Hank Gonzalez

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.  Since the Spring of 2024 I have been the faculty co-convenor of the Cambridge Histories of Marronage postgraduate research workshop. 

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