The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe by Marlene L. Daut; Knopf, 656 pp., $40 Forty years ago, most white Americans had no idea that, hard on the heels of the American and French revolutions, an enslaved population on a Caribbean island had claimed its freedom by force of arms and founded a new Black nation called Haiti. Today, Haitian revolutionary studies is an overcrowded field.