Every time I think of France doubling down on its racism I remember this speech, specially the following paragraphs.
Citizens, my countrymen, on this solemn day I have brought together those courageous soldiers who, as liberty lay dying, spilled their blood to save it; these generals who have guided your efforts against tyranny have not yet done enough for your happiness; the French name still haunts our land.
Everything revives the memories of the cruelties by this barbarous people: our laws, our habits, our towns, everything still carries the stamp of the French. Indeed! There are still French in our island, and you believe yourself free and independent of that Republic which, it is true, has fought all the nations, but which has never defeated those who wanted to be free.
What! Victims of our own credulity and indulgence for 14 years; defeated not by French armies, but by the pathetic eloquence of their agents’ proclamations; when will we tire of breathing the air they breathe? What do we have in common with this nation of executioners? The difference between its cruelty and our patient moderation, its color and ours the great seas that separate us, our avenging climate, all tell us plainly that they are not our brothers, that they never will be, and that if they find refuge among us, they will plot again to trouble and divide us.
Peace to our neighbors; but let this be our cry: “Anathema to the French name! Eternal hatred of France!”
Just reading about Dessalines now but he does not seem to be a good man. Forged an alliance with France to turn on Louverture, killed all civilians colons including children, and put himself in a life long governor position
His government and actions are certainly very hard to unpack and I wouldn’t say he was some morally absolute saint or anything of the sort. However he is still very much historically admired for having effectively led the final victory that assured a final end to French rule and slavery, and the speech itself is great to this day.
If you examine some of those facts within the context of both the Haitian and French revolutions, they were not out of the ordinary for the times. For instance, the “Reign of Terror” in France had around 10 times as many victims as that massacre (including children) and the Haitians themselves had around a 100 times that just during the war. On the monarchy, it was still not accepted as default at the time the norm of republics rather than monarchies. Either way he only ruled for a little more than 2 years and after his assassination none of his children inherited the leadership.
The betrayal of Toussaint was done in part on the false promise by the French that slavery would not be reimposed and that he would receive a fair treatment. When those promises were broken, specially after 13 years of war exactly about abolishing slavery, he and Pétion promptly changed sides and this string of broken promises and false proclamations is even referred to by the speech in “Victims of our own credulity and indulgence for 14 years; defeated not by French armies, but by the pathetic eloquence of their agents’ proclamations”. The brutality of the Rochambeau (son of the famous Unitedstadian “war hero”) expeditionary force — which not only reintroduced the forms of torture from slavery but also included the use of war dogs on civilians and POWs — galvanized the Haitians to the point where things like the Le Cap and Port-au-Prince massacres were seen as completely fair retribution.
The massacre wasn’t as clear cut as it sounds though, and many white people who had helped the revolutionaries were spared, including notably the Polish defectors who were even allowed to build their own communities there which remain to this day. Besides that there’s also the 200 year campaign from white countries that followed to both punish the Haitian nation and erase its history. So their slaver “great leaders” get even movies about them played by Joaquim Phoenix, while every educational material you look on the Haitian ones you get only proto-Jim-Crow caricatures.
We can talk more about the specifics of his actions, but I don’t think the “bad” ones detract from what is being said there and I didn’t intend to make it look like he’s a perfect individual.
Thank you so much for covering those subjects! No need to discuss the actions really, history is paved with violent actions He indeed seems to have had a great impact for Haïti
I do understand his motivations
Is Haiti an empire?
Not today, it has an
OAS puppetdemocratic republican government. It has had 2 periods of time where it termed itself “Empire of Haiti” in manner similar to the Empire of France, as well as one in which it was a kingdom. The term empire is historically usually self-identified in messy ways, like Yankee Empire pretending they are not one or the very insular and isolationist First Haitian Empire taking the name anyways to position themselves as equals to the Europeans. Even going into the origins of the term in Rome it had nothing to do semantically with what we now term imperialism.
