Black slaves heavily outnumbered both the whites and the free coloreds, however: there were , of them in Saint Domingue by About half of the slaves had been born in Africa. Slaves were imported from many regions in West Africa. They brought some traditions and beliefs with them, but they had to adapt to a very different environment in the Caribbean. Newly arrived slaves had to learn a common language, creole , a dialect of French.
Out of elements of African religions and Christianity they evolved a unique set of beliefs, vodou , which gave them a sense of identity.
Like white plantation-owners in the American South, slaveowners in the French colonies participated actively in the French Revolution. They demanded liberty for themselves: above all, the liberty to decide how their slaves and the free people of color in their colonies should be treated. The slaves were their hard-earned property, they argued, and a fair-minded government could not even consider taking them away. The French revolutionaries, many of whom had money invested in the colonial economy, took these issues seriously.
A well-funded lobbying group backed by the plantation-owners, the Club Massiac , spread pro-slavery propaganda and convinced the National Assembly to guarantee that no changes would be made in the slave system without the consent of the whites in the colonies.
Initially, representatives of the colonial free colored population, many of whom owned slaves themselves, had hoped that the whites might be willing to reach an agreement with them and form a common front against the slaves.
Most colonial whites, however, feared that granting political rights to people who were partly descended from slaves would undermine racial hierarchy and lead eventually to the abolition of the slave system. They were very frustrated when planter opposition kept the National Assembly from granting them equal rights with the whites. He did not try to gain support among the slaves, and his movement was quickly crushed by the trained white troops on the island.
When news of the executions reached France, the National Assembly blamed the colonists for their severity and passed a decree granting rights to a minority of the free colored population. The revolutionaries were beginning to move away from unswerving support for the whites in the colonies. Before this split could grow, however, the white colonists in Saint Domingue found themselves facing a much more serious danger.
On the night of August , a coordinated slave revolt broke out in the north of the island, the area of the largest plantations. Black slaves massacred their masters, and set fire to plantation buildings. At the same time, a separate rebellion started among the free coloreds in the west of Saint Domingue. They were sure that troops would eventually arrive from France and put down the rebellions. Initially, the leaders of the slave insurrection did not demand the total abolition of slavery.
Instead, they negotiated for freedom for themselves and their families, and for a system under which slaves would have worked 3 days a week for themselves and 3 days for their masters. The whites, however, refused to make any concessions. The free coloreds in the west and the whites in that region did negotiate an agreement, but it soon fell apart. By the fall of , French troops had succeeded in regaining control of most of the island. But the French and the whites in the colony were becoming increasingly divided among themselves about the French Revolution.
When this news reached Saint Domingue, it split the white population. The radical revolutionaries in France sent a commissioner, Sonthonax, to take charge of the island, but most whites refused to obey him. Sonthonax began to seek support among the free coloreds, insisting that they should have the same rights as whites.
Outnumbered, Sonthonax made a radical move: he called on the black insurrectionaries to attack the city, promising that slaves who fought on the side of the Revolution would be freed. In August , Sonthonax extended his abolition decree to cover the entire slave population. The leaders of the black revolt that had begun in were still distrustful of Sonthonax and the French. The white planters had also not given up the fight.
Some of them encouraged the British and Spanish to send forces to Saint Domingue. Others sent deputies to France who managed to convince many supporters of the Revolution that Sonthonax was trying to set up his own dictatorship in the island.
On Feb. A black and a mixed-race deputy from Saint Domingue were seated in the Convention, another first in European history. While this measure marked a breakthrough for the abolition movement, it was not passed entirely on idealistic grounds. The British had already captured the French colony of Martinique.
They were poised to take over Guadeloupe, and they threatened to conquer Saint Domingue as well, if Sonthonax could not rally the blacks to his side. France thus had little to lose by granting emancipation in the Caribbean. Significantly, the abolition decree was never applied in the two small French slave colonies in the Indian Ocean, which were not threatened by the British. Since the start of the insurrection in , several black generals had emerged as leaders of the movement fighting the French and the whites in Saint Domingue.
Even the news of the French emancipation proclamation did not persuade most of these generals to change sides. One of the black leaders did rally to the French side in early , however. Originally a slave, Toussaint had been freed before the Revolution and at one time owned a small plantation with 15 slaves. He does not seem to have been among the earliest supporters of the uprising, but he joined it soon afterward and was quickly recognized for his military and political skills.
By , he had built up the best-organized and most effective military unit on the island. When he decided to join Sonthonax and the French republicans in May , the military balance soon shifted in their favor. By the summer of , the combined forces of Toussaint and the French had regained the upper hand in Saint Domingue, although the British continued to hold part of the island until Toussaint had received the rank of general in the French forces.
During this period, he steadily increased his power at the expense of a series of French generals and political figures sent to govern the island. He also outmaneuvered the leaders of the free coloreds and rival black commanders. Toussaint conducted secret negotiations with the British that led to their withdrawal from Saint Domingue in ; he also had contacts with the United States government, which was then involved in a virtual war with France and was happy to undermine French control over their colonies.
Historians disagree about what Toussaint was aiming at during these years. Some think he already intended to create an independent country; others believe he was hoping for an arrangement in which Saint Domingue would remain a French colony, but with a government of its own, chosen by all its citizens, regardless of race.
Toussaint was aware that, as revolutionary fervor in France was dying down, some politicians were calling for the restoration of slavery in the colonies; he had no intention of letting that happen. But he needed French support against the British, and so he played a complicated game and kept his real goals unclear.
Although he assured the black population that there would be no return to slavery, he insisted that most former slaves had to return to their plantations and resume field work.
They would now be paid and have more free time, but they were still not free to leave or to become independent farmers on their own land. Toussaint needed the income from the large plantations to support his army. To ensure the loyalty of his officers, he gave many of them large estates. Toussaint thus began to create a black-dominated society, but one with a large gap between the ruling elite and the mass of the population.
Toussaint made a point of including some people of mixed race and even some whites in his ruling elite, but he did not allow them any independent authority. In , he fought a bloody war against the remaining leaders of the mixed-race group, who had taken control of much of the west and south of Saint Domingue during the earlier fighting. In , he crushed a rebellion by one of his closest followers, Moyse, who had favored dividing land more evenly among the former slaves.
By this time, a new ruler had taken over France: Napoleon Bonaparte. Toussaint quickly sensed that this determined and authoritarian leader would not be likely to tolerate a largely autonomous government in what Napoleon still regarded as a French colony.
Among other ideas, he even thought of employing Toussaint and his black troops to create a large French empire in Louisiana. As long as he was still at war with the British, he could not do much about Saint Domingue because the British Navy prevented French ships from sailing to the Caribbean. In late , however, Britain and France made peace.
These efforts succeeded in Martinique, where slavery had never been abolished, and in Guadeloupe, where it was restored with great bloodshed in The French military expedition to Saint Domingue, commanded by General Leclerc, arrived in early Surprisingly, Toussaint did not immediately call for all-out resistance.
They so much wanted us to be included and loved. My aunt had to cut my hair short to put a stop to it. Myriam has since relocated to the United States, and although she speaks fluent Creole and never adopted any of her Lebanese heritage, she says that even Haitian-Americans refuse to accept her for what she is. I know what racism is, and I can relate to any Black person or anyone suffering from it worldwide because I have suffered from it in Haiti. I still encounter many discriminatory comments from Haitians living here.
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