The American Revolution of 1776 proclaimed that all men have “inalienable rights,” but the revolutionaries did not draw what seems to us the logical conclusion from this statement: that slavery and racial discrimination cannot be justified. It took the Civil War of 1861-65 to bring about emancipation.
Just when the American constitution was going into effect in 1789, a revolution broke out in France. Like the American revolutionaries, the French immediately proclaimed that “men are born and remain free and equal in rights. ” But did this apply to the slaves in France’s overseas colonies?The question was an important one. Even though France’s colonies looked small on the map, the three Caribbean colonies of Saint Domingue (today’s Republic of Haiti), Guadeloupe and Martinique contained almost as many slaves as the thirteen much larger American states (about 700,000). Saint Domingue was the richest European colony in the world. It was the main source of the sugar and coffee that had become indispensable to “civilized” life in Europe.
Black slaves heavily outnumbered both the whites and the free coloreds, however: there were 465,000 of them in Saint Domingue by 1789.But in 1804 The Haitian Revolution represents the most thorough case study of revolutionary change anywhere in the history of the modern world. In ten years of sustained internal and international warfare, a colony populated predominantly by plantation slaves overthrew both its colonial status and its economic system and established a new political state of entirely free individuals—with some ex-slaves constituting the new political authority. In the book from Dessalines to Duvalier by David Nicholls There is an odd curiosity to Nicholls' approach to Haiti.In the early history the revolution of 1791-1804 and the early years of Haitian independence until about 1848, Nicholls analyzes the events of Haitian history, trying to lay bare the causes. From that point on Nicholls assumes that the events are shaped by the intellectuals who formulated history and ideology.
Thus, rather than doing the same sort of causal analysis of historical events that he did early on, he assumes the causes of Haiti's history lie in these intellectual battles, and he shows us how the events developed from the writings of such people as Thomas Madiou, J. C. Dorsinville, Jean Price-Mars, Les Griots.Alex Dupuy writes a very different, but equally fascinating book. He focuses on the same period of Haitian history, with an earlier start in colonial Saint-Domingue (French Haiti), and not ending until the fall of Leslie Manigat in 1988.
Dupuy's focus is not on general Haitian history, but on the nature of Haitian economy. His primary concern is to explain the causes of Haitian underdevelopment. In particular Dupuy rejects the view that overpopulation is in any way a significant cause of Haiti's misery.Rather, he sees several important causes which correspond to various periods of Haitian history.
During the French colonial period the major problem was France, especially the maritime bourgeoisie. What they wanted from Saint-Domingue was two-fold: firstly, a source of high demand raw materials--sugar cane, cocoa, coffee, sisal, indigo, tobacco and cotton. Secondly a strong market for slave trade. France prohibited the colony from developing manufacturing since the French bourgeoisie wanted that for themselves in France.Meanwhile in the colony itself the slave owning planters resisted any labor saving technologies. They had cheap labor from the slaves, and any decrease in their labor intense lives could have provided a dangerous "idleness.
" Given that the overwhelming mass of people in the colony were unpaid slaves, no serious internal market developed. All of these factors combined to create a highly dependent and underdeveloped economy which independent Haiti inherited in 1804. From 1804 until 1843 the early Haitian rulers continued this underdevelopment.There were no longer official slaves, but Toussaint, Dessalines, Christophe and Boyer all tried to re-introduce the plantation system, but failed to get the former slaves to return to the plantations. Rather, the newly freed Haitians retreated to subsistence farming and small-plot coffee exporting.
This weak internal economy enforced the underdevelopment. The primary problem was the lack of any integrated economy, that is, producing raw materials or agricultural products which fed into manufacturing, which, in turn, returned goods to the local market.Instead Haiti had small local food markets, raw coffee exports, and relied on the importation of all manufactured goods and many foodstuffs. Because of this import-centered economy, the international community earned more profits from Haiti than Haitians, even the rich ones.
It marketed expensive manufactured goods in Haiti, and added the lucrative processing to Haitian coffee and other export crops.The Haitian power elite retreated to the outside of the economy and jockeyed for governmental power in order to expropriate whatever profits they could from the mechanisms of the state (taxation, import/export levies) and the graft that came with government offices, especially the presidency. The impact of the Haitian Revolution was both immediate and widespread. The antislavery fighting immediately spawned unrest throughout the region, especially in communities of Maroons in Jamaica, and among slaves in St.
Kitts.It sent a wave of immigrants flooding outward to the neighboring islands, and to the United States and Europe. It revitalized agricultural production in Cuba and Puerto Rico. As Alfred Hunt has shown, Haitian emigrants also profoundly affected American language, religion, politics, culture, cuisine, architecture, medicine, and the conflict over slavery, especially in Louisiana. Most of all, the revolution deeply affected the psychology of the whites throughout the Atlantic world. The Haitian Revolution undoubtedly accentuated the sensitivity to race, color, and status across the Caribbean.
