Some aspects of the political history of Haiti

1. Haiti
Fernando Flores
Extracts from:
http://www.historyvortex.org/HaitianRevolutionImpactSpanishCaribbean.html by
Michael C. Twomey
Wikipedia; 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

2. • 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.
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3. Hispaniola
3

4. 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

5. • British, Dutch, and French pirates established
bases on the island's abandoned northern and
western coasts.
Santo
Domingo
5

6. 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.
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7. Haiti and the Dominican Republic
Tortuga Island
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8. • 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.
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9. • 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.
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10. • 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.
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11. • 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.
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12. 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

13. 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.
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14. • 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

15. 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

16. Vodou (Voodoo)
• 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.
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17. Vodou original areas in West Africa
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18. 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.
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19. • 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.
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20. 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.
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21. • 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

22. • 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

23. 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

24. • 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

25. • Toussaint Louverture
and his corps of well-disciplined,
battle-hardened
former
slaves came over to
the French
Republican side in
early May 1794.
25

26. • 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

27. • 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

28. 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,
Jean Jacques Dessalines
"we have repaid these cannibals, war
became Haiti's first emperor
for war, crime for crime, outrage for
in 1804. outrage."
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29. Three new leaders of the revolution
• Jean-Jacques Dessalines, (1758-1806)
• Henri Christophe (1767 –1820)
• Alexandre Sabès (called Pétion) (1770 –1818)
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30. 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.
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31. 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

32. 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

33. • While Christophe attempted Pétion
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

34. • 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.
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35. 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

36. • 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.
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37. The End
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