François Mackandal

Mackandal on a Haitian coin

François Mackandal , Creole spelling Franswa Makandal († 1758 in Cap-Haïtien ), was a leader of the Haitian Maroons in Saint-Domingue before the Haitian Revolution .

biography

Mackandal was of African descent. He has sometimes been described as a Haitian voodoo priest or houngan . In some sources he was described as a Muslim , whereby some historians concluded that he must have come from Senegal , Mali , or Guinea , although this assumption is also doubted due to the lack of biographical information from this period. The Haitian historian Thomas Maidou states that Mackandal "had classes and was very proficient in the Arabic language ," although it is largely assumed that Mackandal also had this belief due to the predominant voodoo on the island.

Mackandal has been associated with " black magic, " resulting from his use of poisons made from the island's herbs. He distributed them to slaves who added it to the food they served to the French plantation owners.

He became a guerrilla leader who united the various maroon groups and he created a network of secret organizations that were in contact with slaves who were still on plantations. He instructed the Maroons to raid plantations at night, set fire to properties and kill the plantation owners. 6000 people were killed in these uprisings.

It was feared that Mackandal would drive all whites from the colony. He was eventually betrayed by an ally who was tortured until he confessed. Mackandal was caught in 1758 and burned at the stake in a public square in Cap-Français, today's Cap-Haïtien, by the French colonial authorities.

Some voodoo believers are convinced that Mackandal survived his execution by turning into an escaping fly and returned as a swarm of mosquitoes to punish the French colonial rulers with yellow fever .

Mackandal has been referred to in several fictional works, including the novels The Empire of this World , American Gods and Guy Endores Babouk, and The Island under the Sea (by Isabel Allende). Mackandal also appears in the video game Assassin's Creed III: Liberation .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Sylviane Diouf, (1998), Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas , New York: New York University Press, ISBN 0-8147-1904-X .
2. ↑ Thomas Madiou, (1848), Histoire d'Haïti, Impr. De J. Courtois , ISBN 1-142-83207-4
3. ↑ Corbett, Bob, The Haitian Revolution of 1791-1803, An Historical Essay in Four Parts ( Memento of the original from January 4, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
4. ↑ Patrick E. Bryan, (1984), The Haitian Revolution and its Effects , ISBN 0-435-98301-6
5. ↑ Celucien L. Joseph [Haitian Modernity and Liberative Interruptions: Discourse on Race, Religion, and Freedom]. University Press of America, 2013. page 49. ISBN 0761862579 .
6. ↑ Carolyn E. Fick, (1990), The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below , Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, pp. 60-74, 251-259. ISBN 0-87049-667-0 .
7. ↑ Karol K. Weaver, (2006), Medical Revolutionaries: The Enslaved Healers of Eighteenth-Century Saint-Domingue , Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, pp. 77-97, ISBN 0-252-03085-0 .
8. ^ Anne Rockwell (2009). Open the Door to Liberty !: A Biography of Toussaint L'Ouverture . Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 0618605703 .
9. ↑ Michele Wucker: Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola. Hill and Wang Verlag 1999, ISBN 978-0809097135 , on Google Books . Page 77

Web links

• François Mackandal ( Memento of December 14, 2009 in the Internet Archive ). The Louverture Project.
• Haiti 1804-2007 .