| Summary: | The article considers the significance of geological metaphors in German narrations of the Haitian Revolution. In the late 18th and early 19th century, volcanic eruptions served as key metaphors for revolutionary events. At the same time, in geological discourse volcanic eruptions were themselves described as ‘revolutions of the earth‘. Moreover, geological metaphors have to be considered a constitutive part in the formation of the modern concept of ‘revolution’ itself. The key argument of this article is that in depicting the geological nature of Haiti as ‘revolutionary’, the country was regarded as a privileged site for political revolutions: a chronotope of revolution. This had a strong impact on narrations of the Haitian Revolution, particularly on their temporal dimension that concerned the abruptness of events on one the hand and their long-term conditions on the other, which were related to two geological paradigms, catastrophism and uniformitarianism. Finally, the article discusses how natural tropes of revolution affected the idea of subaltern agency.
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