Hank Gonzalez

University Associate Professor in Caribbean History
Image
Dr Hank Gonzalez
I am a historian of the Caribbean, with a primary focus on the history of Haiti. My work grows out of lengthy periods of research in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

I received my B.A. in history from Harvard College and my Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago. I was a postdoctoral fellow at Duke and I have worked for four years as assistant professor of Caribbean history at the University of South Florida at Tampa.
My scholarship grows out of my own efforts to comprehend the history of Hispaniola – the initial nexus of European conquest and African slavery in the new world. My 2019 book on the early history of independent Haiti focuses on systems of land ownership and crop production devised by the former slaves who overthrew the plantation system of colonial Saint Domingue. In particular I have focused on unauthorized settlements of runaways and squatters that emerged amidst the violence and upheaval of the Haitian Revolution and that came to shape the culture, demographics and economics of the Haitian countryside. Related questions of maroon resistance and Haitian free soil policy inspired my first article, which deals with fugitive slaves from the Turks and Caicos who escaped to Haiti during the 1820s. My second book project examines the history of foreign influence in the twentieth century Haitian art business. I am also currently pursuing my first archeological research project in Haiti.
I formerly convened Paper 21 and the HAP paper, and I formerly directed the MPhil program in World History.  I currently teach the T-16 undergraduate paper on Caribbean history and an MPhil option on Caribbean history.  I lecture in papers on laboring lives, in the World History MPhil core course, and in the CLAS MPhil programme.  I advise undergraduate dissertations and postgraduate work on slavery, colonialism, the Caribbean, and Latin America.
Caribbean History, Latin American History, Slavery and Post-Emancipation Societies

Contact

Tags & Themes

Address

History 6.31

Email
jhg36@cam.ac.uk
Links

Key publications

Maroon Nation: A History of Revolutionary Haiti, Yale University Press, 2019. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300230086/maroon-nation

"Defiant Haiti: Free-Soil Runaways, Ship Seizures and the Politics of Diplomatic Non-Recognition in the Early Nineteenth Century," Slavery & Abolition, 36:1, (2015) 124-135, DOI: 10.1080/0144039X.2014.895508
 
"Haitian Mawonaj, the “Picaroons,” and Re-centering the Maritime Dimensions of Maroon History. Small Axe 1 July 2023; 27 (2 (71)): 128–135. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-10795307

Other publications