Essay on Haitian Revolution
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Visions of Africa in the Caribbean: African Influences on Slave Resistance
The importance of African-born slaves for resistance to slavery in the form of marronage and independent states in the Caribbean cannot be overstated. In both Jamaica and Haiti, the bossales, or African slaves were essential for uniting people of diverse backgrounds through common African cultural features such as language, religion, ethnicity, and ideology to resist slavery. Therefore, the African-born majority of the slave populations in Saint-Domingue and among maroons of Jamaica were the impetus to marronage and the slave insurrection in Saint Domingue that culminated in the Haitian Revolution.
A significant way bossales promoted resistance to slavery was ethnic unity. People who shared a common identity in Africa could easily communicate and form maroon societies because of preexisting similarities. For example, Akan slaves in western Jamaica rebelled and formed their own maroon society, known as the Leeward Maroons. [1] Furthermore, in Saint Domingue and the Hispanic Caribbean, slaves of the same ethnic origin often formed mutual aid societies and elected “kings” and “queens” to lead religious and ethnic rituals and celebrations.[2] This form of loose affiliation among slaves of the same background created a means of communication and organization for Africans scattered in different plantations.[3] Sharing a common ethnicity also played a significant role in the 1791 Haitian insurrection in which large numbers of Kongolese slaves followed their own leaders before Creole, or native-born slaves.[4] Coming from the same background facilitated rebellion because it provided a nucleus for the societies of maroons and early independent Haiti.
In addition to connecting people on ethno-linguistic terms, the African origins of slaves undoubtedly shaped political ideology and development in maroon societies and Haiti. Though one cannot deny European influences that permeated through free people of color and Creole slaves, African concepts of politics and kingship shaped how black leaders were expected to rule. Among the maroons of Jamaica, headmen like Cudjoe who cooperated with religious leaders and directed a disciplined military organization led settlements.[5] The two maroon societies who signed treaties with the British government in 1739 represented two different forms of African political organization: a centralized polity in the west and a decentralized federation in the east.[6] The Leeward Maroons of the west were the result of a slave revolt in 1673 led by Coromantees, an Akan group.[7] By the 1730s, the Leeward Maroons accepted Cudjoe’s absolute command over raiding parties, family inheritance of power from his father, his authority over captains and headmen and his cooperation with Obeah spiritual leaders who served as public oracles and advisors to the headmen.[8] He also forced all maroons in the west to comply with the 1739 treaty, indicating his power in the region.[9] Unlike the Windward Maroons to the east, the position of headman was institutionalized and Cudjoe possessed special privileges, such as the power to impose the death penalty.[10] Unsurprisingly, many aspects of Cudjoe’s leadership were very common among his Akan ancestors and other centralized states in Western and Western Central Africa. His centralized authority, like those of many African kings, gave him special rights, such as the right to execute commoners, close cooperation and contact with Obeah or African religious leaders for counsel, and a trained military force to enforce his decisions. The decentralized Windward Maroons, whose Obeah leaders were very influential and headmen were given less authority, resembled other West African societies where the balance of power favored religious leaders over chiefs or kings. For example, an Obeah woman among the Windward Maroons arranged for the signing of the 1739 treaty instead of a male chief or military leader.[11]
As for Saint Domingue, where African-born slaves were the majority of the slave population, the political ideology of African slaves had an immeasurable impact on the Haitian Revolution. Growing slave imports from the Congo region in the second half of the 18th century that facilitated coffee production and French preferences for specific West African ethnic groups for sugarcane concentrated peoples from similar regions in the same areas of Saint Domingue.[12] This led to the sharing their political ideologies and form associations based on ethnicity, such as the election of kings and queens and secret societies. Kongolese and West African ideas of kingship and social order played a huge role in early stages of the Haitian Revolution. For the Kongolese and other Africans, ideal political leadership was monarchical and centralized, although the king of the Kongo in Central Africa was expected to rule fairly and act in public interest, because the pursuit of private wealth was considered selfish and linked with witchcraft.[13] As one can likely guess, the kings of Kongo were often stuck trying to find a balance of acting in public interest and consulting a council while accumulating wealth for themselves and increasing their power. This led to civil wars that fed the slave trade, especially after the introduction of Christianity in the royal court and the legitimacy of royal rule.[14] African slave rebels in the Haitian Revolution, such as Boukman Dutty and Macaya, were Kongolese or came from areas in West or Central Africa where such visions of kingship were common,[15] and gained followers in their armed bands by appealing to this ideology and ethnic identity. Macaya, for example, swore allegiance to the Kongo king, and his followers did likewise.[16] In order for the revolution to succeed, Creole slaves and free people of color who led larger insurgent forces like Toussaint Louverture had to rely on the African-based bands of armed men, whose numbers alone made them indispensable.[17] Despite their alliances, the African-led rebels often acted independently of Creole leaders, and utilized African military tactics and religious beliefs in order to defeat French forces. For instance, rebel slaves often used charms and incantations made by religious leaders such as Boukman that they believed gave invulnerability in battle.[18] In areas under control of bossales, kings and queens were elected and likely expected to discover the elusive middle ground between absolutism and limited monarchy, though some kings were actually Creoles.[19] This unavoidable contact and exchange of ideas between Creoles and Africans led to a tendency toward limited government or a democratic strain in African-based rebel areas, which is illustrated by the strong resistance to restoration of forced labor by Creoles leaders such as Louverture and Henri Christophe from Kongolese leaders, including Macaya.[20] The non-Kongo African slaves such as the Yoruba, Edo, and Fon peoples also came from areas with centralized states and the same internal conflict of absolutism with limited government power, such as the kingdom of Dahomey and the various Yoruba states.[21] They likely favored more limited governments whose leaders served the public interest and consulted religious leaders for counsel, such as Obeah practitioners in Jamaica. Unfortunately for the Africans who were leaning toward a smaller and less authoritarian state, Creoles and free people of color chose to build a Haitian state that reflected the colonial period. By restoring forced labor in an attempt to rebuild the plantation economy instead of promoting smallholder agriculture, Creoles like Louverture and Dessalines decreed constitutions that gave themselves absolute power.[22] The Creole and mulatto elite’s conception of Haiti was ultimately unable to fully counter the African ideal of limited government in the rural areas and peasant smallholders gradually replaced forced plantation labor.[23] Nonetheless, African political ideology directly impacted the Haitian Revolution’s leaders, including Creole and African slaves, and eventually the mulatto elites of the southern Republic of Haiti, who in the post-revolutionary period agreed to redistribute land[24] and tolerate Vodou, the religion of the ex-slaves.
Slaves born in Africa unquestionably provided opportunities for resistance in the form of marronage and general slave revolts. Moreover, they also provided the blueprint for social and political organization in the societies created by the aforementioned methods of resistance. Through ethnicity, religion, political ideology, and language, Africans were able to influence each other and Creole slaves, who had to appeal to Africans slaves. Jamaican maroon societies also followed the aforementioned guidelines, though on a smaller scale. The importance of the African cultural legacy for slave resistance mattered because it was the cultural background for the majority of the people in Haiti during the early years of the Revolution. Although one cannot overlook the roles played by mulattoes, Europeans, Creole slaves, and free blacks, slave resistance in Haiti would have been impossible without the willing participation of the enslaved Africans. They fought to create a society that would demolish a plantation economy based on forced labor in favor of subsistence-based agriculture typical in Africa and create a less authoritarian state. African political ideology continued to influenced how revolutionary leaders were expected to govern because in rural Haiti, stateless or decentralized communities based on subsistence agriculture continued to exist long after the Haitian Revolution.
Bibliography
Gaffield, Julia. “Complexities of Imagining Haiti: A Study of National Constitutions, 1801-1807. “ Journal of Social History 41 (2007): 81-103.
Geggus, David. “The French Slave Trade: An Overview.” The William and Mary Quarterly 58 (2001): 119-138.
Kopytoff, Barbara Klamon. “Early Political Development of Jamaican Maroon Societies.” The William and Mary Quarterly 35 (1978): 287-307.
Kopytoff, Barbara K. “Religious Change among the Jamaican Maroons: The Ascendance of the Christian God within a Traditional Cosmology.” Journal of Social History 20 (1987): 463-484.
Nesbitt, Nick. “Turning the Tide: The Problem of Popular Insurgency in Haitian Revolutionary Historiography.” Small Axe 12 (2008): 14-31.
Rucker, Walter. “Conjure, Magic and Power: The Influence of Afro-Atlantic Religious Practices on Slave Resistance and Rebellion.” Journal of Black Studies 32 (2001): 84-103.
Stein, Robert. “Revolution, Land Reform, and Plantation Discipline in Saint Domingue.” Revista de Historia de America 96 (1983): 173-186.
Thornton, John K. “’I am the Subject of the King of Congo’”: African Political Ideology and the Haitian Revolution.” Journal of World History 4 (1993): 181-214.
To be perfectly honest, I don't think much of this essay. Whoever wrote it has turned the actors of the revolution into straw men and proceeded to put on a puppet show with them. We have the mulattoes, the creole elite and the noble African who is the repository of all virtue. I don't think that anybody can read the history of the Haitian revolution seriously and come away with the idea that these three types were as distinct as this essay tries to make them out to be. All mulattoes were not free property owners and making Dessalines some kind of privileged creole is nonsense. Dessalines was born a slave in the colony, the lashes on his back indicated that his being creole entailed no special right vis a vis slaves born in Africa. Maroons, were no threat to the slave system, in fact, they made damn good slave catchers. Some of the noble Africans discovered by the essayist were not above making deals with the slavers. One of the points of contentions between Toussaint and Georges Biassou, an early leader of the 1791 uprising, was Biassou's tendency to sell his men as slaves. The fact remains that Toussaint made a conceptual leap when he decided to fight for full emancipation. I've not heard of any Maroon calling for the end of slavery and building an army to accomplish that task. The essayist claims that the revolution was the result of affinity groups getting together on issues they had in common, where is the proof for that claim? Speaking different languages and emphasizing different tribal traditions would tend to limit the effectiveness of such groups. I don't think it was an accident that the creoles ended up leading the struggle, they were the ones able to communicate in a language that all understood. " the African-led rebels often acted independently of Creole leaders, and utilized African military tactics and religious beliefs in order to defeat French forces". True but not the whole truth, they also worked with the ennemies of the revolution such as the French, Spaniards and English, some were plain bandits. I have more objections to this essay but the above will suffice for now.
ReplyDeleteWow, thanks for reading this stuff. I wrote this a long time ago for a university history class in Caribbean History and it actually got an A, but it was undergraduate so that's nothing special. I haven't read this in a very, very long time, probably last since it was first posted on this blog, if I even bothered to really skim it then. I would take issue with some of the things you say, though mainly to add nuance.
DeleteFirst of all, if you don't mind answering this question, what are your main sources for understanding the Haitian Revolution? I would love to see if you have some I haven't heard of and could add to my already long reading list on many topics.
Second, I have no problem admitting many flaws to this piece, but I am generally fascinated by these lesser known actors in the Haitian Revolution, whose identities and contributions seem to be neglected in favor of creole military leaders. You're right that many accepted the existence of slavery, and same with maroons in Jamaica or Saint Domingue, but lest we forget many others were willing to sell out the slave masses for their own followers or interests, such as some mulatto leaders, like Rigaud. I think I am more drawn to subaltern actors in this history than Toussaint and others, though they're all very important and Toussaint was the first to actually go all the way out and declare an end to slavery (though one could argue his agricultural policies which sought to perpetuate the plantation slavery were similar to slavery, despite wages or payment and some rights).
I read a great dissertation from some student from Univ of Florida (where Geggus teaches) about marronage in Saint Domingue, I should re-read that and perhaps some other sources and write another post that focuses solely on the question of maroon communities in Hispaniola. This essay was especially weakened by including Jamaica, though I think the case of the maroons there is interesting. Also, how enslaved Africans rework ethnolinguistic African identities in the New World could be multi-ethnic since these identities are not pure transplants in the Caribbean, Brazil, or anywhere else in the hemisphere. Thus, many slaves from Akan-speaking backgrounds likely came together in some of these Jamaican maroon societies, and I am sure the large proportion of slaves of Kongolese and other West Central African Bantu-speaking ancestry who came to St. Domingue in very large numbers in the second half of the 18th century were able to use that mutual heritage and identity to facilitate slave uprisings, even though it could easily be divisive or exclusive against non-Kongolese and Central African-descended folks. So, I think it's kind of a mixed-bag thing here, since creole slaves and African slaves also mixed in various ways, too, such as in the case of Romaine's leadership of Leogane.
Ultimately, this essay is too short and lacking the depth to really properly tackle this question, unlike Caroline Fick's book-length analysis on the subject of the popular actors in the Haitian Revolution. And knowing some stuff I have learned in recent years, I would definitely have made this more nuanced or dropped parts of it altogether.
If you don't mind me asking, have you shared this blog with other Haitian (or non-Haitian, whatever is fine) people interested in these topics on Haitian history, culture, literature, or music? I would love to have sort of Kreyolicious.com type of blog with more academic-oriented topics, but I unfortunately haven't gotten my name out there in Haitian internet circles in the US.
On Haitian history all roads lead to Madiou, Ardouin and St-Remy. I've yet to read them. I recently finished a book by Berthony Dupuy that purports to be a biography of Dessalines, in my opinion, it was nothing of the sort. Dupuy does show that his life was no different than the life of any other slave. The whole creole elite thing gets on my nerve. Christophe, the bête noir of the type of historians you got some of your notions from, didn't hesitate to burn down his luxurious mansion and the whole Cap. Jean Kina, a Maroon was the tool of the French. Show me where any of these figures were instrumental in defeating the French or any other enemy of the people of St-Domingue. "but lest we forget many others were willing to sell out the slave masses for their own followers or interests, such as some mulatto leaders, like Rigaud." True but insufficient, you also had people like Lamartiniere, white for all intent, who defended Toussaint's cause. You are in fact buttressing my point that you can't neatly separate the actors by claiming they were simply acting based on some kind of ethnic identity. Toussaint had Moise executed on the totally false charge that he was behind an uprising against the French, Dessalines, after Toussaint's redition was Leclerc's executioner of "rebels" until he felt he had the forces necessary to end French domination. "Toussaint was the first to actually go all the way out and declare an end to slavery (though one could argue his agricultural policies which sought to perpetuate the plantation slavery were similar to slavery, despite wages or payment and some rights)." His agricultural policies were similar to slavery, despite wages and some rights, agreed, but tell me where things were different? The USA ended slavery several decades after Haiti and replaced it with a system that was no better than slavery but nobody harps on that. In fact the penal system of the US south was slavery run by the State rather than individuals. I agree with you that it would have been better if the Haitian leaders had created a republic like the Roman Republic where the different groups were represented and the interests of small proprietors paramount. In order to create such polity another leap in thinking would have been required, unfortunately such thinker did not come forth. I shared your blog post on Romaine on Kreyolicious.com and your Dominican anti Haitian newspaper cartoons post on Abagond's blog.
ReplyDeleteBerthony Dupuy should be Berthony Dupont.
ReplyDeleteAh, I must learn to read French really to properly dissect Madiou, Ardouin and these other sources. I have yet to come across an English translation of some of these folks, though Nicholls was very critical of them for a "mulatto" agenda in their writings on the Haitian Revolution. I have a lot of more research to do myself on the historiography and history of this topic before I can really make any substantive or better blog post.
ReplyDeleteOh, I see, yeah I saw those two. Kreyolicious.com should really edit that post and perhaps consider doing a specific 'special' on different actors in the Haitian Revolution rather than such a broad piece, although I suppose the site is not always leaning toward academic writing. Abagond is a great blogger, I wish I could be like his blog, though I would have to learn to write shorter posts in some cases. If I remember correctly, you mentioned some sort of heinous racial incident regarding your sister and white French people? And, have you been following the Trayvon Martin trial? The internet and the defense of Zimmerman have tried to paint her as a lying, fat, dumb, inarticulate woman who cannot speak English, and she's Haitian.
Kreyolicious is a great place to go if you want to read about celebrities. I take stuff there with a grain of salt. I was shocked when she wrote that stuff on Dessalines so close to the 209th anniversary of his greatest creation. Abagond seems to spend all his time on white people and their hangups. I would rather wait for the outcome of the Zimmerman trial to see if murder will be whitewashed.
ReplyDeleteThe hate for Christophe is understandable; Madiou is a mulatto born in 1814 in the middle of the famous rivalry between Christophe and Pétion. He was probably raised anti-christophe rants, since its Pétion camp ( well, Boyer) that unified Haiti once again.
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