Haitian Revolution

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Auguste Raffet : Battle for the Crête-à-Pierrot (March 4-24, 1802)

The slave revolt in the French colony of Saint-Domingue of 1791 and the subsequent events are known as the Haitian Revolution . It resulted in the transformation of the colony into the state of Haiti on January 1, 1804 - the first independent state in Latin America and the first to be formed by former slaves.

Saint Domingue: the situation before 1790

Hispaniola around 1723

Today's Haiti was the French colony of Saint-Domingue until the end of 1803 . It was first settled by privateers in the early 17th century. The cultivation of tobacco began in 1670 , followed by indigo , coffee, cocoa and cotton .

The cultivation of sugar began around 1700 . In 1704 there were already over 100 plantations, in 1791 there were around 1,000. This increase called for more and more labor to be found in African slaves. A total of 800,000 slaves had been imported by 1776 . However, many died during the transport or killed themselves. Others died from overwork, malnutrition, or from punishing the plantation owners. On Saint Domingue, the slave mortality rate was 50 percent for the first three to eight years. For this reason, new slaves had to be brought to Saint Domingue again and again. Two thirds of the slaves were of African descent, the others were born on Saint Domingue.

In 1789, around 600,000 people lived on Saint Domingue. The black slaves made up 90 percent of this population. There were also about 40,000 whites. These split into two groups, the "grands blancs" and the "petits blancs". The former formed the upper class. They were the plantation owners, traders and bureaucrats. At the head of the administration stood the governor as the representative of the French king. The “petits blancs” worked as plantation administrators and supervisors, as shopkeepers, traders and craftsmen in the cities.

The lowest stratum of the free citizens of colonial society were the 30,000 free blacks or mulattos . The latter were often children of the French and black slaves. They formed a layer between the whites and the slaves. Due to the alleged relationship with a wealthy plantation owner and the associated wealth, they attracted the envy and hatred of the "petits blancs". This aversion was expressed in extreme restrictions against free blacks. They were not allowed to sit down at a table with whites and be on the street after 9 p.m. They were also not allowed to enter France .

The disadvantage of the majority of the population led to tensions between the social classes. So there were frequent slave revolts even before 1790, but they were always put down.

The tensions reached a new dimension in the course of the French Revolution of 1789. The concept of human rights , general citizenship and participation in political issues penetrated as far as the distant colonies of France. Likewise, the proclamation of human rights was not compatible with the disadvantage of individual social classes and the system of slavery on Saint Domingue. Especially the mulattos and free blacks saw their chance of social advancement here.

Course of the Revolution

Beginning of the revolution

The fighting around 1802

The revolution began with free blacks demanding equality . They organized themselves in 1788 in the Société des Amis des Noirs in order to emphasize their demands. A law passed in May 1791 to improve their position was ignored by the white colonists and the administration.

Vincent Ogé , who represented the rights of free blacks in Paris, returned to St. Domingue in October 1790 and, together with Jean Baptiste Chavannes, planned to use armed force against the plantation owners. Ogé refused to help black slaves because the free blacks owned a quarter of the slaves and he did not want to lose their support. They managed to raise an army of 300 men, but their uprising was quickly put down and their leaders sentenced to death.

The revolution began with an uprising by the slaves in the northern region of Saint-Domingue Plaine-du-Nord . Starting from a plantation in Acul, the slaves of the colony began to revolt on the night of August 22nd to 23rd, 1791. Within a few days they conquered large parts of the northern plain and freed themselves.

On April 4, 1792, the National Legislative Assembly passed a law granting all residents of the French colonies equal rights, regardless of their skin color. Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, government commissioner of the First French Republic , arrived on the island in September with 6,000 soldiers to enforce the law against the white royalists who continued to refuse to give up the old conditions.

Toussaint Louverture

Louverture depicted on a bank note

François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture was the son of an African kidnapped from what is now Benin . In comparison with other slaves he enjoyed a better position as a house slave. In 1776 he was released.

Toussaint entered the war on Spain's side in 1793. After the abolition of slavery, he moved to the French side with 4,000 soldiers in 1794 and received the rank of Général de brigade . In 1799 Louverture defeated André Rigaud's army in a serious civil war , making it the undisputed ruler of the colony. Louverture sent Governor Laveaux to Paris as an envoy, he had government commissioner Sonthonax deported from the country in 1797 and Saint-Laurent de Roume was arrested in 1800.

Sonthonax gave a speech to the Council of Five Hundred on February 4, 1798 , in which he presented Louverture's behavior towards him. From that moment on, France became suspicious of Louverture. Hedouvilles should stop him. Britain repeatedly sent troops to Saint-Domingue and occupied the western and southern tip of the island. In 1798, however, Toussaint Louverture finally succeeded in driving the British off the island.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Under the rule of Napoleon there was a final break between the French colonial power and the colony of St. Domingue. Louverture had enacted a constitution at St. Domingue in 1801 and personally proclaimed himself governor for life. The constitutional text was not discussed with the French colonial power, even if he did not expressly question their claims. Napoleon took advantage of the peace that had meanwhile been concluded with Spain and Great Britain and sent a 6,000-strong force to St. Domingue to reinstall French law there. The force was led by his brother-in-law Charles Victoire Emmanuel Leclerc .

After three months the fighting ended and in May 1802 Louverture's troops surrendered. French law was re-enforced. Louverture himself was arrested and shipped to France, where he later died in prison.

Napoleon's brother-in-law died of yellow fever in November 1802 . He hadn't succeeded in pacifying the island completely. This turned out to be impossible after Napoleon's plans to reintroduce slavery in all French colonies became known. Many French supporters switched sides and helped the insurgents to fight against the French troops, which were also severely weakened by the yellow fever. Requested support from the French mainland did not materialize, as France was exposed to a sea blockade by the British Navy due to the new outbreak of war with Great Britain and Napoleon therefore had to give up his plans for the overseas colonies. In April 1803 he was the colony of Louisiana to the United States sold . On November 18, 1803, there was one last major battle in Vertières, in which the French were defeated and initially retreated to the eastern part of the island.

This defeat led to the independence of St. Domingues, which was proclaimed on January 1, 1804, at the same time the country was renamed from St. Domingue to Haiti. The civil war for Haiti's independence cost an estimated half a million lives.

Results and consequences of the revolution

Dessalines at the top of Haiti 1804–1806

The Haitian Revolution destroyed America's main slave market and freed nearly half a million people from slavery. The success of the black population in Haiti became known throughout America and encouraged the slaves to plot, revolt and assert black rights from Brazil to the USA. In 1807, British legislators also abolished the slave trade, which can in part be attributed to developments in Haiti.

With the proclamation of the independence of Saint Domingues on January 1st, 1804, the revolution ended in the establishment of the first free Latin American state. This also presented the government of Jean-Jacques Dessalines with difficult tasks, both at the diplomatic level and in the area of ​​trade relations.

Foreign policy

Dessalines pursued a cautious policy, particularly with regard to the neighboring slave-holding societies, in order to counter an impending invasion of the colonial powers France, England and Spain. Despite considerable concerns from the European colonial powers and the USA, new trade and diplomatic contacts developed very early on. The USA became Haiti's most important trading partner.

economy

Dessalines tried to strengthen the economy by introducing a general import tax of 10 percent and levying taxes on exports of certain products. The influence of the state in the economic field should also be increased. So all land sales and transactions made before 1803 were declared invalid.

Domestic politics

The consequences of the War of Independence were also evident on a social level. Many of the white Europeans who formed the elite in colonial society, as well as large parts of the black population, had perished in the fighting or fled. During the war of independence, the total population shrank by around 150,000 to 380,000.

A thin white layer (anciens libres) formed, but the broad mass was made up of the ex-slaves (nouveaux libres) who had largely supported the revolution.

Dessalines, who made himself emperor in 1804 , was murdered by some military officers in 1806. He was succeeded by Henri Christophe .

literature

  • Walther L. Bernecker : Little History of Haiti (=  Edition Suhrkamp . NF 994). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1996, ISBN 3-518-11994-X .
  • François Blancpain: Les abolitions de l'esclavage dans les colonies françaises (1793–1794 et 1848). In: Léon-François Hoffmann, Frauke Gewecke , Ulrich Fleischmann (ed.): Haïti 2004 - Lumières et ténèbres. Vervuert, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-84-8489-371-4 , pp. 63-83.
  • Flavio Eichmann: War and Revolution in the Caribbean. The Lesser Antilles, 1789–1815 , Paris Historical Studies 112, De Gruyter 2019
  • Philippe Girard: Toussaint Louverture. A Revolutionary Life . Basic Books, New York 2016, ISBN 978-0-465-09413-4 .
  • Oliver Gliech: The slave revolution of Saint-Domingue / Haiti and its international effects (1789 / 91–1804 / 25) . In: Bernd Hausberger , Gerhard Pfeisinger (Ed.): The Caribbean. History and Society 1492–2000 (=  Edition Weltregionen . Volume 11 ). Promedia, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-85371-236-3 , p. 85-100 .
  • CLR James : The Black Jacobins. Toussaint Louverture and the Independence Revolution in Haiti (=  Small Library . Volume 341 ). Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1984, ISBN 3-7609-0911-6 .
  • Philipp Hanke: Revolution in Haiti. From slave revolt to independence. (=  New Small Library . Volume 245 ). PapyRossa, Cologne 2017, ISBN 978-3-89438-637-5 .
  • Isabell Lammel: The Toussaint Louverture Myth. Transformations in French Literature, 1791-2012. transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2015, ISBN 978-3-8376-3170-8 .
  • George Ciccariello-Maher: 'So Much the Worse for the Whites': Dialectics of the Haitian Revolution. In: Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy , Vol. 22, No. 1, Pittsburg 2014, pp. 19-39.
  • Emil Maurer: Haiti. Black pearl of nature. The roots . Universitas Verlag, Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-8004-1494-9 .
  • Karin Schüller: slave revolt, revolution, independence: Haiti, the first independent state in Latin America . In: Rüdiger Zoller (ed.): Americans against their will. Contributions to slavery in Latin America and its consequences (=  Latin America Studies . Volume 32 ). Vervuert, Frankfurt 1994, ISBN 3-89354-732-0 , p. 125-143 .
  • Sibylle Fischer: Haitian Revolution. In: Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism . Volume 5. Argument-Verlag, Hamburg 2001, Sp. 1121–1130 ( inkrit.de PDF; 128 kB).
  • Erwin Rüsch: The Revolution of Saint Domingue. (Overseas history. Volume 5) Friederichsen, de Gruyter, Hamburg 1930.

Footnotes

  1. 23 August: International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Retrieved December 27, 2017 (English).
  2. ^ Philipp Hanke: Revolution in Haiti (2017). P. 71 ff.
  3. The Haitian Revolution 1791. Retrieved December 27, 2017 .
  4. ^ François Blancpain: Les abolitions de l'esclavage dans les colonies françaises (1793–1794 et 1848) . In: Léon-François Hoffmann, Frauke Gewecke, Ulrich Fleischmann (eds.): Haïti 2004 - Lumières et ténèbres. Vervuert, Frankfurt am Main 2008. p. 70.

Web links

Commons : Haitian Revolution  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files