Haiti

Fernando Flores

Extracts from:http://www.historyvortex.org/HaitianRevolutionImpactSpanishCaribbean.html byMichael C. TwomeyWikipedia; Cronica General del Uruguay No. 6 Washington Reyes Abadie and Andrés Vásquez Romero; La Escalvitud Africana en América y el Caribe by Herbert S. Klein; Alianz Editorial 1986; and From Las Casas to Che, FF, Lund 2007.

1

• On 1492 Christopher Columbus arrived to a large island in the region of the western Atlantic Ocean that later came to be known as the Caribbean Sea.

• It was inhabited by the Taíno, an Arawakan people, who variously called their island Ayiti, Bohio, or Kiskeya.

• Columbus renamed it La Isla Española ("the Spanish Island"), or Hispañola (later Anglicized as Hispaniola).

• The island was populated by the Taino indians.

2

Hispaniola

3

Spanish Hispaniola• Following the arrival of Europeans, Hispaniola’s

indigenous population suffered near-extinction, possibly the worst case of depopulation in the Americas. The high mortality in the colony can be attributed at least in part to murder, forced labour, and repression but also to Old World diseases, from which they had no immunity.

• Spanish interest in Hispaniola began to decrease in the 1520s, as more lucrative gold and silver deposits were found in Mexico and South America.

• Fearful of pirate attacks, the King of Spain in 1606 ordered all colonists on Hispaniola to move closer to the capital city, Santo Domingo.

4

Santo Domingo

• British, Dutch, and French pirates established bases on the island's abandoned northern and western coasts.

5

French Saint-Domingue

• French pirates established a settlement on the island of Tortuga in 1625.

• They survived by pirating Spanish ships and hunting wild domestic animals. Although the Spanish destroyed the buccaneers' settlements several times, on each occasion they returned.

• The first official settlement on Tortuga was established in 1659.

6

Haiti and the Dominican Republic

Tortuga Island

7

• In 1664, the newly established French West India Company took control over the colony, which it named Saint-Domingue, and France formally claimed control of the western portion of the island of Hispaniola. In 1670 they established the first permanent French settlement on the mainland of Hispaniola.

• Some years after, Spain officially ceded the western third of Hispaniola to France. By that time, French farmers had begun to grow tobacco, indigo, cotton, and cacao on the fertile northern plain, thus prompting the importation of African slaves.

• Slave insurrections were frequent and some slaves escaped to the mountains where they were met by what would be one of the last generations of Taíno natives.

• After the last Taíno died, the full-blooded Arawakan population on the island was extinct.

8

• The economy of Saint-Domingue gradually expanded, with sugar and, later, coffee becoming important export crops.

• Saint-Domingue became known as the "Pearl of the Antilles" – one of the richest colonies in the 18th century French empire.

• By the end of the 18th century, Saint-Domingue produced about 40 percent of all the sugar and 60 percent of all the coffee consumed in Europe.

• This single colony produced more sugar and coffee than all of Britain's West Indian colonies combined.

9

• The labour for these plantations was provided by an estimated 800,000 African slaves (accounting at the end of the 18th -century for a third of the entire Atlantic slave trade).

• During that time, the average importation of slaves varied between 10,000-15,000 a year and 1787 onward, the colony received more than 40,000 slaves a year.

• However, the inability to maintain slave numbers without constant resupply from Africa meant the slave population of 500,000, ruled over by a white population numbered only 32,000.

• At all times, a majority of slaves in the colony were African-born, as the brutal conditions of slavery prevented the population from experiencing growth through natural increase.

10

• African culture thus remained strong among slaves to the end of French rule, in particular the folk-religion of Vodou, which combined Catholic liturgy and ritual with the beliefs and practices of Guinea and Congo.

• The slaves who arrived came from hundreds of different tribes, their languages often mutually incomprehensible.

• To regularize slavery, in 1685 Louis XIV enacted the Code Noir, which accorded certain human rights to slaves and responsibilities to the master, who was obliged to feed, clothe, and provide for the general well-being of their slaves.

• BUT the code noir also sanctioned corporal punishment, allowing masters to employ brutal methods to inculcate in their slaves the necessary docility.

11

The first rebellion: Mackandal• Thousands of slaves found freedom by fleeing into the

mountains, forming communities of fugitives and attacking isolated plantations.

• The most famous was Mackandal, a one-armed slave, originally from Guinea, who escaped in 1751.

• A Vodou (priest), he united many of the different fugitive bands. He spent the next six years staging successful raids and evading capture by the French, killing over 6,000 people, while preaching a fanatic vision of the destruction of white civilization in St. Domingue.

• In 1758, after a failed plot to poison the drinking water of the plantation owners, he was captured and burned alive at the public square in Cap-Français.

12

François Mackandal, (died 1758),

• He was a African who is sometimes described as Haitian voodoo priest. Some sources describe him as a Moslem leading some scholars to speculate that he was from Senegal, Mali, or Guinea.

• He disappeared from the plantation and became a charismatic guerilla leader who united the different Maroon bands and created a network of secret organizations connected with slaves still on plantations.

• He led Maroons to raid plantations at night, torch property, and kill the owners. Mackandal created poisons from island herbs. He distributed the poison to slaves, who added it to the meals and refreshments they served the French plantation owners and planters.

• The French feared that Mackandal would drive all whites from the colony through the fear of being poisoned. Mackandal was betrayed by an ally who was tortured into submission. He was captured and burned alive in 1758.

13

• Saint-Domingue also had the largest free population of colour in the Caribbean, the gens de couleur (French, "people of colour").

• The mixed community in Saint-Domingue numbered 25,000 in 1789.

• First-generation gens de couleur were typically the offspring of a male, French slave-owner and an African slave chosen as a concubine.

• In the French colonies, the semi-official institution of "plaçage" defined this practice. By this system, the children were free people and could inherit property, thus originating a class of "mulattos" with property and some with wealthy fathers.

• This class occupied a middle status between African slaves and French colonists.

Mestizo

14

Plaçage• Was a recognized extralegal system in which white French

and Spanish and later Creole men entered into the equivalent of common-law marriages with women of African, Indian and white (European) Creole descent.

• The term comes from the French placer meaning "to place with."

• The women were not legally recognized as wives, but were known as placées; their relationships were recognized among the free people of color as mariages de la main gauche or left-handed marriages.

15

• Is a religion originating from Haiti, located on the island of Hispaniola. It is based upon a merging of the beliefs and practices of West African peoples with Roman Catholic Christianity.

• The principle belief in Haitian Vodou is that there are various deities, or Loa, who are subordinate to a greater God, known as Bondyè, who does not interfere with human affairs.

• Therefore it is to the loa that Vodou worship is directed. Other characteristics of Vodou include ancestor worship and protection against evil witchcraft.

• Haitian Vodou shares many similarities with other faiths of the African diaspora, such as Louisiana Voodoo of New Orleans, Santería and Arará of Cuba, and Candomblé and Umbanda of Brazil.

Vodou (Voodoo)

16

Vodou original areas in West Africa

17

African origins of Vodou • The word voodoo derives from vodũ, which in Fon, Ewe,

and related languages (distributed from contemporary Ghana to Benin) means spirit or divine creature.

• The cultural area of the Fon, Ewe, and Yoruba peoples share common metaphysical conceptions around a dual cosmological divine principle Nana Buluku, the God-Creator.

• The pantheon of vodoun is quite large and complex including interethnic deities related to natural phenomena or historical or mythical individuals, and dozens of ethnic vodous, defenders of a certain clan or tribe.

18

• West African Vodun has its primary emphasis on the ancestors, with each family of spirits having its own specialized priest- and priestesshood which are often hereditary.

• European colonialism, followed by totalitarian regimes in West Africa, suppressed Vodun as well as other forms of the religion.

• However, because the Vodou deities are born to each African clan-group, it proved to be impossible to eradicate the religion.

• Although permitted by Haiti's 1987 constitution, which recognizes religious equality…

• many books and films identified voodoo as “black magic” based on animal and human sacrifices to call upon zombies and evil spirits.

19

Haitian Revolution

• The outbreak of revolution in France in the summer of 1789 had a powerful effect on the colony.

• In 1790 the free men of colour claimed that they too were French citizens under the terms of the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

• Through the efforts of a group called Société d'Amis des Noirs, of which Vincent Ogé was prominent leader,

• in March 1790 the National Assembly granted full civic rights to the gens de couleur.

20

• Vincent Ogé travelled to St. Domingue to secure the promulgation and implementation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, in October 1790.

• After his demands were refused, he incited the gens de couleur to revolt.

• However, the mulatto rebels refused to arm or free their slaves, or to challenge the status of slavery, and their attack was defeated.

• Ogé and his followers were captured, returned to the French authorities, and Ogé was executed in February 1791.

Jacques Vincent Ogé (c.1755 - 1791) was a wealthy free man of colour. The Ogé revolt of 1790 foretold the massive slave uprising of August 1791 that began the Haïtian Revolution.

21

• On August 22 of the same year, slaves in the northern region of the colony staged a revolt that began the Haitian Revolution.

• Tradition marks the beginning of the revolution at a vodou ceremony. The call to arms was issued by a vodou priest named Dutty Boukman.

• Within hours, the northern plantations were in flames. The rebellion spread through the entire colony.

• Boukman was captured and executed, but the rebellion continued to rapidly spread.

• Toussaint Louverture become the leader of the Haitian Revolution was

22

Léger-Félicité Sonthonax (1763 – 1813)

• A French Jacobin and abolitionist active during the French Revolution was who controlled the 7,000 French troops sent to Saint-Domingue during the Haitian Revolution.

• He believed that Saint-Domingue's whites were royalists or separatists and therefore he attacked the military power of the white settlers.

• Although he did not originally intend to free the slaves, by October 1793 he was forced into ending slavery in order to maintain his power.

• 1794 Sonthonax returned to France. 23

• On August 29, 1793, Léger-Félicité Sonthonax took the radical step of proclaiming the freedom of the slaves in the north province (with severe limits on their freedom).

• In September and October, emancipation was extended throughout the colony. On February 4, 1794 the French National Convention ratified this act, applying it to all French colonies.

• White colonists continued to fight Sonthonax, with assistance from the British. They were joined by many of the free men of colour who opposed the abolition of slavery.

24

• Toussaint Louverture and his corps of well-disciplined, battle-hardened former slaves came over to the French Republican side in early May 1794.

25

• Toussaint Louverture successfully drove back the British and by 1798 was the defacto ruler of the colony.

• By 1801 (10 year after the revolt), he was in control of the whole island, after conquering Spanish Santo Domingo and proclaiming the abolition of slavery there.

• He did not, however, proclaim full independence for the country,

• nor did he seek reprisals against the country's former white slaveholders, convinced that the French would not restore slavery.

• In 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte sent a massive invasion force under his brother-in-law Charles Leclerc.

• With a large expedition that eventually included 40,000 European troops, Leclerc invited Toussaint to negotiate a settlement.

• Toussaint Louverture was apprehended and deported to France, where he died of pneumonia in April 1803. 26

• On May 20, 1802, Napoleon signed a law to maintain slavery where it had not disappeared, Martinique, Tobago, and Saint Lucia.

• A confidential copy of this decree was sent to Leclerc, who was authorized to restore slavery when the time was opportune.

• At the same time, further edicts stripped the gens de couleur of their newly won civil rights.

• The rainy season brought yellow fever and malaria, which took a heavy toll on the invaders.

• By November, when Leclerc died of yellow fever, 24,000 French soldiers were dead and 8,000 were hospitalized, the majority from disease.

27

The Taino name: Haiti

• On January 1, 1804 Dessalines then declared independence, reclaiming the indigenous Taíno name of Haiti ("Land of Mountains") for the new nation.

• Most of the remaining French colonists fled ahead of the defeated French army, many migrating to Louisiana or Cuba.

• Unlike Toussaint, Dessalines felt little equanimity toward whites.

• In a final act of retribution, the remaining French were slaughtered by Haitian military forces. Some 2,000 Frenchmen were massacred at Cap-Français, 800 in Port-au-Prince, and 400 at Jérémie.

• He issued a proclamation declaring, "we have repaid these cannibals, war for war, crime for crime, outrage for outrage."

Jean Jacques Dessalines became Haiti's first emperor in 1804. 28

Three new leaders of the revolution

• Jean-Jacques Dessalines, (1758-1806)

• Henri Christophe (1767 –1820)

• Alexandre Sabès (called Pétion) (1770 –1818)

29

Haiti: The Oldest black Republic

• Haiti is the world's oldest black republic and the second-oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere, after the United States.

• Although Haiti actively assisted the independence movements of many Latin American countries – and secured a promise from the great liberator, Simón Bolívar, that he would free their slaves after winning independence from Spain – the nation of former slaves was excluded from the hemisphere's first regional meeting of independent nations, held in Panama in 1826.

• Furthermore, owing to entrenched opposition from Southern slave states, Haiti did not receive U.S. diplomatic recognition until 1862.

30

The Constitution of 1804

• Upon assuming power, General Dessalines authorized This constitution, in terms of social freedoms, called for:

– 1. Freedom of Religion– (Under Toussaint, Catholicism had been declared the official state religion);

– 2. All citizens of Haiti, regardless of skin colour, will be known as "Black"

– (this was an attempt to eliminate the multi-tiered racial hierarchy which had developed in Haiti, with full-blooded Europeans at the top, various levels of light to brown skin in the middle, and dark skinned "Kongo" from Africa at the bottom).

– 3. White men were forbidden from possessing property or domain on Haitian soil.

31

Dessalines proclaimed himself Emperor Jacques I

• In January 1804, Dessalines, proclaimed himself Emperor Jacques I

• After the Dessalines coup d'état, two of his own advisers, Henri Christophe and Alexandre Pétion, helped to provoke his assassination in 1806.

• After that, the two main conspirators divided the country in two rival regimes.

• Christophe created the authoritarian State of Haiti in the north, and

• Pétion helped establish the Republic of Haiti in the south.

32

Pétion• While Christophe attempted to maintain a strict system of labour and agricultural production akin to the former plantations…

• by contrast, Pétion broke up the former colonial estates and parcelled out the land into small holdings.

Alexandre Sabès Pétion 1770- 1818 was President of the southern Republic of Haiti from 1806 until his death.

33

• Because of the weak international position Pétion’s government was perpetually on the brink of bankruptcy.

• Yet, for most of its time, it produced one of the most liberal and tolerant Haitian governments ever.

• At a key period of time for the Spanish American Wars for Independence, he gave asylum to Simón Bolívar in 1815, and provided him with soldiers and substantial material support. I

• Pétion died of yellow fever, and his assistant Jean Pierre Boyer replaced him.

34

The Impact of the Haitian Slave Revolution in Spanish America

• 1815 arrived Simon Bolivar to Haiti attempting to secure the backing of President Pétion in his fight against Spain.

• A similar appeal for aid from the British on Jamaica had been unsuccessful, and Bolivar finally fled to Haiti after narrowly escaping several attempts on his life.

• Initially Pétion was reluctant to provide Bolivar aide against the Spanish, but he finally relented.

• Petion's agreement however, was conditional on the understanding that, Bolivar would "take immediate steps to abolish slavery.

35

• With the aide provided by Pètion and others, Bolivar was able to fit out an expedition consisting of "250 men, mostly officers, and arms for 6,000 troops.“

• Unfortunately, the campaign did not progress and different problems forced Bolivar to return to Haiti after a few small initial successes.

• Once again the freedom of much of the South American mainland depended on the generosity of the former slave colony.

• Pétion re-supplied Bolivar's force, and the Liberator once again sailed for the mainland and his destiny.

36

The End

37