Hayti, or the Black Republic

Spenser St John was the British consul general in Port-au-Prince, and this 1884 book is his own account of Haiti, including his description of the 1864 Bizoton trial, which became the founding text of the enduring claim that Haitian Vodou involves human sacrifice and cannibalism. Its value is exactly as evidence of that accusation's own origin and of the colonial-era mindset that produced it, in the accuser's own words. Its limit is severe and the reason for its tier three placement, the book is a primary example of the hostile misrepresentation that later scholarship, including Kate Ramsey's work also cited in this atlas, has shown to be unreliable as description, so it should never be cited as a factual account of Haitian Vodou itself, only as evidence about the accusation and its author.