Bound in a rusted, leather cover, a book, small enough to fit inside a coat’s pocket, has been circulating around the world for decades. Its origins are unknown, but it is believed to have once belonged to a pupil under one of the greatest Enlightenment thinkers of the seventeenth century. Having been passed on from hand to hand, the book has evolved into a record of accounts in which the Enlightenment ideals have undoubtedly stirred up.

 

…

 

September 4th, 1783

 

Yesterday marked our victory against Great Britain and the end of her Majesty’s unjust reign over her American subject. 

 

We have endured her Majesty’s relentless imposition of acts of taxation without representation which wholly disregarded the will of the American people, and mercantilist policies that allowed herself to reap the fruits of her colonial subjects’ suffering, leaving us with nothing but a few crumbs of bread fallen from the banquet table at which the monarch indulges at.

 

In her Majesty’s stubbornness to accept our Olive Branch Petition, which aimed to restore the former colonial relation under salutary neglect, and in preserving the glory she basks in, we had, thereby, chosen the last resort we were given.

 

We, the American people, will now build our new, independent country upon the scraps and destruction that the American Revolution has left behind.

 

It was the newly founded Enlightenment philosophies brought from Europe to the American people that reminded us of our natural rights and liberties, and thus the causes we were fighting for. It was these ideas that questioned our own loyalty to the British Crown’s traditional authority, and fueled the desire for these virtues against her rule. It was this epiphany that brought on Thomas Paine’s publication of Common Sense and its spread to awaken the American people.

 

Perhaps a revolution was necessary, for it was incumbent upon us to fend off the largest threat to our personal liberties.

 

Through John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract, and under the framework of Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, the United States of America will rise as a republic. In building our Constitution, we are to remind ourselves of our entitlement to the innate rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” of which the British Crown had stripped from us. We are called to step beyond the tyrannical cage that confined our nation and to preserve our liberties through self-governance, born of the people’s consent, not only for the days ahead but forevermore.

 

In gratitude to France and her generous aid towards the American war efforts, I shall send this book back to her people, whose continent had birthed the foundations of our nation.

February 24th, 1794

 

I do not know how these Enlightenment ideas, the same ones that the American people prided themselves on in achieving the full liberation of their nation, have gotten lost in translation amidst the French Revolution.

 

Perhaps the French people had been beaten down too many times by the monarchs who spared them nothing but years of famine and debt after the American Revolution, and now they could not control themselves from lashing out like rabid dogs. The violent mob stormed the Bastilles, formed the National Assembly, and took on the Tennis Court Oath that declared themselves inseparable until a constitution had been crafted, or until the King’s head was waved amongst the people.

 

However, I cannot blame them. 

 

King Louis XVI was no fit for a king. The people of France did not need a king.

 

The Third Estate, encompassing ninety-seven percent of the Kingdom of France, worked arduously. They bought the seeds and the shovel and bent their backs to plant the trees, only to watch the fruits of their labor harvested by the King. When they looked to their neighbors, the Second Estate and the First Estate were indulging in a gold-ridden picnic with three-tier fruit platters. The King spared them so much of nothing but a glance.

 

It had been inevitable that once the words of the Enlightenment got around, it spread like a wildfire. It could not have been put out until a revolution was thrown or bread was finally made affordable. Just like the American people, we were made aware of our own rights, and we planted that explicitly onto the Declaration of Rights of Man, just as their Declaration of Independence.

 

I wish not to conceal my identity. I am French, and I will pride myself upon being a French, but what kind of French am I? What kind of French will not get my head forced into the blood-stained hole of the guillotine with a blade dangling above my body, while hundreds of people around me watch?

 

A breeze of the wind had brought on a low rumor that has been stirring up among the common people: a certain military general named Napoleon Bonaparte is conspiring to end the Reign of Terror and ultimately Maximilien Robespierre himself.

 

I fear for my life in whatever future that may come. Hence, I will pass on this book to one of my acquaintances who is to escape from this unstable period and travel to one of France's colonies.

 

November 12th, 1802

 

The Enlightenment has truly sparked something within us, within everyone. It is a fire that spreads noxiously to everyone until they all have been lit in flames and are scrambling for water. The only water that could put them out, however, is death to whoever that reigned over them.

 

It is no different here in Saint-Domingue, or in Latin America for that matter.

 

In a desperate search for solace and peace, I had escaped to an island far away from the bloodshed that enveloped my nation. I was quick to realize upon stepping foot on Carribean soil that I was wronged, for I am met with even more bloodshed here.

 

This time, however, I was the target.

 

Any white intruder who tread on this wealthy colony was deemed a savage colonial planter who sought to viciously chain and whip the slaves just like many of the ones before that. 

 

The enslaved maroons have killed and tortured their white owners through means of unimaginable evils, such as mutilation and rape to name a few, and burned hundreds of sugar plantations before freeing themselves. Yet even after they themselves were liberated, they did not hesitate to spread more violence. Perhaps the only thing that remained in view of these maroons was their quest for vengeance.

 

This vengeance and fire that they possess were only realized when Toussaint L’Ouverture rose. Having been filled with the same Enlightenment ideas as the French and the Americans, he had taken it upon himself to abolish slavery in Saint-Domingue once and for all. He raveled the enslaved maroons from their dreadful plantations and led them to revolt the French Kingdom’s hold on them. 

 

It only took one man to awaken the entire herd with the recognition of their own natural rights. And from the looks of it, I am confident that Saint-Domingue will become the first independent Black Republic and the first American nation to abolish slavery.

 

The Enlightenment has truly taken a toll on us all. I have heard rumors of other uprisings from the Creole under Simon Bolivar conspiring to stir up nearby. Perhaps they will also be initiating independent movements just as the rest of us, though I do hope in a severely less violent manner.

 

Nonetheless, I fear that my head will end up placed in a pike like the French children, no matter if I surrender or not. If they did not spare the children, I don’t dare to imagine what kind of mercy they will spare for me.