As such, Saint-Domingue was, in the author’s words, “a vast infernal factory where labor never ceased and slaves regularly worked from sunup to past sundown in conditions rivaling the concentration camps and gulags of the twentieth century.” It was from this Caribbean charnel house that Davy de la Pailleterie took his mixed-race young son to France for a free life and gentleman’s education. According to Reiss, the island colony - known as the “pearl of the West Indies” - accounted for two-thirds of France’s overseas trade in the late 18th century. Thomas-Alexandre (later, simply Alex) Dumas was born in 1762 in Saint-Domingue to a blackguard French aristocrat named Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie and one of his black mistresses.

Historian Tom Reiss went to France specifically to uncover the papers and tell the story of this forgotten Dumas, the titular “Black Count” of Reiss’ fascinating new book. For the father of Alexandre Dumas, pere, the sword was mightier than the pen, and this larger-than-life figure’s story heavily influenced the fiction of his literary offspring. The novelist Alexandre Dumas - the one known for penning The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers - is often referred to as “Alexandre Dumas, pere.” This is to distinguish him from his son, also a writer, who is identified as “Alexandre Dumas, fils.” The thing is, there is an even older Alex Dumas who, while not a professional writer, made quite a name for himself in Revolutionary France. (Reiss’ previous books include The Orientalist and Fuhrer-Ex: Memoirs of a Former Neo-Nazi.)

In his latest book, Reiss argues that Haitian General Alexandre Dumas is “an important, criminally neglected historical figure quite apart from his relationship to his famous offspring,” author Alexandre Dumas. Drew Toal reviews Tom Reiss’ The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo (2012), which just hit the stands yesterday.

The black count book review