Atlantic Unbound: Architecture in the World of the Haitian Revolution

In Atlantic Unbound, Peter Minosh examines neoclassical architecture within the Atlantic World--a site of colonialism, resource extraction, commodity circulation, capital, and slavery spanning Europe, North America, and the Caribbean in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The book centers on France during the expansion of its colonial empire and the French Revolution, Saint-Domingue during and after the Haitian Revolution, and the United States in the decade following the ratification of the Constitution. By analyzing architecture's relationship to revolutionary politics, colonial practices, and Enlightenment discourse, Minosh reveals buildings, cities, and landscapes as products of transnational exchange and cross-cultural interaction that shaped the modern world. An original contribution to the history of modern architecture and the first in-depth study of the architecture of the Haitian Revolution, Atlantic Unbound reorients neoclassicism as a globalized modernity--a negotiation of global systems and hybrid sovereignties. Together, these interventions position the book as a major contribution to architectural history, situating neoclassical architecture within colonialism and slavery while rethinking its role in Atlantic revolutions.