Pompée Valentin Vastey

Pompée Valentin Vastey (1781[1] - 1820), or Pompée Valentin, Baron de Vastey, was a Haitian writer, educator, and politician. Vastey was what people at the time called a "mulatto," because he was born to a white French father and a black Haitian mother. He served as secretary to King Henri Christophe and tutor to Christophe's son, Victor Henri. Vastey also claimed to have fought in Toussaint’s army and is said to have been the second cousin of the French novelist and playwright Alexandre Dumas (Daut 56; see also, Griggs 181). Vastey is best known for his essays on the history and contemporary circumstances of Haiti.

Selected works

Notes

  1. Vastey stated that he was born in 1781 in Ennery, Haiti in a letter that he wrote to the celebrated British abolitionist Thomas Clarkson dated from Sans Souci, November 29, 1819. See Griggs 179.

Bibliography


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