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Haiti THE HAITIAN REVOLUTION
The Slave Rebellion of 1791
Violent conflicts between white colonists and black
slaves
were common in Saint-Domingue. Bands of runaway slaves,
known as
maroons (marrons), entrenched themselves in
bastions in
the colony's mountains and forests, from which they
harried
white-owned plantations both to secure provisions and
weaponry
and to avenge themselves against the inhabitants. As their
numbers grew, these bands, sometimes consisting of
thousands of
people, began to carry out hit-and-run attacks throughout
the
colony. This guerrilla warfare, however, lacked
centralized
organization and leadership. The most famous maroon leader
was
François Macandal, whose six-year rebellion (1751-57) left
an
estimated 6,000 dead. Reportedly a boko, or voodoo
sorcerer, Macandal drew from African traditions and
religions to
motivate his followers. The French burned him at the stake
in Cap
Français in 1758. Popular accounts of his execution that
say the
stake snapped during his execution have enhanced his
legendary
stature.
Many Haitians point to the maroons' attacks as the
first
manifestation of a revolt against French rule and the
slaveholding system. The attacks certainly presaged the
1791
slave rebellion, which evolved into the Haitian
Revolution. They
also marked the beginning of a martial tradition for
blacks, just
as service in the colonial militia had done for the
gens de
couleur. The maroons, however, seemed incapable of
staging a
broad-based insurrection on their own. Although challenged
and
vexed by the maroons' actions, colonial authorities
effectively
repelled the attacks, especially with help from the
gens de
couleur, who were probably forced into cooperating.
The arrangement that enabled the whites and the landed
gens de couleur to preserve the stability of the
slaveholding system was unstable. In an economic sense,
the
system worked for both groups. The gens de couleur,
however, had aspirations beyond the accumulation of goods.
They
desired equality with white colonists, and many of them
desired
power. The events set in motion in 1789 by the French
Revolution
shook up, and eventually shattered, the arrangement.
The National Assembly in Paris required the white
Colonial
Assembly to grant suffrage to the landed and tax-paying
gens
de couleur. (The white colonists had had a history of
ignoring French efforts to improve the lot of the black
and the
mulatto populations.) The Assembly refused, leading to the
first
mulatto rebellion in Saint-Domingue. The rebellion, led by
Vincent Ogé in 1790, failed when the white militia
reinforced
itself with a corps of black volunteers. (The white elite
was
constantly prepared to use racial tension between blacks
and
mulattoes to advantage.) Ogé's rebellion was a sign of
broader
unrest in Saint-Domingue.
A slave rebellion of 1791 finally toppled the colony.
Launched in August of that year, the revolt represented
the
culmination of a protracted conspiracy among black
leaders.
According to accounts of the rebellion that have been told
through the years, François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture
helped
plot the uprising, although this claim has never been
substantiated. Among the rebellion's leaders were Boukman,
a
maroon and voodoo houngan (priest); Georges
Biassou, who
later made Toussaint his aide; Jean-François, who
subsequently
commanded forces, along with Biassou and Toussaint, under
the
Spanish flag; and Jeannot, the bloodthirstiest of them
all. These
leaders sealed their compact with a voodoo ceremony
conducted by
Boukman in the Bois Cayman (Alligator Woods) in early
August
1791. On August 22, a little more than a week after the
ceremony,
the uprising of their black followers began.
The carnage that the slaves wreaked in northern
settlements,
such as Acul, Limbé, Flaville, and Le Normand, revealed
the
simmering fury of an oppressed people. The bands of slaves
slaughtered every white person they encountered. As their
standard, they carried a pike with the carcass of an
impaled
white baby. Accounts of the rebellion describe widespread
torching of property, fields, factories, and anything else
that
belonged to, or served, slaveholders. The inferno is said
to have
burned almost continuously for months.
News of the slaves' uprising quickly reached Cap
Français.
Reprisals against nonwhites were swift and every bit as
brutal as
the atrocities committed by the slaves. Although
outnumbered, the
inhabitants of Le Cap (the local diminutive for Cap
Français)
were well-armed and prepared to defend themselves against
the
tens of thousands of blacks who descended upon the port
city.
Despite their voodoo-inspired heroism, the ex-slaves fell
in
large numbers to the colonists' firepower and were forced
to
withdraw. The rebellion left an estimated 10,000 blacks
and 2,000
whites dead and more than 1,000 plantations sacked and
razed.
Even though it failed, the slave rebellion at Cap
Français
set in motion events that culminated in the Haitian
Revolution.
Mulatto forces under the capable leadership of André
Rigaud,
Alexandre Pétion, and others clashed with white militiamen
in the
west and the south (where, once again, whites recruited
black
slaves to their cause). Sympathy with the Republican cause
in
France inspired the mulattoes. Sentiment in the National
Assembly
vacillated, but it finally favored the enfranchisement of
gens
de couleur and the enforcement of equal rights.
Whites, who
had had little respect for royal governance in the past,
now
rallied behind the Bourbons and rejected the radical
egalitarian
notions of the French revolutionaries. Commissioners from
the
French Republic, dispatched in 1792 to Saint-Domingue,
pledged
their limited support to the gens de couleur in the
midst
of an increasingly anarchic situation. In various regions
of the
colony, black slaves rebelled against white colonists,
mulattoes
battled white levies, and black royalists opposed both
whites and
mulattoes. Foreign interventionists found these unstable
conditions irresistible; Spanish and British involvement
in the
unrest in Saint-Domingue opened yet another chapter in the
revolution.
Data as of December 1989
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