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Haitian Revolution

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Haitian Revolution
Image:Haitian revolution.jpg
Battle at "Snake Gully" in 1802
Date August 22, 1791 — January 1, 1804
Location Haiti
Result Haiti wins independence from France
Combatants
Image:Flag of Haiti.svg Haiti Image:Flag of France.svg France
Commanders
Toussaint L'Ouverture
Jean-Jacques Dessalines 		Charles Leclerc
vicomte de Rochambeau
Strength
Regular army: up to 55,000
Volunteers: up to 100,000 		Regular army: 60,000
86 warships and frigates
Casualties
Unknown military deaths
Civilian deaths: up to 100,000 		5,000-6,000 dead
15,000 wounded
10,000 died of yellow fever epidemic
Civilian deaths: approx. 25,000 settlers

The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) was the most successful of the many African slave rebellions in the Western Hemisphere and established Haiti as a free, black republic, the first of its kind. At the time of the revolution, Haiti was a colony of France known as Saint-Domingue. By means of this revolution, Africans and people of African ancestry freed themselves from French colonization and from slavery.

Haiti is the first black republic in modern history. It went directly from being a French colony to self-governance through a process that has had lasting effect on the nation. The system established by slaveholders demonstrated the effectiveness of violence and force in controlling the majority. This system survived the revolution and continued under the nascent black republic. A light-skinned elite took a control of political and economic power.<ref name="kreyol-001">Haiti: Historical Setting. Retrieved on 2006-11-27.</ref>

Historians traditionally identify the catalyst as being a particular vodou service in August 1791 performed at Bois Caïman by Dutty Boukman, a high priest.<ref name="webster1">Prelude to the Revolution: 1760 to 1789. Retrieved on 2006-11-28.</ref> A number of complex events may have set the stage for the most significant revolt in the history of African enslavement.

Contents

[edit] Precursors

The slave population on Saint-Domingue totalled at least 500,000 by the mid 1700s and was mostly African-born as the slavery system there was extremely harsh; slaves died almost as fast as they were "imported" and born, so the slave population experienced little or no growth. In 1758, the white landowners began passing legislation that set restrictions on the rights of other colors and classes, until the restrictions became so specific that a rigid caste system was defined. Most historians have classified the people there at the time into three groups. One was the white colonists, or blancs. A second was the free blacks, usually mulattoes, or gens de couleur (people of color), otherwise known as affranchi. A third group was made up of mostly African-born slaves. <ref name="kreyol-003">Haiti - French Colonialism. Retrieved on 2006-11-27.</ref>

White colonists and black slaves frequently had violent conflicts. Bands of runaway slaves, known as maroons, lived in the woods and raided plantations owned by whites. Although the numbers in these bands grew large, sometimes into the thousands, they generally lacked the leadership and strategy to accomplish organized goals. However, these attacks were the start of a black Haitian martial tradition. François Macandal was the first effective maroon leader to emerge. He led a rebellion from 1751 until 1757 that succeeded in focusing the black resistance on its target. Said to be a voodoo sorcerer, Macandal inspired his people by drawing on African traditions and religions. In 1758, he was captured by the French and burned at the stake.<ref name="kreyol-004">The Slave Rebellion of 1791. Retrieved on 2006-11-27.</ref>

[edit] Beginnings

After two years of dispute among elements of the free population, a great slave uprising plunged the country into civil war in 1791. Besides the racial conflicts cultivated by slavemasters between whites, gens de couleur, and blacks of whom many were slaves of African birth, the country was polarized by regional rivalries between the North, South, and West. In addition, there was class conflict between rich white planters (grands blancs), poorer whites (petits blancs), free blacks or gens de couleur (affranchis), and slaves, as well as conflict between proponents of independence, those loyal to France, allies of Spain, and allies of Britain. Closely shaping the course of the conflict was the French Revolution which began in 1789, and was at first widely welcomed in the island. So many were the twists and turns in the leadership in France, and so contorted were events in Haiti itself, that various classes and parties changed their alignments many times.

The African population got wind of the agitation for independence by the rich European planters, the grands blancs, who had resented France's mercantilistic limitations on the island's foreign trade. This class mostly realigned itself with the royalists and the British within a few years of the French Revolution. Africans understood that if 'Saint-Domingue's' independence was to be led by vile and brutal European slavemasters, it would probably mean even harsher treatment and injustices for the African population, who would be free to inflict slavery as they pleased - without being accountable to their French peers whatsoever. News had probably travelled from the newly independent United States that revolution by whites there had not abolished slavery or improved the lives of slaves in any way.

[edit] Disturbances

Saint-Domingue's free people of color, most notably Julien Raimond, had been actively appealing to France for full civil equality with whites since the 1780s. Raimond used the French Revolution to make this the major colonial issue before the French National Assembly. In October 1790, Vincent Ogé, another wealthy free man of color from the colony, returned home from Paris, where he had been working with Raimond. Convinced that an ambiguous law passed by the French Constitutent Assembly had given full civil rights to wealthy men of color like himself, Ogé demanded the right to vote. When the colonial governor refused, he led a brief insurgency<ref name="kreyol-004"/> in the area around Cap Francais, before being captured and brutally executed, in early 1791, by being tied to a wheel, crushed by hammer blows and left to die.

Ogé was not fighting against slavery, per se, but his treatment was cited by later slave rebels as one of the factors in their decision to rise up in the same parishes in August 1791, and to resist treaties with the colonists. Eventually, in 1792, the French legislature proclaimed the equality of all free people in the French colonies regardless of color, and sent Léger-Félicité Sonthonax to Saint-Domingue to ensure that the colonial authorities complied.

However, by that time, even larger disturbances were underway, as the slave uprising begun in August 1791, and led by Jean François and Biassou, associated itself with the pro-royalist Spanish authorities in Santo Domingo. The slave rebellion began on the plantations in the north and spread across most of the colony. Slaves burnt the plantations where they had been forced to work, and killed masters, overseers and other whites. One of the most successful black commanders was Toussaint L'Ouverture, a self-educated former domestic slave. A French general, Étienne Laveaux, was able to convince L'Ouverture to change sides in May 1794 and fight for the French Republic against the Spanish; meanwhile Sonthonax had proclaimed an end to slavery on 29 August 1793.

[edit] Leadership of Toussaint and culmination of rebellion

Under the military leadership of Toussaint, the rebellious slaves were able to gain the upper hand and restore most of Saint-Domingue to France. Having made himself master of the island, however, Toussaint did not wish to surrender power to Paris, and ruled the country effectively as an autonomous entity. Toussaint overcame a succession of local rivals (including Sonthonax, André Rigaud, and Comte d'Hédouville). Hédouville forced a fatal wedge between Rigaud and Toussaint before he escaped back to France.<ref name="webster3">Review of Haitian Revolution Part II. Retrieved on 2006-11-27.</ref> Toussaint defeated a British expeditionary force in 1798, and even led an invasion of neighboring Santo Domingo, freeing the slaves there by 1801.

In the same year, Toussaint issued a constitution for Saint-Domingue which provided for autonomy and made Toussaint himself governor-for-life. In retaliation, Napoleon Bonaparte dispatched an expeditionary force of French soldiers to the island, led by Bonaparte's brother in law Charles Leclerc, to restore French rule. The French soldiers were accompanied by mulatto troops led by Alexandre Pétion and André Rigaud, who had been defeated by Toussaint three years earlier. Some of Toussaint's closest allies, including Jean-Jacques Dessalines, defected to the French. Toussaint was promised his freedom, if he agreed to integrate his remaining troops into the French Army. Toussaint agreed to this in May 1802, but was deceived, and was seized and shipped off to France, where he later died, while imprisoned at Fort-de-Joux.

For a few months the island was largely quiescent under Napoleonic rule. But when it became apparent that the French intended to re-establish slavery, Dessalines and Pétion switched sides again, in October 1802, and fought against the French. In November, Leclerc died of yellow fever, like much of his army, and his successor, the Vicomte de Rochambeau, fought an even more brutal campaign than his predecessor. His atrocities helped rally many former French loyalists to the rebel cause.

The French were further weakened by a British naval blockade, and by the unwillingness of Napoleon to send the requested massive reinforcements. Napoleon had sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States in April 1803, and had begun to lose interest in his ventures in the Western Hemisphere. Dessalines led the rebellion until its completion, when the French forces were finally defeated at the Battle of Vertières in November 1803. <ref name="kreyol-004"/>

[edit] Free republic

On January 1, 1804, Dessalines, the new leader under the dictatorial 1801 constitution, declared Haiti a free republic. Thus Haiti became the second independent nation in the Western Hemisphere, after the United States, and the only successful slave rebellion in world history. However, the country had been crippled by years of war, its agriculture devastated, its formal commerce nonexistant, and the people uneducated and mostly unskilled.<ref name="kreyol-005">Independent Haiti. Retrieved on 2006-11-27.</ref> <ref>Chapter 6 - Haiti: Historical Setting. Retrieved on 2006-09-18.</ref>

Haiti was forced to make reparations to French slaveholders in 1825 in the amount of 90 million gold francs (a value of $21 billion USD today), Haiti was forced to pay France for the next one hundred years for its independence. A great many historians believe that this indemnity has contributed significantly to making Haiti the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

The end of the Haitian Revolution in 1804 marked the end of colonialism, but the social conflict that had been cultivated under slavery continued to affect the population. The revolution left in power an affranchi élite as well as the formidable Haitian army. These elements split into two factions – the supporters of Alexandre Pétion who were predominantly milat (mulatto, light-skinned), and those of Henri Christophe who were mainly nwa (noir, dark-skinned). The two factions assumed control of most of the businesses in the new country.

[edit] Impacts

The Haitian Revolution was influential in slave rebellions in American British colonies.

Many of the freed slaves of Saint-Domingue settled in New Orleans, profoundly influencing the history of that city.

In 1807, Britain became the first major power to permanently abolish the slave trade.

In 2004, Haiti celebrated the bicentennial of its independence from France.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

<references/>

[edit] Bibliography

  • Dubois, Laurent. Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University (2005) ISBN 0674018265.
  • Dubois, Laurent & Garrigus, John D. Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789–1804: A Brief History with Documents. Bedford/St. Martin's Press (2006) ISBN 031241501X.
  • Garrigus, John D. Before Haiti: Race and Citizenship in Saint-Domingue. Palgrave-Macmillan, (2006) ISBN 1403971404.
  • Geggus, David P. Haitian Revolutionary Studies. University of South Carolina Press, (2002) ISBN 1570034168.
  • James, C.L.R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. Vintage, 2nd edition, (1989) ISBN 0679724672.

[edit] Literature and Art

  • English poet William Wordsworth published his sonnet To Toussaint L'Ouverture in January 1803.
  • In 1938, American artist Jacob Lawrence created a series of paintings about the life of Toussaint L'Ouverture, which he later adapted into a series of prints.
  • Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier's second novel, The Kingdom of this World (1949) explores the Haitian Revolution in depth. It is almost universally recognized as one of the novels that inaugurated the Latin American "Boom" in fiction during the middle part of the twentieth century.
  • In 2004 an exhibition of paintings entitled Caribbean Passion: Haiti 1804, by artist Kimathi Donkor, was held in London to celebrate the bicentenary of Haiti's revolution.

[edit] External links

fr:Révolution haïtienne ka:ჰაიტის რევოლუცია nl:Haitiaanse Revolutie zh:海地革命

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