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The Birth of a Nation
Table of Contents:
In 1492 Christopher Columbus landed on Hispañiola and claimed it for Spain. The Spanish colonizers attempted to enslave the natives, the Taino/Arawaks. The Taino/Arawaks died out due to lack of immunity to the Spanish diseases, forcing the Spanish to use Africans as their slaves. Hispañiola prospered greatly as a colony, but experienced one major problem, French pirates. In order to prevent further pirate raids, Spain gave France the western half of Hispañiola. This occurred in 1697, creating Santo Domingo (Spanish) and Saint Dominigue (French). Both halves prospered greatly and by the late 1700's had an estimated 500,000 slaves. Pierre Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture was born in 1746 into slavery. Due to his knowledge and manner, he was given the job of coach driver. With his free time, he taught himself to read and write. This educational background made him the perfect man to take charge of the Haitian Revolution. Maroons, guerilla mulattos, used guerilla warfare in order to get rights for mulattos in Hispañiola. The French Revolution in 1789 gave rise to new government. A Colonial Assembly was created, a group, which could make laws for Saint Dominigue. The Rights of Man was also created in France, which gave rights to all men such as suffrage. In 1790 Ogé started a mulatto rebellion in an attempt to secure suffrage. This was, however, suppressed by the white militia. The attempt, though failed, showed unrest in St. Dominigue.
The first slave rebellion of the Haitian Revolution took place in 1791 and was led by Toussaint L'Ouverture. Fellow conspirators consisted of Georges Biassou, Jean François and Jeannot. Leading each group was a large pole capped with the carcass of a dead white baby. Every white in the groups path was slaughtered and all their property set ablaze. This revolt set off other revolts in Cap Français, both of which were put to stop. The whites, of course, retaliated by massacring blacks. Ten thousand blacks and 2,000 whites were killed. Mulattos, such as André Rigaud, fought for Mulatto rights, but were put down by the white militias. As it stood, blacks fought mulattos and whites, whites fought mulattos and blacks and mulattos fought the whites. This chaos led to intervention by England and Spain in St. Dominigue.
The mulattos were the only things lying in the way of a united black colony. Rigaud led a campaign against Toussaint, which was defeated, leaving Toussaint in charge. Toussaint drafted a constitution and named himself governor of the island. St. Dominigue still took advice from France but governed almost entirely as an independent state. Napoleon, just recently having taken control of France, could not stand to see this colony lost. He sent troops into Haiti to regain control of the colony. Toussaint was captured and imprisoned in Fort de Joux, where he died in 1802. Fighting continued under leadership of Jean Jacques Dessalines and Henri Christophe. In 1804, France was defeated after years of guerilla warfare and Dessalines named himself ruler of the first western independent black nation, Haiti, meaning a "higher place".
There were three main factors of the independent Haitian state that caused international effects. First, it was comprised of free blacks. It was also the first independent state in Latin America. The last factor was that Haiti was a colony under imperial rule, which had freed itself. All of these factors caused international effects. The southern United States relied on slavery. The fact that slaves had just overrun a nearby nation scared many in the US. Officials took action to protect the public from this fact, so as not to allow a slave rebellion. The rest of Latin America followed Haiti's lead. Leaders such as Bolivar and San Martin took great advances in making Latin American nations independent. The reason that these nations revolted, besides the hardships of colonialization, was that they had seen success in the Haiti and realized that they could also be free as a colony. The thought of a colony gaining its freedom also scared many European imperial nations. In these ways, the Haitian revolution had an expansive effect.
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Corbett, Bob, "Pre-Columbian Hispaniola &endash; Arawak/Taino Native Americans." August 1999. URL: www.webster.edu/~corbetre/ haiti/ history/precolumbian/tainover.htm (12 November, 2001) "Haiti Gains Its Independence, 1804." DIScovering World History. Gale Research 1997 "Haiti, The Haitian Revolution, The Slave Rebellion of 1791" URL: lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi.bin/query /r?frd/cstudy:@field(DOCID+ ht0017) (3, November, 2001) Hurbert, Montas. "The Early History of Haiti." URL: pasture.ecn. purdue.edu/~agenhtml/agenmc/haiti/history.html (20 November, 2001) "Toussaint L'Ouverture." U*X*L Biographies. U*X*L, 1999 Tyson, George F. Toussaint L'Ouverture. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice Hall Inc. 1973 Annotation: This book is a compilation of numerous primary sources, arranged in a manner so as to tell the story of Toussaint and the Haitian Revolution. Many of the primary sources are letters, such as a letter to General Laveaux on May 18, 1794, and speeches, such as the address to people of color in 1800. |
