoundly shape the course of history. In the newly built church at Jamestown, the General Assembly - the first gathering of a representative governing body in America - came together. A few weeks later, a battered privateer entered the Chesapeake Bay carrying the first African slaves to land on mainland English America.
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Brilliant!
- By HonestOpin on 05-06-19
By: James Horn
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A Short History of the World
- By: Christopher Lascelles
- Narrated by: Guy Bethell
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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While this book explores world history from the big bang to the present day, it principally covers key people, events, and empires since the dawn of the first civilizations in and around 3500 BC. Epic in scope but refreshingly concise, A Short History of the World is an excellent place to start to bring your historical knowledge up to scratch.
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Apt introduction to World's History
- By rpluss on 12-22-16
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Empire's Crossroads
- A History of the Caribbean from Columbus to the Present Day
- By: Carrie Gibson
- Narrated by: Romy Nordlinger
- Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Ever since Christopher Columbus stepped off the Santa Maria onto what is today San Salvador, in the Bahamas, and announced that he had arrived in the Orient, the Caribbean has been a stage for projected fantasies and competition between world powers. In Empire’s Crossroads, British American historian Carrie Gibson traces the story of this coveted area from the northern rim of South America up to Cuba, and from discovery through colonialism to today, offering a vivid, panoramic view of this complex region and its rich, important history.
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Careless production mars storytelling
- By Brenda Thomas on 03-31-16
By: Carrie Gibson
What listeners say about Toussaint L'Ouverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Mícheál Ó Healighthe
- 01-30-21
Interesting account made unintelligible
This brief account of the characters of Toussaint L’Ouverture and Jacques Dessalines is an interesting if sometimes simplistic telling of these important stories. Yet this fails as an audiobook as the narrator is incapable of pronouncing a single proper noun that appears in the book. An American narrator has a choice of choosing between pronouncing the French names as they would be pronounced in English [po:rt o: prins; TU Sawnt duh LOO ver toor] or sticking to the French. This narrator uses a bizarre form that is both inconsistent and unintelligible in every instance.
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