ABSTRACT

Scholars studying the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1804 have often focused on its influence on contemporary politics and slave resistance throughout the Atlantic World. Less attention has been given to the creative and cultural impact of emigrants from Saint-Domingue in their new homes in the Greater Caribbean. When French planters abandoned the new Republic of Haiti, Africans and those of African descent, both enslaved and free, formed part of the emigrations. Spanish colonies underwent dramatic demographic and concomitant cultural changes as they admitted emigrants from Haiti and adopted large-scale sugar and coffee cultivation in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution. As Borucki, Eltis and Wheat noted in 2015, although Spanish America had the most enduring links to Africa, it has nonetheless been the least explored area of the African Diaspora. This chapter addresses the fact that although African influence is linguistically significant in the creole-speaking Caribbean islands belonging to other colonizers, in the case of Spain, African resistance to colonizers and dominant cultural norms was largely communicated in nonlinguistic forms such as music and dance. The chapter examines how in Cuba and Puerto Rico, to the west and east of Haiti, respectively, these aspects of Afro-Caribbean culture and identity evolved and continue to thrive.