A Narrative of the Haitian Revolution and the Involvement of the British, French, and Americans
The Haitian Revolution makes for the most fascinating revolt in history. The black race, after many years of oppression, overcame the dominant white race. Without the assistance of guns, and other technological warfare at that time. In its own words, the author states that the book makes clear that the roots of the revolution of Haiti consist of movements involving the "wisdom and common sense of the masses". Hordes of blacks reached a consensus that human sacrifice is a small price to pay for freedom. In the view of Carolyn E. Fick, no organization or political entity involved can be attributed as much credit than the masses for the popular revolution that unseated one of the longest dictatorships of mankind.
In Haiti existed a system of degradation and denial of humanity itself towards human beings only because they were born with a black skin. While emphasis is made on the fact that the blacks were the majority of the population at the time of the revolution, it is brought up that at the outset the white indentured or contracted servants "worked and lived side by side in near equal numbers with black slaves" (Fick 15). This suggests that if we consider an indentured worker or worker under contract to be a financial slave living in the same condition as a black slave, that slaves did not necessarily have to be black.
Slavery began because there was the need for labor to work on plantations of sugar and tobacco. Once the black slave took the place of the white indentured worker, a system of classes emerged. The middle class white man was the absentee planter enjoying the amassed fortune in France. The middle class were also the agents or managers of the absentee planter striving and sometimes attaining plantation ownership.
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The high class or grands blancs such as the governor, the Intendant and their representatives were white people appointed by the French government to administer with "absolute authority". The petit blancs or little whites such as the lawyers, retailers, grocers, carpenters, and masons performed all other tasks. They came from any background however low in life and rose to be a privileged member of the white society. A common maxim of the time connoted the condition of superiority. "A white is never in the wrong vis-a-vis a black". (Fick 18).
Due to the miscegenation of the whites with the slave females a new class of people emerged the affranchis, who were gaining economic stability and who were also gaining in numbers to the extent that they numbered as many as the white. The affranchis were usually free members of the black race who established themselves on the same level as the petit blancs whose status was becoming lower and lower. The affranchis were in fact rising in the ranks to positions in commercial enterprises, trading and military service. They became the white-like blacks who not only received an education outside of Haiti, but also became plantation owners and accepted the ways of the white man. Their numbers made them a threat to the white status quo.
France, being the cradle of revolution, enjoyed the antithetical position of owning the wealthiest colony in the Caribbean, St. Domingue or Haiti, along with owning the greatest number of slaves being imported from Africa on a yearly basis. Thus, while to a degree inventing or redefining freedom at a global scale, France had also defined the slave as a 'socially dead person' or a person whose existence in social and political terms was no different from the horses and the pigs otherwise owned by the white colonists.
The labor run economy of the colony and the lack of laws to protect the slaves led to atrocities to be committed against them including torture and murder among the worst and other kind of horrible acts all aimed at forcing the slaves to labor beyond human endurance. The Black Code gave rights to the black to prosecute those who committed the inhuman acts, but the code was enforceable at the discretion of the white prosecutors whose contempt and arrogance toward the slaves was a matter of course. "Slavery was a system that robbed them of the most basic of all things-their humanity, the recognition before law and before society of their status (and consequent rights) as free, social individuals.' (Fick 36).
The African slaves united in a cultural identity and religious beliefs by a sacred and religious dance of voodoo. Although forbidden by the whites, voodoo parties were common and united the blacks to the point that laws were passed to prevent "indecent and lascivious postures which make up this dance" and to prevent insurrection. (Fick 41). But the slaves who held on to voodoo as the only medicine that appeased the pains of the chains and the psychological degradation of their dignity never stopped their voodoo.
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A Narrative of the Haitian Revolution and the Involvement of the British, French, and Americans. (2023, May 24). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/a-narrative-of-the-haitian-revolution-and-the-involvement-of-the-british-french-and-americans/
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