Putschcast
A global podcast about Riots, Rebellions and Revolutions. Putschcast explores how power changes hands, whether through internal social and political decay, external pressure, popular resistance or a pure stroke of luck.
Featuring experts in their field, every episode explores a unique moment in history that led to profound changes in the lives of the people affected by it.
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Putschcast
#11 Haiti - Successful Revolution & Failed Genocide
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The Haitian Revolution is the only successful slave revolt that birthed a free republic. Professor Nicolai von Eggers brings a crucial perspective to understanding the revolution not just as a military event, but as a profound political upheaval in the colony of Saint-Domingue, which at the time, was the world's most profitable colony.
We unpack the radical ideas of former slave and revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture that fueled the fight for freedom that sent shockwaves through slaveholding global powers, including France, England and Spain.
We confront the harrowing French response, initiated by Napoleon, intended to reconquer the fledgling nation via a brutal campaign that historians increasingly examine for its genocidal dimensions. We also learn why the small island nation that we know now as Haiti never really had a chance to become a propserous society.
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Welcome back to Putschcast. I'm your host, Oliver Heuter. We spend a lot of time on the show chewing over coups, overthrows, and moments where power gets snatched at gunpoint. But today we're looking at a revolution where the bullets weren't just aimed at the colonizers, they were aimed inward at slaves killing slaves, slaves selling slaves. At the center of it all is the dream for freedom and liberty, but three powerful empires don't agree with the idea of granting everyone human rights. The year is 1791 and the place signed Domingue, or as we call it today, Haiti, where a truly historic revolution occurred, where the oppressed became the oppressor. Our guest today hails from Denmark, Dr. Nikolai von Eggers. He's an associate professor of history at the University of Aarhus and he knows the history of Haiti like no other. He will share insights with us that even people familiar with the topic may find interesting and enlightening. I'm also happy and excited to be enlightened by my very own co-host today, David Sloan. Hi Dave, welcome to Podcast again.
SPEAKER_02G'day Oliver, very excited to be here as usual, and super excited about this episode, full of what was the most powerful economy in the Americas. And you may not have realized that, but Haiti definitely was that back in 1791. Revolution, Civil War, Cuban attack dogs, it's all coming. So stay tuned and listen to this.
SPEAKER_00Dave, here we are again. It hasn't been that long. Welcome, Festival to Putschcast, once more.
SPEAKER_02It's great to be back. You're right. It hasn't been that long, but uh another exciting episode.
SPEAKER_00Because our listeners would remember the name Nat Turner, we dedicated an entire episode to. What was the time and event?
SPEAKER_02That's right. So the Nat Turner Rebellion took place in 1831, and the man was born in the year 1800. There's a nice little overlap with today's episode.
SPEAKER_00And the topic's almost the same, so it's oppressed people, slaves, so to speak, from Africa in a Western-controlled colonized setting, and uh not happy with the way they've been treated, and seeking freedom. Now, if you want to find out what happened to Naturna and what happened to that revolt, you'll have to listen to that episode.
SPEAKER_02It's a very good episode.
SPEAKER_00It is, but today, similar scenario, very, very different outcome. So we've just mentioned it, it's the Haitian Revolution, and as always, David, I'm not the expert, neither are you. But when's the first time you remember? First time you've heard about that topic?
SPEAKER_02I think it might have been early days of Butchcast, to be honest. Um it's uh it's very fresh for me, but I I do find it fascinating. I think one of the things about this is that it goes for a long time. It's not a a fast fight necessarily with with clear opponents. Uh it kind of boils away. It's it's tumultuous. Uh goes for uh through sort of ebbs and flows, political shifts, there's uh diplomacy, and uh there are three kind of global superpowers uh focused on Haiti at one stage, which is really interesting.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there's something in there for military enthusiasts, there's something in there for people and putschers and coups and um state politics for that matter, um, in a very strange setting. And the setting is you just mentioned the year, it's late 18th century. And as I said before, we have no idea what we're talking about. So let's bring in our guest today. It's uh Nicolai from Denmark. We've just introduced you. Nicolai, you are an actual professor.
SPEAKER_04I am, I am indeed. Yeah, hi, good to see you. Most of my research is about revolutionaries and the so-called age of revolutions. So that's the French Revolution, American Revolution, Haitian Revolution, and and also Greek Revolution. There's actually a Greek revolution in the 1820s. Um and yeah, I mostly focus on sort of political ideas and political participation and those sorts of things in that time period.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think we might hear you uh again in future on Putcast. But today the topic is Haitian Revolution. Uh I just gave a rough time frame, late 18th century. The place is obviously Haiti, but it wasn't called it back then. What was it called and what was the global context of this conflict?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's right. So what became Haiti was known as Saint Domingue. And Saint Domingue was a French colony in the Caribbean. Um, so it's the it's the western part of the island of Hispaniola, where Columbus actually put his foot, uh, you know, he went to Hispaniola when he first went to the Americas in 1492. So it was it was known in Europe since the late 15th uh century. But Saint Domingue uh in the late 18th century was the most important colony in the entire world, we might say. It it it let about 50% of sugar production, global sugar production, came out of Saint Domingue. Almost about 50% also of coffee production came out of Saint Domingue in the late 18th century, and also there were other crops like indigo, which is used for coloring, and also a few other things. And so this was the most economically important colony in the entire world. The output of uh Saint Domingue was higher than all the 13 states in the North America combined. Like, so this is this is massive. It's like, well, it's a bit much maybe to call it the workshop of the world, but it is economically the most important colony globally speaking at the end of the 18th century. Incredible. So this is like incredible. It is incredible. Le Cap, which which was the main city of uh Saint Domingue, so it's on the northern plains. Um Saint Domingue was sort of divided into three. You have the northern plains, you have the western plains, and then you have the southern parts. And so Le Cap, which was the main city of the Northern Plains, was was bigger than Boston at this time. You know, it had theaters, it had brothels, it had lots of things going on, actually. Yeah, so but it was of course based on slave labor. So the triangular trade where you have European merchants going to Africa to sell some goods and then buy enslaved people, transporting them to the colonies in the Caribbean and Latin America and other places where they would be engaged in plantation labor, which was pretty arduous based on torture. In the colonial period, you had about 12.5 million people being transported from Africa to the Americas, and only about 10.7 million of them would actually survive uh the so-called Middle Passage. And when they arrived in uh the colonies, uh average lifespan was about seven years because people would simply die from labor, uh being overworked. And so the enslaved population could not reproduce itself because it was being worked so hard, right? So you you constantly had this import of new uh people and worked them basically to death in the colonies. And so Sandamank had actually been not that important um aside in the 17th century and beginning of the 18th century, but throughout the 18th century it became sort of the main site of production for French uh colonial production of sugar. At the time of the revolution, which breaks out in 1791, you have about 600,000 people living in Saint-Domingue. Approximately 550,000. 500,000 of those would be enslaved um laborers, enslaved black people. Um two-thirds of those had come directly from Africa. We call them Bosal, and then one-third had been born in the colonies. And then in addition to this, you had about 30,000 white people, and then you had 25,000 so-called free people of color. And this is one of the things that actually makes Saint-Domingue unique, is that you had a pretty large population of free people of color. So this would be people who had been born to like a plantation over owner and an enslaved person, or who had bought their freedom, would otherwise been um emancipated from slavery. And some of these were plantation owners themselves, but a lot of them were actually working in the cities, so cities like Le Cap, where they ran like small businesses of different sorts, they became artisans, and so you had a quite vibrant um colonial society in many ways in Saint-Domingue, composed of like rich white people, poor white people coming to the colonies to try their luck, enslaved laborers, and of of course also these um uh free people of color.
SPEAKER_02So, Nicolai, just quickly on that point, becoming uh a free person of color, um uh how is it you start as a slave and then have enough money to buy your freedom? How how does that come about?
SPEAKER_04Well, that's pretty difficult. I can imagine. Like it it wouldn't there will be only like very few cases of these people. But so the plantation labor, um, you worked for six days a week in the fields. So, what we need to know about uh sugar uh production at this time was that it was actually quite complex and a quite capital-intensive process, which meant that of course you had people working in the fields, but you also had people working with the machinery, um, you had people overseeing production of sugar, and so you had many different uh kinds of job functions within the um within the system. And some enslaved people were of course beyond the fields, but other would be like skilled um craftsmen of different sources, you know, working with machinery or even managers. I see, and especially the managers could accumulate, you know, some form of capital because they were paid or could be paid, and they could buy their own freedom. But also, like slaves would work about six days a week in the field, and then they would have one day to work on their own small plot of land, which was used for subsistence, but few lucky people could, you know, make a little money from this, take it to markets, and then eventually buy their own freedom.
SPEAKER_02Just a quick bit of maths that I've done while you've been speaking. You said that uh the life expectancy is seven years for somebody who arrives uh in this place uh as a slave. And we've got 500,000 slaves there, which means every year another 70,000 slaves need to arrive just to replace the population. Does that sound right?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's right. And so this is a growing economy, and it's actually a boom economy at the time of the revolution. So in the middle of the 18th century, you would have something like 15, 10,000, 15,000 people arriving each year, and slave people being sold at the slave markets in Saint Domingue. By the time of the revolution, the last year before the revolution, you have more than 30,000 people being sold as uh captives in Saint Domingue.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, what I've learned already from you is um that comparison that the 13 colonies that made up the USA, which obviously just became independent before that, had a lower economic output than that tiny little speck of Hispaniola, which it really was. It's a tiny country, right? I don't know the square kilometers, but it clearly wasn't big. Um but what I've also learned is that France was basically the leading force. If you ask anyone on the streets, transatlantic slave trade, colonialism, slave labor, you hear Spanish, Portuguese, English. Like the French I've never had on my radar. So were there almost role modeling and economic business that was then copied by the other powers?
SPEAKER_04No, I think we should see this as colonial rivalry between the different empires where they sort of steal ideas and practices from each other. So what happened in the French colonies was no different to what was happening in the British colonies and also to some extent in Spanish and Portuguese colonies. So this is, you know, these kinds of forms of production develop over time. And I think what we need to say about the French in comparison to the British, at least, is that this was the most important colony in France, but of course, Britain had like lots of colonies and were actually leading when it came to colonial trade and um colonial production in many ways. But this was the rivalry at the time, right? And it wasn't given that the British Empire would become just the largest empire of the world. And when it comes to slave trading, you know, the Portuguese are actually the merchants who trade the most slaves uh throughout this entire period. So I mean, but it also doesn't really matter that much who actually does the trading because you would have Portuguese merchants, you know, also selling enslaved people in French uh lands, in British lands, and so on. So this is this is international global trade uh at this moment.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so Nicolò, we've got these uh three primary groups of people that populate uh populate this island. We've got slaves, we've got free people of colour, and we've got white people. Um at this time, the French Revolution is uh is taking place or has just taken place. Um the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen uh is is an output of that, which basically says that all men are free and equal. How does that land in this French colony? How is it perceived by these different groups?
SPEAKER_04There's probably only one group that really knows about well, two groups that really know about it the free people. Like they follow the news and know what's happening in France, and they're scared to death about this, you know, because the main fear in the colonies is that they will be overrun by the enslaved population at some point, you know, that there will be a rebellion and they will be slaughtered. And they will be slaughtered because this is a system based entirely on repression, on torture, on I mean, it it's gruesome what's happening in the in the colonies at this moment. So, of course, um the the whites and the people owning the enslaved population are under no illusion that they will be treated, you know, kindly if if this sort of the power relation sort of reverses at this moment. So they are scared to death about what's happening in France, and they try to control uh circulation of news and circulation of information so that the enslaved people do not know too much about what's actually happening in France. Of course, they cannot control it entirely, and you do have enslaved people who learn about the French Revolution. I cannot say that there is a direct causality where enslaved people in Saint-Domingue are sort of inspired by the French Revolution. That's not really the relation between the French Revolution and the Haitian Revolution.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, okay. So you so you're saying that it it could have uh it could have kicked off independently, uh irrespective of the French Revolution being there?
SPEAKER_04I'm not sure it could have kicked off independently in the sense that, well, you had rebellions before the French Revolution, actually also in other colonies, where there is a sort of relation is that that the French Revolution destabilizes colonial society. Like the political authority is not as strong, it's not as cohesive in 1791 as it was before the French Revolution. And so, in that sense, you do have people who are starting to think about okay, maybe enslaved people should have some kind of rights, but also just you have internal squabbles between especially the white population and the free-colored population. Because whereas the white population gets civil rights, free colored don't. Right. So they don't really support the revolution in the same way, or they actually want to expand the revolution, and also you have you have different policies throughout the revolution in France where at some points you do give rights to to people of color, and then you have white people in the colonies being pissed off about that, right? And then at other points the revolutionaries in France sort of reverse and then start supporting. So you do have these internal squabbles between free people of color and white people of color in the colonies, and that really destabilizes the system, especially because the militias who are mostly responsible for controlling the enslaved population, they are made up of free people of color. Right. And so if white people can't depend on the free people of color in the colonies to control the enslaved population, well, then suddenly a space opens up for slave rebellion.
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SPEAKER_00Is there a pivotal moment? Because you know, uh, we always on Putschcast talk about what was the actual the spark that that set the powder cake on fire. Was there a moment like this or was it a slow process?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, this is actually really fascinating because there is a very exact moment in many ways. So you have in in in late August 1791, you have a rebellion um beginning, emerging on the northern plains of Saint Domingue. And and this was a coordinated effort by enslaved people from various plantations across the plain, across the northern plain. And we do know this, we do know this because um uh enslaved people were interrogated. Actually, they caught one before the actual rebellion broke out who who spilled the beans on this and said, you know, in a few days we are planning to rise up on the northern plain and we're gonna burn down all the plantation and take control of the northern plain. And you know, the white people who caught this guy weren't really sure whether he was telling the truth or not. But what we can say is that uh people from different plantations, and spent this was especially be like coachmen, people who were allowed to sort of travel around, they would they met up. So there is this we don't know if it's historically true, it might be, but we call it the Ba Keyman ceremony. So it's a ceremony in the Cayman forest or the alligator forest, where different leaders promised that you know they would spark a rebellion on their local plantation in their local area, and so they would guide um lots of enslaved people in this rebellion. And so they set a date for this to happen. And then because this guy was caught, you know, and the and and he had told about the plans in the western parts of the plain, they started the rebellion at least a few days before it was supposed to take place. But so what you had was a coordinated effort by um hundreds, if not thousands, of enslaved people who took over control of local plantations, they got control of uh weaponry, uh horses, etc. Burned down the plantations in many cases, and then withdrew to the mountainous regions. And this is what characterizes the geography of Saint Domingue, or what became Haiti is that you have the plains where you have all the sugar plantations, and then you have a lot of mountains where you have coffee plantations, and then of course, also uh forests in some places. And so they would get they would start burning down these plantations, and very quickly, you know, it's spread all across the plain, and you have these uh drawings from the time period where you can just see all the black smoke sort of covering all of the northern plain because all these plantations are being burned down, and they then they would sort of go into the forest in the in the mountains and then do kind of guerrilla raids onto the plain, you know, where they would recruit new people for the revolution and also uh push back, you know, white people and take control over more and more territory. And so you have pretty quickly from a couple of thousand people sparking this rebellion in August 1791, you have about a month later, you have approximately 100,000 people being part of the Haitian Revolution or what becomes the Haitian Revolution. And this includes also, of course, women and children who are also being part of this movement and and who live then start to live in the mountains.
SPEAKER_00So the fascinating thing for me is the communications channels that would have been used. You just mentioned coachmen before, so people that get to travel. But as we've learned, many people never actually left their farm, right? Or their plantations. So they were sold on a slave market and then to the highest bidder and ended up on a farm and spent the rest of their lives there. Plus, the people from Africa officers came from different parts as well. And so, first of all, what language did they communicate in? I mean, to organize 100,000 people is a massive undertaking, even in today's day and age. But for those people who were probably illiterate and then didn't have much at their disposal to communicate, how did that work practically?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it was pretty complicated. Uh and also didn't work out too well in many instances. Language. The language most spoken in Saint-Domingue was French Creole, or what became Haitian Creole. So a Creole language was a sort of a mixture of French and also other European languages mixed with elements from some of the different African languages. And so that would be sort of the lingua franca of the colony as a whole. But of course, like I just said, like a lot of people just came from different parts of Africa, and they weren't able to speak Haitian Creole at this time. So they would speak their own different languages. And so what you have inside the revolutionary movement is you have different language groups and ethnic groups sort of working together and then having leaders who are able to sort of translate and communicate between uh their specific groups and then the movement as a whole. And so you see different leaders being connected, probably to different groups of different ethnic groups, because there is a hierarchy within this enslaved population. There is a hierarchy between different groups, and you also see this in the slave labor or the plantation labor, you have usually specific functions where you have different specific ethnic groups, whereas that those lowest down in the hierarchy would come from other ethnic groups. So it's not a homogenous movement in any ways. You have lots of internal differences. What we can say is that it seems like a lot of people who were leading the movement had Congolese roots. And one of the reasons for this might Been that there were civil wars in the Congo at this time. So these enslaved people would have been veterans of uh civil wars in the Congo, what we today call Congo area region. Right. And so when the revolution breaks out, they are experienced in kind of guerrilla warfare, civil warfare of different sorts, and so they naturally become leaders uh of the revolution. It's it's a very diverse movement, like hundreds of thousands of people that don't live in the same place. You have different mountains, so you have different local leaders leading different groups in different areas and sort of trying to communicate uh behind the lines. And this is where already at the beginning of the revolution, someone like Toussaint Louverture, who I think will speak about, is seems to have a sort of mediating function. So he's not really part of the movement, but lots of revolutionary leaders sort of send letters to him and he will send out orders and information to other leaders, and so he works kind of behind the scenes, and so you have the very top of the revolutionary hierarchy. You have people who are not necessarily literate, but they will then have secretaries. So, and especially white people taking as uh prisoners in the beginning of the revolution will work as secretaries for the revolutionary leaders.
SPEAKER_00So it's a guerrilla warfare, but that takes on massive scales, we've just learned. So a fifth of the island was an uproar, really. My question is how did the white colonizing population react? And I've heard those fires were massive, apparently. Like uh I think there's historic accounts where people can see it from the harbor and far away, like half the island was on fire. It must have been a horrific image. And how did they respond? Did they all gather and ring up Paris and say, hey, we need support or give a hand out guns to every white man? Or what was the immediate response?
SPEAKER_04So that's what happened. Like Paris uh sent uh troops to Saint-Domingue, but also, of course, the whites uh were trying to organize both militias but also the military to sort of destroy this revolution, nip it in the butt if they could. In the beginning, of course, they believed you know that they they could control it and they would be able to control it pretty quickly. And this is of course not what happened. One of the issues for the whites in the colony was that as I just said before, they depended on free people of color who made up sort of the militias at this moment. Who exactly do you arm was a real question because you don't want to put arms into the hands of the people who might use them against you. But they were sort of successful for a period, you know. In the beginning, it looked like the the rebellion uh might be able to take over the entire northern plain. Their plan was definitely to control Le Cap and control the entire area, and then pretty quickly they weren't really capable of taking Le Cap. It it became this protracted uh guerrilla war where the whites were sort of able to still control Le Cap and control other areas, that is at least until 1793, where because of internal divisions also Le Cap was burned to the ground. Internally the first time during the revolution, because it also happened a second time. Yeah, this was a city of like 30,000 people, you know. Like you said, one of the massive destructions.
SPEAKER_00So the whites were divided themselves as well.
SPEAKER_04As the revolution in France also progresses, you have internal divisions because suddenly you have a more radical revolutionary leadership in France who try to pursue different kinds of policies. And some of they become more and more well, it it goes a little bit up and down, but they come become more and more positive towards the free-colored population. At some point, citizenship in France is also not based on property, so that means also poor people, like poor white people, will get property rights. And so it develops over time. So in 1793, two years after the rebellion, a new commissar is sent to the colonies. His name is Son Tonac, and he is a progressive in many ways. And so the local white leadership don't really like him, at least the so-called big whites, those with properties, plantations, and so on, uh, military leadership. And so there you have internal divisions again between, let's say, more pro-revolutionary whites and then counter-revolutionary whites. And the counter-revolutionary whites, what they do eventually is that they ally with the British. Like they invite the British to come and occupy the island because they're like, you know, we're gonna lose our plantations and our slave labor if the revolution and all the revolutionary reforms are implemented. So our, let's say, uh alliance is not based on nationality, it's based on who will protect our rights as owners of plantations, and the British are willing to do that. And so most of the island actually, or most of the of Sandomank, actually comes into the hands of the British after they go into the revolution in 1790.
SPEAKER_00Isn't that a form of treason to invite another nation into um to your fighting for you? And this this aligned with with Robespierre being in power, right? So we had the terror happening in France at the same time, so maybe they got a bit distracted.
SPEAKER_04This already starts to happen before Robespierre actually comes to power in France. But we can say already, you know, so it's the Shirondong, and they are also more revolutionary and sort of progressive than what you had before. It's it's a very complicated situation. And and there's also this delay we need to keep in mind. It takes about two months for news and people to arrive from Saint Domingue to France, and also the other way. So if you have things happening in Saint Domingue and you want the government to do something, you can expect to to go at least you know half a year before things actually happen and go come back into the colonies. And I think that therefore we should also understand the sort of logics going on there. It's very much based in what happens in Saint Domingue and and the actual power relations in Santa Manque.
SPEAKER_02Okay. So we've got uh we've got the British involved, uh and the French uh are certainly there. How do the Spanish get involved? I know that they've got the other half of the island, but how do they actually get involved in the conflict?
SPEAKER_04From the very beginning of the revolution, the revolutionaries, so the enslaved revolutionaries, they need supplies, like they they they need uh gunpowder, they need food, they need different kinds of things. And and where they have their stronghold is in the mountainous region between French Sant Domingue and then Spanish, it's called Santo Domingo, right? So it's uh it's the other half of the of the island. And so they get their supplies from the Spanish, right? So the Spanish actually support the Haitian revolutionaries in the beginning. And why do they do this? Well, because they want to destabilize their imperial rival, the French. So it's a bit similar to the American Revolution, where you have French, the French government supporting the American revolutionaries, even though the French government is, of course, a monarchy. So it's a bit the same, and and but then at some point, you know, the French control over Saint-Domingue is so destabilized that it's actually possible to sort of get in and take control over it. And so the British come in, they come in with lots of white soldiers. But the way the Spanish take control over parts of French Saint-Domingue is via uh Haitian revolutionaries, and so they the Haitian revolutionary leaders in 1792, 1793 are actually made officers of the Spanish army. They get official titles. Wow. Um they they visit the governor in in the main city of Spanish Santo Domingo where there's a like feast and so on, uh celebrations, they get uniforms, and suddenly they are no longer just Haitian revolutionaries and rebels, they're actually officers in the Spanish army. Um, and so that's what that's the situation, sort of 1793, let's say.
SPEAKER_00So there's emancipation happening right there. Now, were there any double standards? Did these Spanish do the same thing for their own slaves?
SPEAKER_04Uh, there were lots of double standards on all sides. Like from the very beginning of the revolution, you do have people who definitely fight for you know independence and and just the abolition of slavery. But very quickly, like the revolutionary leaders that we know the best, Jean-Francois and Biasou, they're called, they become officers of the Spanish army. They don't fight for uh universal emancipation, they fight for their own emancipation and for emancipation of their sort of officer core. And then they just want reforms to the slave system, like better working conditions, etc. etc. But it's clear they don't fight, they don't believe that they will become leaders of a new revolutionary independent state in any way. And so actually, one of the ways they finance their operations is by selling people into slavery in the Spanish parts of Santo Domingo. They take control over various parts of Santo, and then some are enrolled into the revolutionary movement, but at some point they don't really need any more uh soldiers or anything, they're they're also expensive to feed, etc. etc. And so they take people and sell them off into slavery in Spanish Santo Domingo, and then they're transported off into different colonies, of course, where they will work as as slaveries. And the Spanish never fight, they never um fight for emancipation of slavery. They keep slavery and they only they only give manumission to the people who are enrolled into the Spanish army. Okay.
SPEAKER_00That that is an amazing, amazing finding again, just from now. So double standards. I've expected them on the on the ruler side, right? Uh it doesn't surprise me the English, the Spanish, or the French. But even on the oppressed side, so the slaves. It's probably my 21st century mindset and naivety to think you know they had this great grand course to fight for and free all their brethren and sisters. But in the end, they had very close-to-home interests at heart, and they were willing to sell other people into slavery, even though they knew exactly what it meant from their own experience, and had no reasons not to do it. Just climbing over each other.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah, I think we need to understand that there's a lot of realpolitik in this. Like what is actually feasible, but also that the color line was of course really important, but it wasn't the only way of people thinking about identity and so on at this time period. So if people are from a different language group, a different ethnic group, or whatever, they might not there's no solidarity necessarily between them just because they're of the same skin color.
SPEAKER_00So no fraternity.
SPEAKER_04At least on this case.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_02Now there's a guy that you mentioned uh not too long ago, and if anybody researches this particular sort of period of time and this revolution on the internet, uh his name will definitely pop up. He's kind of the rock star of uh of what goes on here in Haiti. Toussaint Louvre. Can you tell us about this guy? Where did he come from? Because it seems to be from fairly quiet beginnings. He definitely wasn't involved right at the beginning. He turns out to be a bit of a powerhouse of what takes place.
SPEAKER_04And why is he still so famous? This is an amazing figure, like he's so fascinating. So Toussaint is um initially an enslaved person. He has his freedom before the revolution actually breaks out, and and he starts his he owns a couple of slaves, we know, before the revolution breaks out. Toussaint, uh at the time of the revolution, is definitely in touch with those who become the revolutionary leaders initially. So he's he's there from the very beginning, but he's still working, you know, on his uh his own plantation or his own plot of land. Um he's not really showing his true colours from the very beginning. And then eventually he sort of takes up his role as an officer or revolutionary leader in in throughout 1792 and 1793, and he's one of these people who become an officer in the Spanish army. So he's actually fighting on the side of the Spanish, you might say, in 1793. And then Songsonak, the commissar from France, arrives in the colonies, and the situation is is is really dire for the French. They have basically no control. All of the all of Santa Mang is controlled by either the Spanish or the British. And so, in an act of desperation, what he does is that he abolishes slavery. Slavery is from now on abolished in Saint-Manc. The French state, they give you all freedom if you fight for the French. And so this is really angling for support from the revolutionaries, the black revolutionaries. Because at this moment it's not really clear that some are fighting for the Spanish, you know, some are fighting for themselves, etc. etc. So he's trying to unite them under French uh rule in a way. And it ultimately pays, you know, it's it's successful. It's how the French actually keep control of the colony, is that they give full citizen Rabbi.
SPEAKER_00People went for this. Everyone fell for it. I would immediately think that's a trap, clearly. That's it.
SPEAKER_04And that's what Toussaint does.
SPEAKER_00That's what Toussaint does, actually.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So he's like, this is a trap. He doesn't believe the French. So Santanax was actually sincere and he you know he kept his promise. Okay. But but Toussaint doesn't believe him. So from the summer of 1793, Toussaint is still fighting on the side of the Spanish. But you can see increasingly, you know, he's thinking about defecting to the French because this might have better promises for him. You know, it might actually lead to abolition of slavery and black freedom, but also from a career standpoint, it might actually be a better um opportunity for him eventually. We don't really know his motives. He seems to have been driven by definitely a fight for universal emancipation. It seems to be pretty clear in many many ways. And so, what happens in the summer of 1794 is that finally Toussaint defects, you know, and so he goes from the Spanish army and then becomes a member of the French army. And and he does this by uh taking on Jean-Francois and Pierzu. Like his former, so they would be generals and he would be sort of lieutenant or whatever, so he's former superiors, and he fights them in a couple of battles, and then he he's sort of part of the French army. And from that point on, the French are really reliant on the revolutionaries to fight the British and to fight the Spanish. And so Toussaint becomes one of the most important generals, if not the most important general of the French army throughout the 1790s, and by the time that the British are finally booted out in 1798, Toussaint is the most powerful, most important person in Saint-Domingue.
SPEAKER_00You just mentioned the year 94. He finally changed sides in 94. There's only three years into revolution, like it's a pretty short time to change your mind. But does that have to do with the uh politics happening in France at the time, where they then finally decided to abolish slavery per se?
SPEAKER_04February 1794. The National Assembly in France sort of ratifies what Sonson Axe has done on his own in the colonies. Okay, he has no mandate to abolish slavery. He just forced by hand, did he?
SPEAKER_00He had no chance left. Okay.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, he's just some deputy, you know, commissar sent out, and and then the National Assembly under the Jacobins, uh 4th of February 1794, ratifies the abolition of slavery in all French colonies. Then this comes with like double standards, you know, it comes with a kind of uh decree saying that, well, maybe don't do it right now in all the other colonies. But it it it it's it stands up for Saint Dominic. And so Toussaint, so he defects in I can't remember exactly May or June 1794. So he's had a little time to see, okay, that makes sense now been ratified.
SPEAKER_00Nicolai, there's your four months that you've mentioned. So it was ratified in February and in mid-year he defects, so he would have received the info by then.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I think but what is even more important is that you have a lot of other revolutionary leaders who have who are part of the French army and who have been working for the French for quite some time at this point, like almost a year, and some of them he trusts, you know, and it's quite interesting. We can see these correspondences between black revolutionaries who are fighting for different armies. So it's still they're fighting for different armies, but they're also fighting for the same uh aim, ultimate aim in a way, and so they keep correspondence. And so I think that's actually most important that you have other revolutionary leaders, Pierrot, Macaya, you have others who have been working for the French for quite some time and can say, okay, you know, Sansonaks, the commissar, he's actually a good guy, he he he stands up to what he says, you know, he has abolished slavery. We can also see it implemented in practice. You can safely come to the side of the French now because this is where universal emancipation is happening. Whereas what's happening in the Spanish army and the Spanish Empire is going nowhere ultimately.
SPEAKER_00We are talking to uh Nikolai van Eggers. He is uh an associate professor at the Department of History in Aarhus University, and we're talking about the Haitian Revolution. We have learned that Haiti wasn't always called Haiti, that there was uh around half a million people enslaved, only 30,000, 40,000 white people, and there was another caste of people, so to speak, who were either mixed race or um slaves who were free at the time. Uh the revolution broke out in 1791, two years after the French Revolution. There was a lot of back and forth, three empires involved the Spanish, the English, and the French, of course. 1994, we just learned officially slavery was abolished. Not that the French had much of a choice, but uh that happened, and many of the slaves then defected and changed sides back to their former slave owners, the people who used to whip them, they now fight on their behalf. However, the man we've just learned about Toussaint Louverture is a fascinating character, and we've just learned, Nicolai, that he was powerful way into the late 90s. So when he was at the peak of his power, was he pretty much in control of the colony? And what were his main measures?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, he was in complete control of the colony at the peak of his power. Um, so so what happens is that after the British are defeated, you would expect there to be harmony and joy and everything would be good, right? You have kicked out the British, you have universal emancipation, etc. etc. But you have lots of internal differences and internal squabbles between different ambitious generals who are also heading different uh social and ethnic groups, and especially there's a division between Rigaud, who is leading the sort of uh mixed race uh people who is also an important general, and then Toussaint and his black movement, and and it's also a geographical divide because the mixed race people uh have control in the south, basically, and Toussaint and his people have control in the north. And so what happens after 1798 and the British are kicked out is that we have a civil war. But Toussaint wins out, and and he then is sort of the supreme leader of the entire colony uh of Sandomang. And then what he does is that he gathers a lot of people together, and then he writes basically what is a constitution. Um, in 1801, so we have Toussaint's constitution, but and that constitution, it is important to say, is is at the same time extremely progressive and extremely reactionary or authoritarian. It's progressive in the sense that of course it abolishes slavery. Uh citizenship is not based on skin color in any way. So that's sort of the progressive part of it because slavery exists in all other places at this time, right? The authoritarian part is that he actually wants to maintain the plantation system.
SPEAKER_00I was wondering the whole time what happened to the economy during all this. So we've almost had like close to 10 years of first uh revolutionary war, now we got civil war, um, the whole business model was based on plantations, on slavery. That's gone, the plantations have burned down. What happened to the economy and did that fuel the disarray that then happened?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, the economy is completely devastated. Like within a few years, exports have gone down by more than 90%. Most of the plantations are burnt down, all the major towns have burned down. This is a completely devastated and destructive society, destroyed society. And then, of course, within the revolutionary movement, then you have different kinds of visions and projects. And Toussaint's project is one of um racial solidarity, you might say, and then recreating the export model that you had before. So so producing colonial goods, export them to Europe, and then you have an income based on that. And and the only way he can see this happening is by sort of uh restarting the whole plantation model, basically. No longer based on enslaved labor, but then based on pretty strict rules of people still being tied to plantation, they will now get a salary, they will get a part of the produce, you know, the income made by each plantation. There will be regulations and they will be overseen by a kind of police force who will make sure that working conditions are quite decent, etc. etc. But regular people would still be tied to plantations where they would be sort of kind of forced to do plantation labor. Because he works with the white people, he works with the former plantation owners because they have the connections, they have the credit, the capital that you need in order to res reboot the entire plantation system. You need merchant houses, you need contact with people in European ports and American ports, etc. etc. And so Toussaint protects, let's say, these kind of people, merchants and plantation owners, those who are left, like a lot of people have left, of course, and and a lot of people have died. Other revolutionaries want to transition to a more kind of self-sustained model of production, if you will. Um where where you produ what you produce is not so much uh sugar and coffee, but it's much more uh uh food crops and things for sustenance. So you have a self supporting economy. But that also leads to a lot of problems, like from where will you get weaponry? And from where will you get like the kind of things you need to defend this uh Uh this new well if it becomes an independent state, it's not yet an independent state, it's still a a colonial state. Because you cannot just start arms production and all kinds of other forms of production. Also because environmentally, Santa Mang is not in a good place. It's been heavily intensive plantation production for decades now, which means that that you have irrigation system, you have you have you have no, I mean you have soil erosion, you have lots of mud slides all the time, and the only kinds of crops you have are um are these uh like sugary and and indigo and so on. So crops that are used for selling, not for producing anything. Also, there I said there were some forests and so on, but most of the wood have actually been cut down in order to build these plantations. So you also you need to import wood actually. So so it's very complicated to to to for Saint Domingue to to find a way out of this where you're still independent on the international system of trade. But the international system of trade, you the only thing you have to sell is uh things that sort of uh necessitate plantation labor, and no one wants to do plantation labor. Like no one wants to work in the sugar fields. It it's so hard, it's it it kills you, basically. So, of course, you can understand regular revolutionaries not really wanting to go back to the sugar plantation.
SPEAKER_02So so this constitution isn't uh isn't universally popular. Um so one of the things I understand happened is that uh Louverteur uh and the army invade the eastern side of the island, the Spanish side of the island. Yeah, yeah. What fuels that? Is it what you're describing? Is it the degradation of uh of the western side? And you know they they they're seeking uh you know natural resources, people, other resources, or is it uh is it just uh Was he power hungry desire for domination?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, was he a conqueror?
SPEAKER_04I think it's for two reasons basically security and uh ideology. So I think for security reasons it's nice to have control over the entire island. Um some of it is also that you still actually have um um a French battalion and that takes refuge in the Spanish side of uh Hispaniola, and so if you want to root out like French army who are you know still working against you, because things have also changed in France during this period, right? So the army is not necessarily the French army is not necessarily on the side of Louvergio, but so he wants to take control of the entire island in order to um for security reasons, but I think also for ideological reasons, he wants also to present himself as sort of the liberator, you know, the the man who is behind the emancipation from slavery, and that includes all blacks on his uh sort of territory. Um and he also has plans for maybe sending um battalions to Jamaica and other uh Caribbean islands as at this moment, but he's persuaded, you know, by uh colonialists but also people within his army that this is a pretty bad idea because then suddenly you will have the full European imperial system working against you. So it becomes more of a defensive, you know, taking control of Hispaniola and then trying to maintain that control.
SPEAKER_02No need to kick the hornet's nest. Um one of the things that's a theme seems to be a theme throughout that we haven't mentioned yet, uh, is disease and yellow fever. Uh and the impact that that has on the effectiveness of, in particular, the the the armies of the empires, so uh the the French, the English, and the Spanish. Um they they're particularly weakened by this, whereas uh it it seems that the uh the black slaves on the island are not. Is that uh is that something you can tell us a bit about, Nicolai?
SPEAKER_04The diseases, local diseases are really important because uh lots of people die from them, and especially soldiers sent. I mean, also black people die from this a lot when they are transported from uh Africa and then come to the colonies, they will also die from yellow fever um and other kinds of diseases. But of course, at the time of the revolution, once the revolution breaks out, you have no longer any imports from Africa. So the people who arrive in uh Saint Domingue are, of course, mainly white soldiers, and you have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people dying from yellow fever throughout this revolution. The British die like flies. Um, there are different French expedition armies also die like flies, and this is also why the Spanish strategy is in many ways pretty smart. It's to enroll um the black people into the army because if you send your own soldiers, they might die eventually. And this is also why at the Haitian Revolution becomes a sort of war of attrition. You have open fights, you have open battles and so on, you have guerrilla raids, but what you also have is if if you can just hold out for long enough, then people will eventually probably die.
SPEAKER_00So I I know there's always scare tactics and what's propaganda, what's real, what's not. You as a historian, you can maybe tell us what's fact, what's not. One one story I've heard in my research was former slaves, uh revolutionaries chopping off uh the heads of babies and putting them on pikes to scare others away, and really graphic going after children again, which is what we heard about Naturner as well. Like there was no barrier, it was pure hatred. There was no such thing as holding former slave drivers or slave owners accountable, but anyone simply based on race could have become a victim.
SPEAKER_04It's really difficult to tell. And one of the reasons why it's really difficult to tell is that that the sources from this revolution are so one-sided. Almost all the sources we have are from the white people, and and of course they didn't like the revolution, that's pretty obvious. I think when we speak about you know stories about babies being beheaded and paraded on sticks and so on, we find that throughout history and and it probably has no basis in reality. That's that's my honest opinion as an historian. This is propaganda to make the revolutionaries look like uh complete, you know, barbarians. What can be said for sure is that it was extremely brutal. Like lots of people were killed and and they were killed on spot. And this happens on both sides, like torture, uh dismemberment, uh, etc. etc. That's definitely true on both sides. But I think there is definitely we need to be careful with the sources here because there is this clear racialized interest in depicting the revolutionaries as just complete barbarians, and that doesn't really seem to be uh holding um out. I think so. One thing to mention is that in 1802, it so Haiti becomes the independent in 1804. That is when the revolution ends. In 1802, 1803, Napoleon sends his son-in-law, Leclerc, with an army to retake control over Haiti and to ultimately reinstall slavery. So he gets some control and he etc etc. But at some point, you know, it it's it's going badly for him, and and he can see that he cannot really get control over the colony once again like he could before. And then he says, from now on, we fight a war of extermination.
SPEAKER_00Who said that?
SPEAKER_04Which means that General Leclerc, so Napoleon has sent him to take control over the colony again. Toussaint is basically in power. Yeah. Toussaint is sent to France, where he ultimately dies in prison. And then Leclerc, you know, he says, Okay, we need to fight this war because there's again a rebellion breaking out, a revolution breaking out against the French control in 1802, 1803, because the slave the formerly enslaved people don't want to be re-enslaved, obviously. And then he says, Okay, from now on, this is a war of extermination. We cannot get these black people who have gained their freedom, we cannot make them slaves again. This will never happen. So, what we need to do is we need to exterminate all the blacks, we need to exterminate every person who is above the age of 12. And then they fight the war as a war of extermination. So it's not really about just gaining control, it's a it's genocide, you know. It's it's about killing off every black person, and then you start from scratch basically, and then you can rebuild the plantation system and reintroduce slavery and re-import new slaves. I think that just speaks to the brutality of the situation at this moment.
SPEAKER_00I've never come across this expression in my I haven't done that much research about the word extermination and and genocide, which it is, and if if that's the case.
SPEAKER_02I didn't get that as well. Uh I did read about Cuban attack dogs at this stage that were around that were introduced by the French, and that sounds horrible.
SPEAKER_04That is really horrible, yeah. So it it's dogs being trained to attack black people, like they train them on skin color, and then they in Cuba, and then they take them to uh that's part of the Leclerc expedition in 1802 or 1803, and and and use them uh as part of of this uh struggle in 1802, 1803.
SPEAKER_00That is again that's a very graphic example of the brutality. So a colonial genocide almost in the 18th century still. Like I'm used to them from the late 19th, early 20th century, but that was one of the first, I would assume.
SPEAKER_04They're ultimately not successful. Um so it but the intent is to carry out a genocide.
SPEAKER_02And that's a really interesting point. We're talking about uh the French, we're talking about Napoleon Bonaparte. He's a guy who likes to win wars, and he's gone on a mission to exterminate, and he loses.
SPEAKER_00And he's the father of the Code Civil and still held for that in all of Europe until this day. And this part of his history is not very well covered, I think.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, the Code Civil is itself a very interesting document. It's also uh like women gained a lot of rights during the revolution, and that's also abolished with the Code Civil, so it has a very to it's a double-edged sword, let's say. Um, but Napoleon, so he doesn't send Leclerc to implement a genocide, he sends Leclerc to gain control over the colony once again so that they can eventually re-implement slavery. Um and then Leclerc on the ground sort of realizes we might say that this has to be a war of extermination if if they want to win. But Napoleon to the end of his life, so we have some of his memories from when he's in Santa Elena, you know, and he says, you know, the the the decision to send this expedition to Saint Domingue was one of the worst decisions I ever made. Like there was no chance in Hill this was going to work out. So he regrets this to the day he dies, having be involved himself in this war once again.
SPEAKER_02Thank you for explaining that one. That does make sense. So how does uh how does this end? What's the end game like? Um how do the revolutionaries win?
SPEAKER_00You mentioned independence, 1804. So happy end in the end?
SPEAKER_04Both uh happy and very unhappy. So happy in the sense that they gain independence. Um so you have a declaration of independence, 1st of January 1804, and Haiti becomes a sovereign state, which it is until this day. Um, it's especially the person most venerated, we haven't spoken about him at all. He's called Jean-Jacques Dessaline. Um he's behind this declaration of independence. He sort of becomes one of the leaders after Toussaint. But then very unhappy because of course none of the American or European uh countries are willing to accept that Haiti is now uh an independent state. And so that takes decades, and when it's eventually um accepted in Europe, it it's only on the basis of Haiti paying a huge loan that they're forced to take out from France to buy their own freedom. And this leads to permanent underdevelopment in Haiti until this very day. And it if you want to check it out, you know, the New York Times did a big sort of uh series of articles about um Haitian underdevelopment because of the way in which they gained their freedom um a couple of years ago, uh, where you can read more about this if you want.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much, uh, there, Nicolai Fanegas. There's also more we can read about the topic from yourself, and we didn't have time to touch on that today, but we have linked your article uh on our website, putchcast.com. Can you just summarize your angle there? And what we liked about it, you know a lot more than I do, David, is that it's not all just about Louverture. There were other leaders.
SPEAKER_02It seems there are a lot of people working in the background. Uh, there's a lot of different generals, and uh I guess the way that this has panned out in in sort of gorilla style, not necessarily all on the same page and fighting for the same reasons.
SPEAKER_04What I really wanted to do with that article of what got me writing it was that I think it's important that we see the Haitian revolution as we see all other kinds of revolutionary movements. It's not just that there was one project, one person, everyone agreed, and it was just happy days. You know, there were internal differences, and these were fought out in violent ways that ultimately led to the death of revolutionary leaders. And we know this from the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and so on. And this also happened in the Haitian Revolution. The reason why we don't speak about it that much is that we don't really have a lot of source material. It's very difficult to try and get to know the sort of internal workings of the revolutionary movement. But what I did do in that article was try and and you know take a look at all the information that we have about the very early revolutionary movement. So in the fall of 1791, and see, you know, what kind of different political what kind of different leaders were there and what were there, different kinds of projects. Can we actually say something about this? Because what happens is that many of the leaders of the early revolution are executed or assassinated by some of those who then become the leaders of the revolution right after that. And I think this is this is also really interesting interesting because it speaks to these different kinds of ideals, different kinds of projects, different kinds of personalities that were, of course, part of the Heitian Revolution. Like I mentioned, in the fall of 1791, it's like 100,000 people. Like, of course, they would have different viewpoints and projects and so on. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's fascinating how revolution always seems to be there seems to be a very fine line between revolution and civil war, which which played out here again. It it did both, yeah but but I think on Putsch today we can say this was a successful one. It didn't really pay off for the people, unfortunately, of Haiti. Which leads me to the question, Nicolai, have you actually ever been there yourself to the country?
SPEAKER_04I have never been to Haiti myself, uh, which uh is something I really want to do at some point. I mean the situation seems quite unstable, and it does every time I really plan to go. The Haitian revolution is so important to uh later uh thinkers and so who speak about you know black freedom, uh black emancipation, and so on. It really is a symbol within black revolutionary theory and political theory and for black movements. And so I think it's if for us, I mean, uh for a lot of people it seems like it's just the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, etc. etc. But for a lot of people it really is this uh symbol of uh freedom and emancipation.
SPEAKER_00And how did you come about studying this topic?
SPEAKER_04This goes back about 15 years. Uh, I started doing my PhD and I wanted to do my PhD about responses to revolutionary movements. So basically the emergence of the modern uh secret police and how that sort of evolved in in Europe. And then I had this colleague who was like, okay, what about the Haitian Revolution? Because I was really getting into revolutions and especially the French Revolution. And I had honestly to say I'd never heard about it, and I was so embarrassed. And then I just took a deep dive pretty quickly. And this, so I said this was 15 years ago. This was also happening in a moment where there was an upsurge in interest in the Haitian Revolution. So, from being a rather sort of peripheral subject throughout the noughties and tens, it just there was a boom, there was an explosion of research on the Haitian revolutions, which means that today we have like 20 really good books about different aspects of the Haitian Revolution. So it's really become a very important subject. And of course, with decolonialization and questions about race and black freedom and so on, you know, the Haitian Revolution has really become something that is discussed a lot within um history.
SPEAKER_02How um if you put yourself in the shoes of uh of the French, how did they view this in history looking back today?
SPEAKER_04That's actually a really good question. I mean, I think it's starting to be appreciated more what actually happened in Haiti um in France now. Of course, I mean the main memory of the Haitian Revolution was about, you know, uh white people being killed, the demise of the French colonial empire. But I think as the French have increasingly started to reckon with their own imperial past, you know, the Haitian Revolution is also in France becoming an increasingly important uh subject. For some port cities, like it's important to mention that that cities like Nantes, um Le Havre, other of these port cities, their trade with uh Haiti, of course, also went down. Like so, this was also the start of the downfall of uh places like Nantes and other places in western France, these big port cities. And so, in this way, you know, like you have um post-industrial cities like Manchester or wherever, where you can sort of have this nostalgia about the past where it was an economic powerhouse and so on. This is also what happened in France right after the Haitian Revolution. Like people in Nons were like, okay, we used to be this important city where lots of things were happening, and now we just lost that with no real appreciation about you know the slave slave system and and the ordeals of of black people. But I think that has throughout the last couple of decades that started to change a lot. Um, you also get like memorial, you get like you know, this whole fight over statues and so on. You see that in France also happening, that there's more appreciation of um of this um fight for black freedom.
SPEAKER_00That brings us to an end here, podcast. Uh, thanks again, David, for for your research. Thanks again for your time, Nicolai. Um, last question. Again, you are made for this podcast. Will you come back to us to talk about Papa Doc?
SPEAKER_04Let me just say yes, but you know that would that would actually be something I had to read a bit more up and if you yeah, let's fast forward 170 years and uh see what happened to AT until then.
SPEAKER_00Let's do that. Thank you again for your time, and uh all the listeners out there, please don't forget to subscribe. You find all the details on putchcast.com, where you also find uh Nicolai's article and many more of our episodes. And you can, of course, leave a suggestion for any future coups, uh revolts, revolutions that we should cover on this wonderful airwave. Thank you very much. Thank you.
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