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Code Henry: Digital version

Texte publié le mardi 26 juin 2007 à 10:42

Christophe Henri, Constitutions et recueils de lois, Histoire, Histoire: 1804-1915, Législation

The second decade of the nineteenth century has just begun, and we are in Haiti, the Caribbean country that has just proclaimed its independence from France. The alliance between the former African slaves and the mulattoes that led to that epic has collapsed. Thus, two years after the proclamation of independence, the country was already on the verge of civil war and divided between two opposing governments: one in the southern and western regions, presided over by Alexandre Petion; the other established in the northern parts under the leadership of Henry Christophe, who proclaimed himself king and in so doing created the Kingdom of Haiti.

Attracted by the British system and trying to shape his administration according to that model, Christophe, despite governing his fellow citizens with a strong hand, proved himself to be a skilled and methodical administrator with an almost neurotic sense of pride, taking the challenges as a new leader seriously and trying to build a respected kingdom. Those inherent attributes explained the discipline expected not only from his army and his Privy Council, but also from the citizenry. The fortresses he built to defend the country from a possible return of the French army and the laws and ordinances he promulgated confirmed his success in obtaining that discipline.

In 1812, after only five years of government, laws and ordinances relating to all governmental institutions of the kingdom were collected by the Privy Council and upon Christophe’s approval published in a compendium called the “Code Henry”(1) . Today, this publication has become an item of great interest among historians and researchers, and of incalculable historical value and extreme rarity.

In 1972, the National Union Catalog pre-1956 Imprints mentioned only one library that held a copy — the New York Public Library(2). Searching the NYPL’s online catalog we could not locate the copy; nor could a librarian at that institution with whom we had an online conversation.

Max Bissainthe, former director of Haïti’s national library, in his Dictionnaire de Bibliographie Haïtienne published in 1851(3), mentioned the existence of three copies found in the following libraries:

the Bibliothèque Nationale d’Haïti, since lost;
the British Library although Bissainthe were unable to find it (4); and
the Boston Public Library.

Asking for a confirmation of the British Library’s holding, we were told by a librarian at that institution that it was missing.

The Boston Public Library just digitized its copy of the Code Henry and has published it in DjVu, PDF, B/W PDF, and TXT formats, an initiative that will certainly delight historians, law students and researchers specializing in Haitian studies.

Notes:

(1) Madiou, Thomas. Histoire d’Haïti. Tome V: 1811-1818. (Port-au-Prince : Editions Henri Deschamps, 1988); 62-63. Christophe, who was born on the British island of Grenada, was an anglophile and continued to use the English spelling of his given name.

(2) National Union Catalog pre-1956 Imprints. Vol. 226. (London : Mansell, 1972); p. 404.

(3) Bissainthe, Max. Dictionnaire de Bibliographie Haïtienne. (Washington, D.C. : Scarecrow Press, 1951); §808.

(4) The bibliographer stated to have “vainement cherché” (looked unsuccessfully for) the item (Loc. Cit.). Besides, the curators of the Canadian and Caribbean Collections and the Department of Manuscripts at the British Library could not find the Code. According to the latter, "There is the possibility that the Code is just one part of a larger manuscript relating to Haiti but … was not indexed. However, [He found] this possibility unlikely. Something as important as the Code would have been indexed separately if we had it." St John-McAlister, Michael. "Regarding the Code Henry." E-mail to Jean Antoine: Mardi 19 June 2007.

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