| The History of Haiti:
1804-1820
by
Bob Corbett
Part 2: Post Revolution
The first leader of free and independent
Haiti was Jean-Jacques Dessalines, a former slave and victim of
a cruel and brutal master, furious warrior, hero and leader of the
last days of the revolution, and sworn enemy of whites, especially
the French.
Two apocryphal tales, those wonderful
pieces of folk tradition which every nation has, define Dessalines.
At the Conference of Archaie in 1803, Dessalines was the person
who reputedly tore the white stripe from the French tricolor and
determined Haiti's flag to be two stripes, a blue and red one, to
symbolize that the "white" had been ripped out of Haiti,
perhaps as a prophecy of what was to come in a few months later.
Another famous tale of December 31,
1803, the eve of Haitian Independence, is that when the declaration
of independence was read out the people protested it wasn't what
they wanted to hear. Boisrond-Tonnerrer, an underling of Dessalines,
reported called out "This doesn't say what we really feel.
For our declaration of independence we should have the skin of a
blanc for parchment, his skull for inkwell, his blood for ink, and
a bayonet for pen!" (Cited in Heinl and Heinl, 1978). Dessalines
reportedly took up this cry.
Certainly this hatred of whites, especially
the French, dominated Dessalines' very short regime (2 1/2 years).
However, it was not mere hatred that
moved him. To some extent the professed hatred of the French was
a TACTIC. Dessalines, Christophe and Petion, the earliest Haitian
leaders, were quite worried, even completely preoccupied, with the
expectation that the French would come back and try to resubjugate
Haiti. One recent work even suggested that some of Dessalines' declamation
that the French were coming, and his harsh treatment of Haitian
free workers, were, in part, tactics to remind them of the dangers
of a French return, thus keeping the militarist spirit alive in
order to insure a willing military readiness to defend the nation.
(See, POLANDS'S CARIBBEAN TRAGEDY by Pachonski and Wilson)
Thus I would argue that two main factors
dominate the short rule of Dessalines:
Dessalines first decided to get rid
of the French who were in Haiti. Early in 1804, his first year of
rule, he had the French killed, sparing only a few doctors, priests
and essential exporters. It is generally thought that around 20,000
French were slaughtered, and it was a brutal and harsh extermination.
This had important consequences for Haiti, giving her critics something
concrete to latch onto and helping to build the picture of a savage
nation incapable of being part of the world community.
At the same time, Dessalines, realizing
the horrible economic position of Haiti decided to get the economy
moving again and decided to reinstate the French plantation system
and rebuild the sugar industry. This presented a difficult problem.
How was one to get free people to do the work formerly done by slaves?
This was not a new problem, though
the environment of the problem was new. The slaves had been free
since 1794. Toussaint had introduced a system call FERMAGE and managed
to significantly rebuild the sugar trade. After Dessalines, Henry
Christophe would have even greater success with this system, but
eventually the plantation system died out within the first decade
of independence.
Under fermage the land belonged to
the government. It would be leased out to managers and worked by
workers who were obligated to remain on the land in much the same
way that serfs were in Europe. The workers, while bound to the land,
did receive 25% of the value of the crops to divide amoung themselves,
and housing, food, clothing and basic care. However, their lives
were vigorously regulated and discipline was strict. While the old
slave whip was gone, discipline was carried out with the cocomacaque
stick.
When Dessalines heard that Napoleon
was to be made an emperor, he decided to do so too, and actually
beat Napoleon to the coronation. On October 8, 1804 Jean-Jacques
Dessalines became JACQUES I, EMPEROR. Unlike Henry Christophe a
few years later, he did not create any other nobles, claiming that
he alone was noble.
Perhaps that spirit characterizes much
that went wrong with Dessalines. He was stern, even cruel, demanded
unflinching obedience and ruled with an iron hand. This was not
what most of the Haitian people thought that had fought a war of
independence for, and discontent was widespread.
Aside from the massacre of the French,
another of Dessalines' actions which had long-term affects was his
invasion of Santo Domingo (today's Dominican Republic). He was able
to rush across Santo Domingo toward the capital city, but was not
able to take it, partially because of an accidental arrival of French
ships. Eventually he had to withdraw. But the entire war had been
so brutally effected by Dessalines and his troops that it laid the
ground for the hatred between these two nations.
There was growing discontent with the
rule of Jacques I. This was especially pronounced in the south and
Dessalines marched on the south to put things in order. On Oct.
17, 1806, just short of three years after independence, Emperor
Jacques I was assassinated as he marched.
Haiti was now plunged into a chaotic
period of political maneuvering and civil war that divided Haiti
into two nations under two different leaders for the next 12 years.
Actually, at one time there were 4 Haitis, but for this story I'm
just concentrate on the two main Haitis.
The civil war came about because of
political maneuvering. Henry Christophe assumed that he would become
the ruler to succeed Jacques I. Alexander Petion, leading political
figure in the south and a mulatto, had other ideas. However, Petion's
folks played up to Henry, then outmaneuvered him politically. They
agreed to elect him president, but then saddled him with a constitution
that left him with virtually no power, all the genuine power being
reserved for senate, of which Petion was the head.
(It is interesting to note that a
very similar constitutional tactic is being played out now. On
March 29, 1987 Haiti received a new constitution. This constitution
downplayed the position of president and elevated the role of
prime minister. The first president to actually have to live under
this new constitution has been Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who, from
a constitutional standpoint, holds nothing like the powers of
Haitian presidents from 1806 until today.)
At any rate, Christophe marched on
the south, but the military move didn't settle anything, and a sort
of stand off occurred. Finally, Christophe simply retreated into
his strongly held north and declared the State of Haiti on Feb.
17, 1807. Shortly after, on March 9, 1807, Petion was elected president
of the Republic of Haiti, and there were two Haitis.
And two very different Haitis there
were. My position on them is this. The north (soon to become the
Kingdom of Haiti) is well-known, flashy and quite interesting. But,
it is the Republic of Haiti and the rule of Alexander Petion which
is definitive of the future of Haiti. Given this view, I will briefly
treat of Christophe's colorful rule, and focus on what seems to
me the more important and formative of the two Haitis, Petion's
Republic.
On March 26, 1811 Henry Christophe
had himself crowned King Henry I and changed the name of his "country"
to the Kingdom of Haiti. Unlike Dessalines, he created a large batch
of nobles and organized his kingdom more along the lines of European
monarchies. Henry was a dictatorial king, but a man who saw the
importance of development and set out to bring his kingdom into
the modern world. He began an ambitious project of education, at
least for the children of the elite, and spent incredible wealth
and energy on monuments and buildings.
Two of his most famous monuments were
his own palace of Sans Souci in the village of Milot and the Caribbean's
most famous monument, the huge citadelle on the mountain top of
La Ferriere. The Citadelle had an ostensible military purpose. Like
Dessalines, King Henry I expected France to attempt to re-invade
and regain Haiti as a colony. Since no one formally recognized Haiti
as an independent nation, she was, to the world at large, a colony
in rebellion. Henry's fears were not without solid foundation. His
plan for the Citadelle was to have an impregnable fortress to which
he could retire with a large army and from this fortress carry on
a guerilla war. The strategy was a very good one, thought the Citadelle
never had to be tested for that purpose.
Perhaps the most startling achievement
of Henry I's rule was that he was able to make the fermage system
work quite well, at least to re-establish production of the sugar
plantations. Henry I insisted upon and got vigorous discipline and
enforcement of fermage and was able to return production of sugar
to about 75% of what it was under the French prior to the revolution.
That's an astonishing achievement given that the French were working
with slaves and the Haitian were employing serf-like free people.
But this success in the production
system was the beginning of the end of Henry I's power at the same
time. The Haitian masses did not fight a war of independence to
be introduced to a social system that looked to them very much like
slavery. Many fled to the south where no such system existed, and
others, while not feeling the ability or desire to flee, built up
and increasing hatred of the system of Henry I, despite it's seeming
"success."
Henry's world came crashing down once
Petion died in the south and Jean-Pierre Boyer, his successor, launched
an attack on the north. This was a signal to those within Henry's
realm that an uprising was possible. Many in the masses rose up
in personal indignation of the fermage and other dictatorial aspects
of Henry's rule. Many in the army and elite rose up in an internal
power struggle. Henry's own failing health due to a stoke, weakened
his position and finally on October 13, 1818, rather than be taken
by his enemies, Henry I, Henry Christophe, committed suicide, thus
ending the divided Haitis.
Alexander Petion's Republic of Haiti,
established the economic and social system, and on my view, did
much to determine what sort of nation this would be.
In is my own view that the rule of
Alexander Petion, and his successor Jean-Pierre Boyer, is the most
important rule in the history of Haiti. Obviously the this period
from 1807 to 1818 under Petion and then 1820-1843 under Boyer is
not possible without the revolution and the particular designs of
Dessalines and Christophe, nonetheless, the far reaching impact
of Petion's mode of government has shaped Haiti in a unique manner.
Alexander Petion was, in the main,
a do-nothing leader. He lived a comfortable life in Port-au-Prince,
was fair and quite honest, but didn't intend to exercise much force
on his people. He had an army and did utilize them to keep things
peaceful in his country, especially holding down the rebellion of
Goman in the far western part of the southern peninsula.
Unlike Dessalines and Christophe, he
did NOTHING to reinvigorate the economy. Consequently there was
little economy. But the decisive decision of Petion was to redistribute
land as a means of paying soldiers, since the treasury had no funds.
This was the first land distribution program in the "new world,"
unless one counts the colonial take over of native land as land
redistribution. Petion divided the land into small portions, giving
somewhat larger grants to officers and smaller ones to the common
soldier.
The effect was that Petion created
a country of peasants living on their own land doing subsistence
agriculture and having little or no involvement with government,
or the life of the cities, much less with the external world. Sugar
virtually ceased to exist as a notable crop and coffee, which could
be harvested by the individual farmer on his small plot, became
the dominant crop.
Even this crop was not hugely significant
economically. Given that the elite of the cities, primarily mulatto
associates of Petion, were the coffee brokers, and that they paid
the peasant only a tiny pittance for the coffee, there was a growing
social instantiation of a radically and racially divided two class
system.
On the one hand were the city based
mainly mulatto elite, small in number and quite wealthy, mainly
through the international trade of coffee. On the other side were
the masses of poor black peasant farmers, eking out a living doing
subsistence farming, supplemented by a tiny bit of trade with city
markets, especially in coffee.
This form of life which emerged in
Petion's Haiti is little different from the Haiti we know today.
Things are not exactly the same. Haiti changed with the American
occupation of 1915-1934 which brought about a much more direct international
presence. Haiti changed with the noirist impact of the Duvalier
regime which brought more blacks into the power elite. Haiti changed
with the slow acquisition of small land plots by the elite, converting
Haiti's peasantry more and more into share-cropping peasants than
land owning peasants. Haiti changed with the introduction of drugs
as a major economic and political fact of life in the 1980s, and
Haiti has changed with the rise of the popular movement which both
overthrew Jean-Claude Duvalier and eventually put Jean-Bertrand
Aristide into power.
Despite all of this change, Haiti looks
much like the world of 1818! The huge mass of Haitian people still
struggles along doing subsistence farming and supplementing this
with a bit of trade at the markets. The rich of the cities still
make their money by ownership of rural land, and exporting crops
which they've gotten from the peasant for share-cropping, or purchasing
for a pittance at market. The elite are more color-mixed than in
the past, but it is still a very tiny portion of the people, in
the vicinity of 3% who live lives a great wealth, extracting that
wealth from the peasants, who live lives of extreme poverty and
powerlessness.
There is a great deal of debate in
scholarly circles of what to make of Petion's rule. Was he this
liberal leader who simply gave the people of Haiti what they wanted,
or was he a clever politician who was able to control the country
and people better by serving the interests of a tiny elite and tolerating
the emisseration of the masses? I really don't know what the motives
of Petion were, but anyone really wanting to explore this will find
a good start in analyzing that literature in David Nicholls' book
FROM DESSALINES TO DUVALIER. I'm less interested in figuring out
Petion's motives than I am in seeing that this was indeed a critical
historical period in determining the shape of the future of Haiti.
|
Celebrating 200 Years of Freedom 
