Haiti's Robespierre
The Tragedy of Toussaint L'Ouverture
By BJÖRN KUMM

While the mass graves are being filled up in Haiti and international opinion devotes some fleeting moments of attention to this unhappy nation, all we hear about is misery, poverty, corruption, chaos. This of course was to be expected. Haiti is seen as simply another "failed state" one can only feel sorry for and which will need international intervention. Few people remember – if they ever knew – that Haiti has a glorious past. It was the people of Haiti who two hundred years ago made the first serious attempt to turn the lofty principles of the French into palpable reality.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, Haiti, in those days Saint Domingue, was France´s richest colony. Haiti´s sugar-plantations and Haiti´s African slaves provided the economic backbone also of revolutionary France. After the fall of the Bastille, both Haiti´s white slave-owners and emancipated Haitian mulattoes sent representatives to the revolutionary convention in Paris. Haiti´s slave and plantation owners were relieved that the French monarchy and French commercial controls had collapsed which opened up an interesting new market in neighboring United States. Haiti´s mulattoes were enthralled by French revolutionary principles. A Haitian mulatto leader, Lacombe, insisted that freedom, brotherhood and equality were principles which ought to be observed also in Haiti. He was immediately hanged by irate French slave owners.

Haiti´s popular majority, hundreds of thousands of African slaves, sent no representatives to revolutionary Paris. Instead they organized themselves, using the cover of voodoo sessions, which were tolerated by French plantation owners who thought their slaves were merely gathering to dance and worship their African gods. But, says the foremost historian of the Haitian revolution, Trinidadian author C.L.R. James, Haiti´s slaves were already a modern proletariat, collectivized by their work on the big plantations. And they too heard the rumors from France and the signals of the revolution.
The first Haitian slave rebellion took place in the month of August 1791. Twelve thousand slaves in the northern parts of Saint Domingue rose up, ransacked the plantations and hanged their oppressors from the nearest palm trees. And this is where Toussaint L´Ouverture, Haiti´s revolutionary leader, enters world history. He was a literate, black supervisor on a plantation where his French master seems to have been fairly tolerant and was protected by Toussaint   against rebellious slaves. For a while Toussaint was seen as a benign Uncle Tom, but he had read his Julius Caesar and realized that the slaves needed military organization. He raised a black army and had the satisfaction of defeating two European invasions, first the troops sent out by revolutionary France to quell the slave rebellion, after that one hundred thousand British soldiers, dispatched by prime minister William Pitt the younger. The invaders were thoroughly beaten by Haiti´s African defenders and by yellow fever.
In France, especially the Jacobins showed a great deal of sympathy for revolutionary Haiti, and in 1793 slavery was banned. However, after assuming power, the First Consul, Napoléon Bonaparte, decided to reintroduce slavery and, as he put it, "rip the epaulettes off the shoulders of the Negroes". Napoléon sent new invasion forces. Haiti did survive as an independent nation but was under perpetual pressure from France, England, the United States and Spain.   Toussaint L´Ouverture died in a French dungeon.

Haiti, it could truly be said, drew the ultimate consequences of the   French revolution. In the United States and in France freedom was born for white people. In Haiti freedom was born for everybody.
But why did everything later go wrong? C.L.R. James in his marvellous The Black Jacobins, published in 1938, suggests that Toussaint L´Ouverture in fact remained too much of a loyal French citizen. He wanted the formerly enslaved Haitians to become exemplary Frenchmen. He wanted to show the world that black men could build a civilized state. French should be spoken as correctly in Port au Prince as in Paris. And he intervened brutally against his own followers, who began wondering if they would have to go on slaving for French plantation owners, white and mulattoes, who had been invited back to Haiti by Toussaint L`Ouverture.

C.L.R. James sadly concludes that Toussaint L´Ouverture, Haiti´s revolutionary leader, was in fact a Black Jacobin, a Caribbean Robespierre, radical but authoritarian, not inclined to listen to his people. Instead of mobilizing the population of Haiti to claim their rights, Toussaint first of all wished to be accepted by the contemporary international establishment and be seen as a reliable upholder of the colonial economy. After Toussaint, the leaders of Haiti turned out to be less respectful – concerning the ruthless Dessalines C.L.R. James famously comments: "His ties to French civilization were of the slenderest". But they successfully fought Napoleon´s forces and in 1804 declared independence. However. in order to be accepted by what has sometimes been called the civilized world, independent Haiti had to pay damages to France and to the white slave-owners who had already made gigantic profits from France´s richest colony. In order to pay, Haiti had to borrow enormous sums from French banks. Haiti remained in the hock for more than a hundred years, with sad consequences for the Haitian economy. The final payment to France was made in 1947.

We now hear Barack Obama talk about the common history that joins Haiti with the United States. Am I the only one who sees a certain resemblance between Toussaint L´Ouverture, struggling for respectability, and the current US president who is so overly respectful in his relations with Wall Street and other rulers of the world? I suggest Obama, in addition to Eduardo Galeano´s The open veins of Latin America, handed to him by Hugo Chavez a few months ago, should also read C.L.R. James The Black Jacobins to remind him how lofty ideals were once translated into reality.
Björn Kumm is a journalist living in Malmö, Sweden. He can be reached at [log in to unmask]

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Why is Haiti so poor? The notion taught in European institutions is that benevolent white men abolished slavery because it was a scar on their conscience. The facts are that enslaved Africans fought back at every opportunity and the Haitian revolt of 1791-1804 led directly to the 'abolition' of the British slave trade in 1807. The Jamaican uprising led by Sam Sharpe in 1832 scared the British into passing the law to 'abolish' slavery itself in 1833.

Abolitionist Wilberforce apart from suggesting that black men be used as breeding animals, actually voted to send 60,000 British troops to force the Africans in Haiti back into slavery. In the 21st century the IMF and World Bank present themselves as benevolent agencies while the evidence shows their policies actually make people poorer and increase the wealth of the US and Europe. See below for details as to how Haiti was forced into poverty by the very nations who are now complaining that Haiti is impoverished.

On August 22, 1791, the Haitian war of independence began under the leadership of an African religious leader named Boukman; over one hundred thousand enslaved Africans rose up against the French army. The great hero of the Haitian Revolution and a man considered one of the great revolutionaries and generals throughout the world, was François Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture.

When the war of independence broke out in August 1791, Toussaint was a fifty year old carriage driver. He rose to become a general when he realized that the revolution could only be successful if the enslaved Africans became militarily and politically organized to resist the external forces. His first move was to train a small armed group. He then realized that the Africans, who now occupied the eastern two-thirds of Haiti (what is now the Dominican Republic), were caught between three contending European forces, all of whom wanted Haiti for themselves. The French, of course, wanted Haiti back. The Spanish and English saw the revolution as an opportunity for seizing Haiti for themselves. Toussaint's great genius was to achieve what he wanted for his people by playing each of these powers off against each other.

Toussaint was a brilliant and charismatic statesman and leader. His reign came to an end with the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte in France. Napoleon sent General Victor Leclerc with over twenty thousand soldiers to eliminate Toussaint, who then waged guerilla warfare against them. Eventually he made peace with the French and retired from public life In 1803. The French tricked him into a meeting where he was arrested and sent to France where he was starved and tortured to death in prison.

With the death of Toussaint, the revolution was carried on by Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Dessalines was extremely angry over his treatment as a slave and was determined not to allow white people to carry on with their racist exploitation. Leclerc was desperate, as his men were dying of yellow fever and the guerilla attacks took a surprising toll. So he decided to simply execute blacks whenever and wherever he found them. Dessalines responded that every atrocity committed by the French would be revisited on the French.

As the fighting wore on, Dessalines ordered the summary execution of all Europeans that opposed the new revolutionary government. Finally, on 1st January 1804 Dessalines declared Haiti to be an independent republic. He took the French three-coloured flag and removed the white from it to produce the bi- coloured flag of Haiti, the first independent Black nation in the Caribbean. Africans had defeated the best French, Spanish and British armies (60,000 troops with the blessings of Wilberforce) and sent shockwaves through the white supremacists in the Caribbean, Europe and America. The slave-masters in the immediate region were terrified that the same thing would happen to them. The British, with their nearby colonies of enslaved Africans, were extremely nervous in 1804.

Immediate After Effects of the revolution.

African people all over the world are inspired to fight harder and longer than they are already doing.
Haiti supplies fighting revolutionaries to other Caribbean islands. Haitians use captured European ships to liberate Africans from passing slave ships
The fear of having too many Africans fresh from Africa contributes to the British abolition of the slave trade in 1807.
Slave breeding and rape of African women is stepped up to make up for lost workers.
Cultural subjugation of African peoples becomes institutionalised - African linguistic and religious expressions are criminalised.
Increase in missionary activity in colonies to convert Africans to Christianity. Wilberforce supports this
In 1803/4 a weakened France is forced to sell New Orleans and the Louisiana territory (15 states),74 times the size of Haiti, in what is now the USA for merely 15 million dollars
In 1806 America joins France and Spain in a trade embargo on Haiti which ruins the economy
In 1825 France demands reparations for destruction of its property during the revolution by sending 12 warships to blockade the port.

The aftermath of the Revolution had other impacts on Haiti, including..

Haiti was in forced to pay a total of 150 million Francs to France for fighting against slavery. The USA endorsed this position, The last payment was made in 1947. (President Aristide actually asked for it back in 2003) The equivalent in today's money is $21.7 billion, source Dr Francis St Hubert, Haiti Restitution Commission. This is based on 5% annual interest; if the normal 7.5% interest were applied, Haiti could be entitled to $4 trillion . The situation is comparable to the Germans demanding compensation from the British for fighting back in World War 2. If that had happened how underdeveloped would Britain be and how overdeveloped would Germany have become?

· Haiti is forced to borrow from French banks at high interest rates to pay the money to the French, forcing Haiti further into poverty.

· The US Marines invade and brutally occupy Haiti in 1915- 1934, because Haitians refuse to allow foreigners to own their land. US corporations are later brought in to establish plantations and jeans factories that use slave-type labour.

· The USA and France support human rights abusers like dictators Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier in the 1950's and 1980's who rip off their countrymen and take out loans from the IMF

· After the US-backed dictators are deposed Haitian people are forced to pay up to 2 million dollars a year on bad debts incurred by the dictators

· The US 'encourages' Haiti to lift its tariff on imported rice, the market is then flooded with imported subsidised US rice forcing local farmers out of work and off their land, then the US companies jack up their prices thereby forcing people to eat mud cakes

· In 2003 democratically elected Jean Bertrand Aristide requests France pays back the reparations it received. He also campaigns to increase the minimum wage to $2 a day

· The US government repeatedly destabilises the democratically-elected government of Aristide until he is finally ousted in 2004. He seeks sanctuary in Jamaica but Condeleeza Rice threatens the Jamaicans with dire consequences if he should stay. He is currently in Africa

This may help to explain why Haiti has gone from being the richest island in the Americas in the 1790's (hence the scramble for the island by France, Britain and Spain), to today being the poorest. Much of the absent infrastructure, which is so often mentioned by the media would be present but for the above.

References:

Ferguson. James, (1998), The Story of the Caribbean People, Ian Randle Publishers, Kingston, Jamaica.
Fryer. Peter, (1984), Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain, Pluto Press.
Hart. Richard, (1998), From Occupation to Independence: A Short History of the Peoples of the English Speaking Caribbean Region, Pluto Press.
Hochschild. Adam, (2005), Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves, Mariner Books
James. C.L.R., (1963), The Black Jacobins, Vintage Books
Martin. Steve, (1999), Britain's Slave Trade, Channel 4 Books
Walwin. James, (1993), Black Ivory: A History of British Slavery, Fontana Press
Williams. Eric, (1944), Capitalism and Slavery, Andre Deutsch