Lwas, Liberty, and Liberation: Vodou and the Religious Imagination of the Haitian Revolution

This paper proposes examining the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) as an event whose religious and spiritual dimensions were not peripheral to the uprising but constitutive of it. Vodou ceremonies, African cosmologies, Catholic sacramental practice, and prophetic leadership coalesced to produce what scholars increasingly recognize as one of the most consequential revolutions in the history of the Atlantic world. Drawing on the conference theme of 'Future/s,' this proposal situates the Revolution as a generative site for thinking about enslaved peoples' insurgency, Caribbean religion, and the entanglement of spiritual authority with political violence.
By centering the religious dimensions of the Revolution, this paper intervenes in two intersecting conversations: the study of North American and Caribbean religions and the broader scholarly reckoning with how spiritual life energizes and shapes revolutionary action. The paper argues that adequate historiography of the Haitian Revolution demands not merely political or economic analysis, but sustained attention to the cosmological frameworks and ritual practices through which its leaders and participants understood freedom, death, the ancestors, and the divine.