freedmen to Haiti.īut it was Pétion’s republic, in the south, that became free soil for political dissidents and fugitive slaves alike. We also know that, with his close association with Prince Saunders-a teacher from the U.S.-Christophe was interested in relocating black U.S. Both were committed in various forms to a new foreign policy: the advancement of liberation struggles beyond their own borders, the transformation of Haiti into a safe haven for revolutionaries in exile.įrom King Christophe’s letter exchanges with William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson-two key abolitionists in England-we know that he was interested in developing his kingdom with emancipation as a guiding spirit. The south went through an agrarian reform, which, however ambitious, still couldn’t prevent high-ranking officers from receiving larger plots of land. The north was categorized by large-scale landholdings, managed by military officers, and compelled labor from former slaves to run its economy. Soon after independence it would be split into two: Henri Christophe’s kingdom in the North, and Alexandre Pétion’s republic in the South. Post-revolutionary Haiti was not without its complications. James has gone even further, arguing that the French revolutionaries were forced to crumple up the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens” and shove it in their pockets in shame when confronted with the challenge from Saint-Domingue. The late Trinidadian activist and scholar C.L.R. The historian Robin Blackburn has argued that it was the revolutionaries of Haiti, and not the French government, who brought abolition onto the agenda during the French revolution. A decade later, in 1804, Haiti became an independent nation. In 1794, the National Convention in Paris ended slavery in all of its colonies. In 1793, colonial authorities were forced to decree abolition. They invoked the language of French republicanism. The slaves, together with the privileged mixed race, and even some of their white accomplices played the various powers-Spain, Britain, and France-against each other, while donning the memorabilia of the Jacobins. In late August 1791, its enslaved population rose up in what the historian Ada Ferrer calls a coordinated revolution, where “the world’s most profitable and powerful system of slavery had been destroyed by its own slaves.” Audio brought to you by curio.io Haiti was once the French colony of Saint-Domingue, the “Pearl of the Antilles” for slavery. It was out of this often unacknowledged rendezvous that the struggle for Latin American independence began to take off. The link that binds these resistance movements dates back to the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Latin American liberator Simón Bolívar sought help from the newly founded republic of Haiti, the first country in Latin America to gain independence, and the first republic to be born out of a slave revolt. In the case of Colombia, African descendent and indigenous communities have been particularly vocal, inserting their unique demands into broader narratives for systemic change. Colombia and Haiti have both been ignited by protests, as part of what looks like a global uprising against austerity, corruption, and unaccountable politicians.
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