Dantès Bellegarde

Dantès Bellegarde (18 May 1877 – 16 June 1966) [1] was a Haitian historian and diplomat. He is best known for his works Histoire du Peuple Haïtien (1953), La Résistance Haïtienne (1937), Haïti et ses Problèmes (1943), and Pour une Haïti Heureuse (1928–1929).

Dantès Bellegarde

Early years

Bellegarde was born in Port-au-Prince to a poor mulatto family. His impoverished but small bourgeoisie background descended from several historical figures in Haiti's history. His maternal great-grandfather Jacques Ignace-Fresnal was an officer in the army and Haiti's first Minister of Justice, and founder of Haitian Freemasonry. His paternal grandfather, General Jean-Louis Bellegarde, was a former Governor of Port-au-Prince.[2]

The Second Pan-African Congress proposed that Bellegarde be added as a member of the Permanent Mandates Commission, but the colonial powers that dominated the Commission did not name him to the Commission.[3]

He was an Assembly delegate for Haiti.[4] On 8 September 1922, Bellegarde highlighted a massacre of the Bondelswarts (a poor pastoral tribe) in South West Africa, which was a League mandate at the time.[5]

Bellegarde was part of a panel of experts on the League of Nations's Temporary Commission on Slavery in 1924. It was the first time that the League of Nations had a black person as an expert on a commission. On the commission, Bellegarde was the strongest critic of colonialism and forced labor.[6]

Career

Bellegarde served as Minister Plenipotentiary to Paris in 1921 and to Washington, D.C., in 1930.

Honours

He was bestowed by France as commander of the Legion of Honour and was holder of the Office of Public Instruction.[7]

References
  1. Association de Genealogie d'Haiti
  2. "Bellegarde, Dantès (1877-1966)". Black Past. 22 September 2009. Retrieved 14 March 2015.
  3. Pedersen, Susan (2015). The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire. Oxford University Press. pp. 60–61. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199570485.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-957048-5.
  4. Pedersen, Susan (2015). The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire. Oxford University Press. p. 84. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199570485.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-957048-5.
  5. Pedersen, Susan (2015). The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire. Oxford University Press. p. 112. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199570485.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-957048-5.
  6. Sánchez Román, José Antonio (2023). "Abolitionism and Self-government. Dantès Bellegarde's Participation in the Temporary Commission on Slavery of the League of Nations". The International History Review: 1–19. doi:10.1080/07075332.2023.2224369. ISSN 0707-5332. S2CID 259390031.
  7. Rogers, J.A. (1996). World's Great Men of Color, Volume 2. Macmillan Publishing Company. p. 555. ISBN 9780684815824. Retrieved 14 March 2015.
  • Biography of Dantès Bellegarde
  • Schutt-Ainé, Patricia (1994). Haiti: A Basic Reference Book. Miami, Florida: Librairie Au Service de la Culture. p. 100. ISBN 0-9638599-0-0.


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