Haitian Revolution

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Haitian Revolution

• Saint-Domingue

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Maps of Saint-Domingue(Haiti)
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Saint-Domingues Racial Breakdown in the 18th
Century

• 20,000-40,000 whites
• 3.5 - 7
• 30,000 free people of color (gens de couleor)
• 5
• 15,000 mulattos
• 2.5
• 500,000 slaves (most of whom were African born)
• 88

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Saint Domingues Economy

• Plantations produce sugar,cotton, indigo and
  cotton.
• In 1789 Saint Domingue accounts for 2/3 of
  Frances tropical imports.
• Generates 1/3 of Frances foreign trade.

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Haiti sends reps to the Estates General

• Wealthy white planters sent representatives who
  wanted more home rule and economic freedom
• Gens de couleur also sent representatives, but
  they sought an end to race discrimination and
  support for political equality
• Neither group sought freedom for slaves.

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Turmoil in France Incites Turmoil in Saint
Domingue (Haiti)

• The gens de couleur forged alliances with French
  radicals
• The wealthy plantation owners related to French
  royalists and aristocrats.

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Revolution

• The bickering between the wealthy land owners and
  the gens de couleur turned into all out warfare
  by 1791 and opened up an opportunity for slaves
  to rise up against their oppressors.

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Slave Rebellion
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Francois Dominique Toussaint LOuverture

• 1794 Frances radical national convention
  abolishes slavery.
• The directory contemplates reestablishment of
  slavery in 1799.
• 1802- Napoleon sends forces to reestablish
  colonial authority and slavery. Many die of
  Yellow fever.
• LOuverture is captured and sent to a prison in
  France, where he eventually dies.
• 1804- LOuvertures successors declare
  independence and Haiti becomes the second
  independent country in the Western Hemisphere.

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Independence and Emancipation

• At what price?
• Tens of thousands dead
• The economy destroyed.
• Public administration corrupted by more than a
  decade of violence.

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Haiti After the Revolution

• Haitis first leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines, a
  former slave and victim of a cruel and brutal
  master.

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Dessalines

• . At the Conference of Archaie in 1803,
  Dessalines was the person who reputedly tore the
  white stripe from the French tricolor and
  determined Haiti's flag to be two stripes, a blue
  and red one, to symbolize that the "white" had
  been ripped out of Haiti, perhaps as a prophecy
  of what was to come in a few months later.

• "This doesn't say what we really feel. For our
  declaration of independence we should have the
  skin of a blanc for parchment, his skull for
  inkwell, his blood for ink, and a bayonet for
  pen!" (Cited in Heinl and Heinl, 1978)