Enfants de la Patrie?: Metaphor, the Marseillaise, and the Haitian Revolution

This study examines the cultural and political significance of the Marseillaise during the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804). Beginning with the oft-told tale of Toussaint Louverture’s soldiers singing French revolutionary songs, it traces the shifting fortunes and evolving meanings of the Marseillaise through five contrafacta published in Saint-Domingue between 1792 (the anthem’s arrival) and 1804 (Haitian independence). Attending to the Marseillaise’s metaphorical language about “slavery” in a context of literal enslavement, the article explores how colonists and revolutionaries reinterpreted the imported song to confront local crises, assert new political identities, and articulate competing visions of freedom. In bringing together these Caribbean adaptations of metropolitan verse, the article raises the Marseillaise as an effective case study for understanding the incoherence of Enlightenment rhetoric within the colonial Americas.