Race, Rubber, Revolution: Haiti’s 1940s Revisited

Professor Matthew Smith, University College London, provides a fascinating insight into the history of Haiti during the 1940s, on the eve of the Duvalier dictatorship. With access to newly revealed personal and institutional archives, Professor Smith reassesses the role of the Société Haïtiano-Américane de Développement Agricole (SHADA) during the early 1940s, particularly the war-time US investment in developing rubber plantations. This original insight will recast the way that we understand the politics and governance of Haiti during WWII, the evolution of the Duvalier regime, and the role of international investment in the Haitian state over the last century.

Matthew J. Smith is Professor of History and Director of the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, after many years working at the University of the West Indies, Mona in Jamaica where he was Professor of Caribbean History. His research is pan-Caribbean in scope with special interest in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century histories of Haiti and Jamaica. Among his publications is Liberty, Fraternity, Exile: Haiti and Jamaica After Emancipation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), a comparative study which explored the post-slavery intersections between the two Caribbean neighbours with a focus on overlapping narratives and shared migration histories. His earlier book, Red and Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict and Political Change, 1934-1957 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009) studied the activities of radical political groups that emerged after the US Occupation of Haiti (1915-1934) and prior to the establishment of the dictatorship of François Duvalier in 1957.

The annual David Nicholls Memorial Trust Lecture is held at Regent’s Park College, Oxford, in early November each year. The public lecture attracts a multidisciplinary audience of students, academics and members of the public, and everyone is warmly welcome. Each year, the lecture commences at 4pm, with tea offered beforehand, and a reception and meal in the College Hall afterwards.