What the Haitian Revolution Might Tell Us about Development, Security and the Politics of Race

Abstract

In this article, the author proposes a critical approach to the development/security nexus. He argues that, despite recent researches in Social Sciences and International Relations, the question of race is still at the margins of the discipline, specially when it comes to understand post Cold War conflicts in the third world and the extended discourse of “failed states”. Recognizing the re-historicizing work done from some influential disciplines as historical sociology, he criticizes their tendency to obscure the politics of race within the modern world order. Therefore, he proposes an approach to the development/security nexus, firstly from a re-politicization of these concepts, and secondly, from the narratives of the Haitian Revolution and the politics of race developed during this period in the Modern World History.