Haiti’s 1805 constitution defined blackness as national identity rather than ancestry.

Evidence

In it Dessalines declared that “no white, no matter what his nation,” could come to Haiti as “master or property owner,” but he exempted those who had been naturalized. He also singled out two special groups who were not included in the ban: the Poles who had deserted or remained in the colony after the evacuation, and a group of Germans who had been settled in the colony before the revolution. The constitution went on to declare that, in the interest of eliminating all distinctions of “color” in the nation, all Haitians would henceforth be known as “black.” Haiti was a black nation, but those who embraced its creed of rejecting France and the slavery it had propagated were welcome to change their official identity and become a part of it, and therefore of the black race. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 1058

Categorization

• DEFINE: A striking definitional move — race redefined as an allegiance-based political category in a constitution.
• XREF: Fascinating echo of the reader’s interest in race as a social construct — parallels how other nations (e.g. Brazil, various revolutionary states) defined citizenship in terms of loyalty rather than descent.
• SEED: An essay angle: ‘the constitutional invention of a race’ — how Haiti’s founding documents literally legislated who counted as black, anticipating by a century-and-a-half debates over racial classification in Latin America.