Talk:Henri Christophe

Removal
I removed this addition to the article: ''His friends descibed him as having great pride in his white heritage, allways wearing a white powedered wig wherever he went. (see picture)''. The person didn't provide a citation so I removed it. The person who added it is User:205.188.116.5. --Kewp (t) 14:22, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Christophe a pre-war freedman?
I qualified the statement that he had received his freedom before the Haitian revolution and served at Savannah. I have looked quite a bit in the pre-war archives specifically for Christophe's name and didn't find it. I suspect that this was a story made up after the fact by 19th-century Haitian commentators (especially Beaubruin Ardouin and Nord Alexis) to make Christophe seem more legitimate and less like Dessalines. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Stewart king (talk • contribs) 20:52, 23 April 2007 (UTC).

Location
He is best known as "Henri Christophe," not "Henry I of Haiti," and he should remain at Henri Christophe. Monarch naming conventions are not intended to put people at utterly unrecognizable locations. john k (talk) 06:05, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not saying that your opinion is right or wrong. All of the scholarly references that I have seen made to Henri have called him "Henry I of Haiti." Can you provide some proof that he is best known as the former? Thanks.-- Eva  b  d  06:57, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
 * What scholarly references are those? Encarta gives Henri Christophe; Britannica gives Henry Christophe; Columbia Encyclopedia gives Henri Christophe, as well.  Google scholar gives 638 hits for "Henri Christophe".  A search for "Henri I" and "Haiti" gave 50 results, and for "Henry I" and "Haiti" 277, but in both cases there's a lot of false hits.  There are 788 hits on Google Books for "Henri Christophe".  There's 612 for "Henry I" and "Haiti", but many of these seem to merely mention the name in context of calling him mostly "Henri Christophe".  It is you who ought to be giving good sources as to why he should be "Henry I of Haiti." john k (talk) 21:37, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
 * If we subscribe to your line of reasoning John K, we must at once rename the article, "Napoleon I of France" (monstrous), to "Napoleon Bonaparte", it would seem to be a logical extension of your argument. While at it diligence would require that the article "Napoleon II" would need to be changed, and as a matter of uniformity "Napoleon III" as well, but wait.... no. Its not necessary, they were after all white monarchs. That is a blow aimed well beneath your editorial belt (unfairly I am sure), yet I hope you take my point, which is that if you do not carry on and extent your rational to its logical conclusion, your efforts to date will seem biased at best and racist at worst. Henri Christophe was in fact a crowned king, whose official name and style was Henri I of Haiti, his personal nature aside, one must give history its due and record it properly. The use of statistical results of various Google searchs to support your position is a quite flawed line of reasoning, considering that the internet is fairly deluged with websites that are based on hearsay, speculation, and barely disguised popular myth masquerading as documented fact. If you searched google and found a enormous upsurge of websites referring to George W. Bush as BIG DUBBYA would you then deem it appropriate to rename that particular article as well? If you are familiar with the Encycopedia Brittanica, you would know that their article of Henri Christophe has changed very little since first written, written one should note, during a period when persons of African descent were known as coloreds with all the negative connotations thereof. I think that such a standard is one that Wikipedia should hardly seek to emulate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by SMS Breslau (talk • contribs) 07:47, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Awful lot of pretend-educated bloviation here. This ‘monarchy’ was widely regarded as a joke at the time, a despot indulging himself. There was a similar episode in the Central African Republic in the Twentieth Century, where another despot declared himself Emperor, (even better). His wiki article is ‘Jean-Bédel Bokassa’, not ‘Bokassa I’. To see how a real, and multi ethnic, monarchy was proclaimed in the new world, see ‘Brazilian Empire’.

Something to improve the article would be to properly source the following: the author C. S. Forester used the career of this character as one of the sources of the villian in his first ‘Hornblower’ story, ‘Beat to Quarters’. This was a landowner in Central America who decided he was the Supreme Being (even better yet). He called himself ‘El Supremo’ and declared that he would rule all Central America, who would then worship his divinity, going in for colorful, Henri-style atrocities. Hornblower shows up to give him arms, and make trouble for the Spanish, at war with Britain. Similar to quiet support given by Britain to this ‘Henri I’, for tactical reasons, in the larger cause of stopping Napoleon. 2601:647:667F:8610:B4B3:7C5C:83BE:4192 (talk) 16:22, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Spelling of name
The following was posted by at Editor Assistance. I thought it may be of interest to the editors of this page.

''All the many letters letters sent from King Henry Christophe to Thomas Clarkson, an Abolitionist who served the King's interests in England and elsewhere in Europe, are signed Henry, using the English spelling. The King despised and feared the French, although he did have Clarkson make overtures on his behalf to re-establish trade relations. He had assistance from Clarkson to employ teachers, artists, and doctors to help set up educational, cultural and health systems in the new country, and was an admirer of the Kings Henry of England. His official proclamations as well as his correspondence use the English spelling, "Henry". One source for documentation of this spelling is the collected letters and papers of Thomas Clarkson, now in the rare books and manuscripts section of the British Library: Add.MSS 41,262A-C. This note is based upon a viewing of that collection. LeGrace Benson/ Arts of Haiti Research Project and Associate Editor, _Journal of Haitian Studies_.''

The post will be housed permanently here in a few days. --Danger (talk) 10:06, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Not to mention that, although the most common spelling in current French history textbooks and on wikipedia is 'Henri IV of France,' for example, the very same king signed his own name with a 'y': https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/1585_signature_of_King_Henri_IV_of_France.jpg)

Summer home
He is supposed to have set up a summer home on Inagua island, to the north, at the bay of Northeast point. Now part of Bahamas. Locals think he buried a lot of treasure there. If this can be sourced, it could improve the article. 2601:647:667F:8610:B4B3:7C5C:83BE:4192 (talk) 16:28, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Censorship warning - quoted sections removed without notifications nor reasons on the Talk Page
The section "Failed military invasion and Dominican Genocide of 1805" was removed without posting the reasons for it the Talk page.

For this, and since such section is fully externably quotable, it will be reinstated and the page blocked from vandalic removals. Flurry (talk) 13:22, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Henri Christophe. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20130609155212/http://www.diariodigital.com.do/articulo.php?id=14805 to http://www.diariodigital.com.do/articulo.php?id=14805

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 23:11, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Henri Christophe. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130609155212/http://www.diariodigital.com.do/articulo.php?id=14805 to http://www.diariodigital.com.do/articulo.php?id=14805

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 15:09, 27 July 2017 (UTC)