This is one
of the most unique books I’ve ever read. James writes a history book with a
polemical style, including his own thoughts on the modern era (1938) towards
the end of most chapters in short asides. But the core of the book is the
Haitian Revolution, the greatest slave revolt in history. The story is an
incredible testament to the triumph of the oppressed over the oppressors and it
is an exciting read. At times, it is difficult to keep up with the names so I
had to do a bit of googling, but mainly you just need to know about one guy:
Toussaint Louverture, the leader and hero of the revolution. One passage that best
exemplifies both James’ love of Louverture and his modern polemicizing is when
he writes of Louverture that, “He said afterwards that, from the time the
troubles began, he felt he was destined for great things. Exactly what,
however, he did not know; he and his brother slaves only watched their masters
destroy one another, as Africans watched them in 1914 – 1918, and will watch
them again before long.”
The
brutality of slavery seems worse than anywhere else I have ever read about.
James gives the reader appalling descriptions of it, for example, telling us
that one-third of enslaved children born on plantations died of jaw-sickness, a
mysterious illness that seemed to only affect enslaved children and was likely
the result of a choice by mothers and midwives to kill the children rather than
let them grow up in the cruelty of slavery. Most colonists in San Domingo
(pre-revolution Haiti) were transitory, a problem that existed in the Spanish
colonies as well. This meant that unlike in the English colonies, where
colonists sought to stay and build a society, the French colonists just wanted
to make as much money as possible, extract what wealth they could from the
island, and return to France as wealthy merchants. Interestingly, racism grew
stronger and stronger as time went on in the 17th and 18th
centuries. Mulattoes (an ugly term but the one that James uses) were all free
up to the age of 24 by law in the 17th century and the Negro Code of
1685 authorized white men to marry enslaved African women, freeing them and
their children. Free Mulattoes and freed Africans had the same rights as free
white men initially. But as the population grew, the French colonists developed
a familiar hierarchy with Whites at the top, followed by Mulattoes, followed by
Africans. Mulattoes were given just enough to bind them to the whites rather
than the blacks and they formed the police organization responsible for
protecting travelers and capturing escaped slaves. They also joined the
militia. However, Mulattoes were still vulnerable to lynch mobs and would lose
any case in court to a white man, significantly lowering their status. Yet
until 1716, every slave who touched French soil was free, a law that was
reaffirmed in 1762. Blacks and Mulattoes served nobility at court in Paris and
some Mulatto children were sent to Paris to be educated. But in the 1750’s and
60’s persecutions of Mulattoes and free blacks grew. New laws were passed in
San Domingo to ban Mulattoes from carrying weapons, meeting “on the pretext of”
weddings, feasts or dances, staying in France, or taking the titles of Monsieur
and Madame. They were left with the privilege of lending white men money (which
I am sure they wouldn’t get back).
The French
Revolution came in 1789 and the Haitian Revolution in 1792, a time when San
Domingo’s production of sugar cane and other agricultural products was at its
most profitable heights. Slavers continued to bring in more and more slaves. In
1770 it was between 10-15 thousand brought in and by 1787, French slavers
brought more than 40,000 slaves in chains to the colony per year. In 1789,
there were half a million slaves in the colony, and more than two-thirds were
born in Africa. This was not a stable society.
When the
French Revolution began, the “small whites,” AKA the whites who were not the
largest landowners, joined the revolution. Due to their intense violence and
lawlessness, the Mulattoes joined with the “big whites” and the royalists in
opposing the revolution. The revolutionaries in Paris debated over what rights
to give to Mulattoes in San Domingo and arrived at a compromise that every
Mulatto born of two free parents would be given the vote- this meant giving the
vote to just 400 men. This is pretty underwhelming, but at the time it was seen
as a major achievement of equal rights. To bring the revolutionaries in San
Domingo in order, the French government sent two regiments, but those soldiers
quickly defected and joined the revolutionaries in San Domingo.
Meanwhile,
the enslaved Africans listened and understood that big changes were coming.
Naturally, they began a revolution of their own and began escaping en masse to
the countryside and mountains. The big whites, fearing the chaos in France,
turned for help to Britain, Spain, and the United States but did not receive
any. Instead, it was the Mulattoes, anxious about what little property they
had, who volunteered to fight the slave revolution while the small whites
demanded the exorbitant price of service of 2/3 of all the booty taken from
recovered plantations. I won’t go into detail on Toussaint Louverture’s early
life, except to say that when the revolution came, he was a middle-aged man,
enslaved on a plantation where he was a sort of manager and had gotten some
education.
Upon
becoming a leader, Louverture went to the Assembly of San Domingo, where he negotiated
with the big whites to end the revolution. He pled that he would end it all if
they would free just 60 slaves, but they would not accept even that. From then
on, he knew that freedom would have to be taken by force. He built an army full
of Africans born out of the colony who could not even speak French and the
chief officers were also ex-slaves. I think that really emphasizes the breadth
of the accomplishment—Louverture united men who didn’t even share a language
under the leadership of former slaves—that is something astounding.
Initially,
Louverture did not seek independence, just the freedom of enslaved Africans in
San Domingo, but the French government never believed that. Louverture
eventually was forced to act against the Directory, then ruling France, when he
invaded the Spanish side of the island, knowing that the French may turn on him
and that he would need control over all of his flanks. Before Napoleon came to
power, the colony was essentially in a civil war, with Louverture as the
foremost warlord. Over the decade of the 1790’s, one-third of the 500,000 blacks
were killed. Only 10,000 of the original 30,000 whites on the island remained, although
about 30,000 of the original 40,000 free blacks and Mulattoes were still there.
Despite all
of the racism and betrayal by the whites, Louverture strongly believed in the
greatness of revolutionary France and the importance of French culture and
connection for Haiti. This was what killed him. He trusted too heavily in
Napoleon, who sent General Leclerc to Haiti to reimpose slavery and secure the
colony for France. Louverture simply did not believe this. As he fought with Leclerc,
Louverture believed that the French general was acting outside of Napoleon’s
orders and Louverture refused to believe that a fine revolutionary like
Bonaparte would want to reimpose oppression on the island. Louverture was wrong.
He planned to capture Leclerc and send him back to France with an account of
Leclerc’s conduct, in the vain hope that Bonaparte would punish the not-so-wayward
general. He hoped Bonaparte would see reason and that the relationship with
France would be maintained but it was not to be. The author puts it well when
he says that Louverture’s “politics lagged behind events.” Napoleon later said
at St. Helena that he regretted capturing Louverture and putting him in
conditions to die, as Louverture was truly a moderate who would have ruled the
island as a colony of free men loyal to France or as a French ally. The critical
moment when other Haitians began to lose trust in Louverture and everyone lost
trust in Leclerc was when the French reimposed slavery in Guadeloupe, signifying
the same plan for San Domingo. Even this caused Leclerc to lose faith in
Bonaparte, as it made his job in San Domingo even harder as he and his troops
were killed by Yellow Fever and other tropical diseases. Of the 34,000 French
soldiers that landed, 24,000 were dead and 8,000 were in the hospital by the
end of the expedition, leaving just 2,000 healthy and able to fight. They were
ravaged.
My biggest
problem with this book is that the author is a complete and total raging
Communist. He praises Robespierre and has a whole appendix lauding Fidel Castro
and comparing him to Toussaint Louverture. I don’t know what to do with this
information. The book was good, but stuff like that completely delegitimizes it
in my eyes. I was literally writing “wtf” in my notes at points because I couldn’t
believe what James was saying. Additionally, the author engages in a little too
much hero worship over Louverture, talking about the man sleeping two hours a
night and being satisfied only with a banana and a glass of water. I believe
that he was a great and impressive man with lots of self-control but that is just
plainly ridiculous. He was still a mortal.
After
finishing this book, I can’t help but think that there is sort of a trifecta of
great American men (in the hemispheric sense) in this era: Washington, Bolivar,
and Louverture. They have a lot of differences in class and race as well as
language, but all three are legendary generals who were responsible for freeing
their people from colonial oppressors. Bolivar even spent some time in Haiti.
Yet all three came to different conclusion on slavery. Washington preserved it
and was a slaver all his life. Bolivar was a slaver but sought to free the
slaves. Louverture’s entire reason for being was to free his enslaved people.
Both Louverture and Bolivar are especially famous for spending so much time in
the saddle, riding insane distances frequently from one end to the other of
their respective lands. Only Washington, though, can be said to have died with
his country intact, as Bolivar watched Gran Colombia fracture and Louverture,
tricked by Napoleon, was captured and died before his revolution was complete.
All three were well-educated and they would all be very interesting dinner
companions. None of them ever met each other but I would like to hear their
conversation if they did.
To end, I
would just like to point out that this revolution was a bloody and horrible
event on all sides, but that only the side of the freed slaves could be
justified. In this war, General Dessalines famously massacred whites all over
the island, but you have to remember that the whites had been burying black up
to their necks near insects, drowning escaped slaves, and engaging in some of
the worst cruelties imaginable for two centuries before revolution broke out.
The whites fought a war of extermination just like Dessalines—only they lost. During
the war, sixteen of Louverture’s generals were chained to a rock where they
wasted away for 17 days. Prisoners were broken on the wheel. But in light of
all this brutality on both sides, you just have to ask what were they fighting
for? And obviously fighting to free people from slavery is far more righteous
that fighting to put chains back on the slaves’ necks. So I’m with the Haitians.
