1. Jean Price-Mars was a Haitian medical doctor, teacher, politician, diplomat, writer, and ethnographer.
14 Facts About Jean Price-Mars
1. 2.
In 1922, Jean Price-Mars completed medical studies which he had given up for lack of a scholarship.
3.
Jean Price-Mars was secretary of state for external relations in 1946 and, later, ambassador to the Dominican Republic.
4.
Jean Price-Mars championed Negritude in Haiti through his writing, which "discovered" and embraced the African roots of Haitian society.
5.
Jean Price-Mars's nationalism embraced a Haitian cultural identity as African through slavery.
6.
Jean Price-Mars' attitude was inspired by the active resistance by Haitian peasants to the 1915 through 1934 United States occupation.
7.
Jean Price-Mars deplored the elite's abandonment of the tradition that had emphasized the nation's achieving independence from French colonialism, but he took pride in the conduct of the poor.
8.
Jean Price-Mars coined the term collective bovarysme to describe the elite as identifying with their partial European ancestry while denouncing ties to their African legacy.
9.
Jean Price-Mars noticed that the elite were composed almost exclusively of people of mixed ancestry, descended from former free persons of color, who embraced their "whiteness".
10.
Jean Price-Mars believed they had unfair economic and political influence.
11.
Jean Price-Mars understood that their power base in the state system relied heavily on the taxation of crops, especially of coffee, the chief export, grown by the peasants who had come to the country's defense when the elites had abandoned it to protect their own interests.
12.
Jean Price-Mars examined the "intellectual tools" available in Haiti and challenged the elite to promote progress among the masses because of their advantage of position.
13.
Jean Price-Mars ultimately came to embrace Haiti's slavery history as the true source of the Haitian identity and culture.
14.
Jean Price-Mars admired the culture and religion developed among the slaves as their base for rebelling against the Europeans and building a Haitian nation.