Michael Deibert’s With the Pen in One Hand and the Sword in the Other is a sweeping history of Haiti’s first century, examining its complex internal political dynamics, the vital role the nation played in liberation movements throughout the Americas, and its tangled relations with the United States. Weaving the diverse stories of the region into a vibrant tapestry of shared struggle under the shadow of both colonial European powers and an ever-more-assertive United States, Deibert uses decades of experience in the region to bring such historical figures as Frederick Douglass, Simón Bolívar, Anténor Firmin, and Ramón Emeterio Betances to life in new and vivid ways. In doing so, he also examines the shared histories of Haiti and the United States, the hemisphere’s two oldest independent republics, and the values each espoused and claimed to live by, sometimes coalescing and sometimes clashing. A must-read for anyone interested in Latin American and Caribbean history as well as the history of the antebellum and postbellum United States, With the Pen in One Hand and the Sword in the Other restores Haiti to its rightful place as a nation at the forefront of the struggle for human freedom during the era and presents, in dramatic and compelling form, the glories and costs that came from being at the forefront of that battle.
