The history of African-Americans and the African Diaspora are given close attention during Black History Month. However, the Ascension Blog readers already know that Black history is an integral part of American history. Therefore, we need to celebrate and be proud of our accomplishments everyday. Nevertheless, Black History Month makes us reflect on us.
Haiti has a special place in history because Haiti is the world’s first black republic. We (African-Americans) could have easily ended up in Haiti instead of the United States; it all depended on where the slave ship stopped. In addition, there is another connection in that we naturally identify with the Haitians because we are a part of the African Diaspora.
Under French colonization, Haiti’s abundant sugar plantations made it the richest colony of the Caribbean.
During the French colonization, the African slaves suffered from malicious maltreatment. The slave rebellion began around 1790; the Haitians were led by Toussaint L’Ouverture. After years of fierce fighting, L’Ouverture was captured by Napolean’s forces and died in France. However, the rebellion lived on, and Napoleon’s mighty forces were defeated.
Haiti gained its independence in 1804.
Haiti is now the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Haiti is poor because of its long period of discrimination, and Haiti had to pay reparations to France. The loss of Haiti’s riches and strategic location was part of Napoleon’s decision to sell the Louisiana Purchase, which increased the size of the United States.
Without a doubt, Haiti was treated differently because they were a black nation. America refused to trade with the new black republic simply because they were black. America occupied Haiti from 1915 until 1934. Then America supported a series of dictators until 1990.
Today, we have all been deeply touched by the catastrophic Haitian earthquake; it is reminiscent of the mass destruction Hurricane Katrina brought to New Orléans. Many Americans are coming together to help Haiti regardless of race. Perhaps the discrimination against Haitians is coming to an end.
In 1893, Frederick Douglass said: “We think about Haiti being a nation that has gained their own independence through struggle.”
We share that legacy of struggle with the Haitians. We understand. We also have a sense of pride in that the Haitians seized their own destiny by fighting for their freedom. This has left an indelible imprint on the minds of African-Americans. Let us not forget about our own slave rebellions that took place in the South. There was always resistance. We should never forget that the slave rebellions and the Civil War prompted Abraham Lincoln to free the slaves. If you look closely at the many uprisings, you will discover that the slaves played a big role in freeing themselves.
Again, Haiti is an important part of our History.
Please keep Haiti in your prayers.
Peace and Love,
Rachel Araya
Comments on: "Black History Month: Why Haiti Has A Special Place In History" (4)
Rach – Thanks for sharing your knowledge of the Haitian rebellion and the subsequent rise of the first Republic of African descendants. An excellent read as usual.
As you will see shortly, I’m in a writing zone. Maybe it is nervous energy – accentuated by a catastrophic event? In reality, I simply enjoy history and I have become enthralled and compelled by this tragedy to keep getting the message out to our peers, regarding our brothers and sisters struggling in Haiti.
Black people in America don’t realize it but in modern times, when Haiti does intrude on U.S. consciousness, it’s usually because of some natural disaster or a violent political upheaval, and the U.S. response is often paternalistic, if not tinged with a racist disdain for the country’s predominantly black population and its seemingly endless failure to escape cycles of crushing poverty. This is a perception that is perpetuated by design and based on sad truths.
However, more than two centuries ago, Haiti represented one of the most important neighbors of the new American Republic and played a central role in enabling the United States to expand westward. If not for Haiti, the course of U.S. history could have been very different, with the United States possibly never expanding much beyond the Appalachian Mountains.
In the 1700s, then-called St. Domingue and covering the western third of the island of Hispaniola, Haiti was a French colony that rivaled the American colonies as the most valuable European possession in the Western Hemisphere. Relying on a ruthless exploitation of African slaves, French plantations there produced nearly one-half the world’s coffee and sugar.
Many of the great cities of France owe their grandeur to the wealth that was extracted from Haiti and its slaves. But the human price was unspeakably high. The French had devised a fiendishly cruel slave system that imported enslaved Africans for work in the fields with accounting procedures for their amortization. They were literally worked to death.
The American colonists may have rebelled against Great Britain over issues such as representation in Parliament and arbitrary actions by King George III. But black Haitians confronted a brutal system of slavery. An infamous French method of executing a troublesome slave was to insert a gunpowder charge into his rectum and then detonate the explosive.
So, as the American colonies fought for their freedom in the 1770s and as that inspiration against tyranny spread to France in the 1780s, the repercussions would eventually reach Haiti, where the Jacobins’ cry of “liberty, equality and fraternity” resonated with special force. Slaves demanded that the concepts of freedom be applied universally.
When the brutal French plantation system continued, violent slave uprisings followed. Hundreds of white plantation owners were slain as the rebels overran the colony. A self-educated slave named Toussaint L’Ouverture emerged as the revolution’s leader, demonstrating skills on the battlefield and in the complexities of politics.
Despite the atrocities committed by both sides of the conflict, the rebels – known as the “Black Jacobins” – gained the sympathy of the American Federalist Party and particularly Alexander Hamilton, a native of the Caribbean himself. Hamilton, the first U.S. Treasury Secretary, helped L’Ouverture draft a constitution for the new nation.
Conspiracies
But events in Paris and Washington soon conspired to undo the promise of Haiti’s new freedom.
Despite Hamilton’s sympathies, some Founders, including Thomas Jefferson who owned 180 slaves, mulatto children and owed his political strength to agrarian interests, looked nervously at the slave rebellion in St. Domingue. “If something is not done, and soon done,” Jefferson wrote in 1797, “we shall be the murderers of our own children.”
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the chaos and excesses of the French Revolution led to the ascendance of Napoleon Bonaparte, a brilliant and vain military commander possessed of legendary ambition. As he expanded his power across Europe, Napoleon also dreamed of rebuilding a French empire in the Americas.
In 1801, Jefferson became the third President of the United States – and his interests at least temporarily aligned with those of Napoleon. The French dictator was determined to restore French control of St. Domingue and Jefferson was eager to see the slave rebellion crushed.
Through secret diplomatic channels, Napoleon asked Jefferson if the United States would help a French army traveling by sea to St. Domingue. Jefferson replied that “nothing will be easier than to furnish your army and fleet with everything and reduce Toussaint [L’Ouverture] to starvation.”
But Napoleon had a secret second phase of his plan that he didn’t share with Jefferson. Once the French army had subdued L’Ouverture and his rebel force, Napoleon intended to advance to the North American mainland, basing a new French empire in New Orleans and settling the vast territory west of the Mississippi River.
In May 1801, Jefferson picked up the first inklings of Napoleon’s other agenda. Alarmed at the prospect of a major European power controlling New Orleans and thus the mouth of the strategic Mississippi River, Jefferson backpedaled on his commitment to Napoleon, retreating to a posture of neutrality.
Still – terrified at the prospect of a successful republic organized by freed African slaves – Jefferson took no action to block Napoleon’s thrust into the New World.
In 1802, a French expeditionary force achieved initial success against the slave army, driving L’Ouverture’s forces back into the mountains. But, as they retreated, the ex-slaves torched the cities and the plantations, destroying the colony’s once-thriving economic infrastructure.
L’Ouverture, hoping to bring the war to an end, accepted Napoleon’s promise of a negotiated settlement that would ban future slavery in the country. As part of the agreement, L’Ouverture turned himself in.
Napoleon, however, broke his word. Jealous of L’Ouverture, who was regarded by some admirers as a general with skills rivaling Napoleon’s, the French dictator had L’Ouverture shipped in chains back to Europe where he was mistreated and died in prison.
Foiled Plans
Infuriated by the betrayal, L’Ouverture’s young generals resumed the war with a vengeance. In the months that followed, the French army – already decimated by disease – was overwhelmed by a fierce enemy fighting in familiar terrain and determined not to be put back into slavery.
Napoleon sent a second French army, but it too was destroyed. Though the famed general had conquered much of Europe, he lost 24,000 men, including some of his best troops, in St. Domingue before abandoning his campaign.
The death toll among the ex-slaves was much higher, but they had prevailed, albeit over a devastated land.
By 1803, a frustrated Napoleon – denied his foothold in the New World – agreed to sell New Orleans and the Louisiana territories to Jefferson. Ironically, the Louisiana Purchase, which opened the heart of the present United States to American settlement, had been made possible despite Jefferson’s misguided collaboration with Napoleon. This purchase of all of the land west of the Mississippi River exspanded our country 400%, taken us all the way out to the Pacific Ocean.
“By their long and bitter struggle for independence, St. Domingue’s blacks were instrumental in allowing the United States to more than double the size of its territory,” wrote Stanford University professor John Chester Miller in his book, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery.
But, Miller observed, “the decisive contribution made by the black freedom fighters … went almost unnoticed by the Jeffersonian administration.”
The loss of L’Ouverture’s leadership dealt a severe blow to Haiti’s prospects, according to Jefferson scholar Paul Finkelman of Virginia Polytechnic Institute.
“Had Toussaint lived, it’s very likely that he would have remained in power long enough to put the nation on a firm footing, to establish an order of succession,” Finkelman told me in an interview. “The entire subsequent history of Haiti might have been different.”
Instead, the island nation continued a downward spiral.
In 1804, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the radical slave leader who had replaced L’Ouverture, formally declared the nation’s independence and returned it to its original Indian name, Haiti. A year later, apparently fearing a return of the French and a counterrevolution, Dessalines ordered the massacre of the remaining French whites on the island.
Though the Haitian resistance had blunted Napoleon’s planned penetration of the North American mainland, Jefferson reacted to the shocking bloodshed in Haiti by imposing a stiff economic embargo on the island nation. In 1806, Dessalines himself was brutally assassinated, touching off a cycle of political violence that would haunt Haiti for the next two centuries.
Jefferson’s Blemish
For some scholars, Jefferson’s vengeful policy toward Haiti – like his personal ownership of slaves – represented an ugly blemish on his legacy as a historic advocate of freedom. Even in his final years, Jefferson remained obsessed with Haiti and its link to the issue of American slavery.
In the 1820s, the former President proposed a scheme for taking away the children born to black slaves in the United States and shipping them to Haiti. In that way, Jefferson posited that both slavery and America’s black population could be phased out.
Eventually, in Jefferson’s view, Haiti would be all black and the United States white.
Jefferson’s deportation scheme never was taken very seriously and American slavery would continue for another four decades until it was ended by the Civil War. The official hostility of the United States toward Haiti extended almost as long, ending in 1862 when President Abraham Lincoln finally granted diplomatic recognition.
By then, however, Haiti’s destructive patterns of political violence and economic chaos had been long established – continuing up to the present time. Personal and political connections between Haiti’s light-skinned elite and power centers of Washington also have lasted through today.
The United States occupied the island from 1915 to 1934. The Haitian administration dismantled the constitutional system, reinstituted virtual slavery for building roads, and established the National Guards that ran the country after the Marines left.
From 1957 to 1986, the Duvalier family reigned as dictators, turning the country into a hermit kingdom with a personality cult and excessive corruption. The head of this Klan was notoriously known as “Papa Doc” Duvalier. They created the private army and terrorist death squads known as Tonton Macoutes. Many Haitians fled to exile in the United States and Canada, especially French-speaking Quebec. In the 1970s the United States funded major efforts to establish assembly plants for U.S. manufacturers. In the mid 1980s the US continued military and economic aid to the regime.
In 1986 protests against “Baby Doc” led the U.S. to arrange for Duvalier and his family to be exiled to France. Army leader General Henri Namphy headed a new National Governing Council.
In March 1987 a new Constitution was overwhelmingly approved by the population. General elections in November were aborted hours after dozens were shot by soldiers and the Tonton Macoute in the capital and scores more around the country.
Recent Republican administrations have been particularly hostile to the popular will of the impoverished Haitian masses. When leftist priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide was twice elected by overwhelming margins – first during the presidency of George H.W. Bush and again under President George W. Bush. Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s government faced a non-confidence vote within the Haitian Chamber of Deputies and Senate. Following a coup d’etat in September 1991, President Aristide was flown into exile.
Washington’s conventional wisdom on Haiti holds that the country is a hopeless basket case that would best be governed by business-oriented technocrats who would take their marching orders from the United States.
However, the Haitian people have a different perspective. Unlike most Americans who have no idea about their historic debt to Haiti, many Haitians know this history quite well. The bitter memories of Jefferson and Napoleon still feed the distrust that Haitians of all classes feel toward the outside world.
“In Haiti, we became the first black independent country,” Aristide once told said. “We understand, as we still understand, it wasn’t easy for them – American, French and others – to accept our independence.”
Alton really WAS in a writing zone. That brother needs a blog. Anyways, good piece Rachel. Your selection of topics have relevence and serve to educate. Need more writers like you. Bravo!
~DDuncan
The belief that abolition of slavery was the only goal of Toussaint and the slaves of Saint Domingue is by far misleading. In 1780 more than half of the slave in the colony were born in Africa, they were African warriors and some nobles who were homesick and had a perfect understanding of the slavery and how to prevent it. After they defeated the French at the begining of the series of war then England and the spanish, the return to Africa with largest unified black army to lay the foundation of the biggest African Empire was more than real. But they also understand the know how of manufacturing arm, gun powder, ship building ect… was a pre requirement to embarck on such a daring project. A good percentage of the slaves were nobles unlike the french commoners who populated the colony were better prepared to lead and to give orders. Beside the majority of the slaves being African warriors and being subjected to such harsh treament from dawn to dusk by the plantation foremen had more endurance and training than any European soldier. And like Ceasar said to his genarals before defeating Pompey in Greece where he was out numbered 3 to 1 “our soldiers had no choice but to win while Pompey’s soldiers had other options, the slaves were in the same situation LIVE FREE OR DIE. The Schools in the colony under Toussaint administration included a lot of trade and technical schools which was designed to able the young African slaves to acquire the necessary skills to manufacture the weapons and build ships. Toussaint and his African staff were very aware of the danger of depending on European powers for arms and munitions, eventhough they had managed to manipulate them in supplying their war machine against one another and the mullato general Rigaud, but they knew this was not going to last forever. As a matter of fact, Jefferson was a perfect example of their fear when Napoleon decided to invade the colony. They also knew the mineral wealth of Africa and the interest of the European powers in Africa. Toussaint had spies across the oceans, but he felt that he was not ready to lead his army to Africa, dispite the pressure the African new comers were exerting on him, supply would be the major problem. It was the reason of his defeat when Leclerk landed, it was not the French soldiers who overan the ingeneous army but the superiority of their guns and canons. History had shown that the African nobles were right by wanting to bring the black army to Africa because after helping the USA in Georgia during their war against Egland, Jefferson had imposed an embargo on the country after Haiti became independent. They helped Bolivar and Miranda to liberate South America from Spain and Portugal at the first American state meeting Haiti was not even invited. More recently the EMBARGO imposed on Haiti , in order to bring back a corrupte elected president who they restored on power by envading Haiti a few years later, had completely destroyed its economy. Did the left wing of the Haitian Political Sector voted him into office to kill the already crippled haitian economy. Should they be reminded that democracy is directly proportional to the elected democrat who applies the democratic principles. Those principles that great haitian senators like Emile Saintlot, Luc Stephen partipitated in the redaction of Les droits de l’homme at the UN, could have been ROCK IN THE SUN WILL KNOW THE CONFORT OF THE ROCK IN THE WATER OR IT IS THE GETTHO WHICH SHOULD LOOK LIKE THE SUBURB, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. This is what Toussaint was aiming for LA PERLE DES ANTILLES restoring the colony to its old level of prosperity and its wealth more proportionately divided, freedom, equality, education and a salary for everyone, this was way passed serfdom. The death of Toussaint at Fort de Joux was not premedited by the jalousy of one sanguinaire whose name just happened to be Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte but was a calculated murder to steal Africa resources and teritories by the European Empires, and the black race of its very soul.