At the end of December 1803, independence was won. Two challenges remained:
ensuring the survival of the "first black republic" in the face of threats ofrevenge; respond to the aspirations of a people who were certainly ready to
defend their revolution, but also wanted to taste the freedom acquired. ----
During the first twenty years of independence, the new ruling class, resulting
from the army, oscillated between two tendencies. Either a state capitalism,
nationalist and militarist, which would maintain the plantation economy; it was
the line of Dessalines then Christophe. Or a liberal capitalism, which would
privatize land for the benefit of the peasants and the bourgeoisie, and normalize
its relations with the old metropolis; it was the line of Pétion, then of Boyer.
Citadel island
From 1804 to 1806, under the rule of Dessalines, Haiti was a nation in arms,
feverishly preparing for a possible new aggression. As the Constitution of 1805
stipulated: "At the first alarm gun, the cities disappear and the nation is
standing." It is therefore rebuilt the coastal cities, torch in hand; a dense
network of fortresses, sometimes disproportionate, equipped with hundreds of
cannons was erected in the mountains; an army of 60,000[1]was maintained ;
"agrarian caporalism " was reinforcedon the plantations, which were massively
state-controlled; we sought American and English neutrality by promising that
Haiti would notAnti-slavery " proselytism "[2]. Finally, the Haitian nation was
demarcated by the sword, in a "last act of national authority"[3].
From 1804 to 1820, 20,000 workers erected the gigantic Laferrière citadel, then,
nearby, the Sans-Souci Palace, home of King Christophe.
Painting by Ulrick Jean-Pierre (1993)
The extermination of the "French whites"
The revolution and the war of independence had generated a Haitian national
consciousness, uniting the yellow (mulatto) and black "races", to the exclusion
of the white minority, compromised by its support for the Leclerc expedition. At
that time, there were only a few hundred white families left in Haiti, either
they did not have the means to flee, or they chose to stay, reassured by promises
of non-retaliation.
Henry Christophe (1767-1820)
This former slave is one of the main generals of Toussaint Louverture. After
independence, he carved out a state in the north of the country and was crowned king.
However, the general staff was thinking of a more definitive solution for this
"enemy of the interior": either deportation or extermination. The second option
won. It was supervised by Dessalines himself, from February to April 1804, to
ensure that local officers, even the most reluctant, carried out the massacre. "I
want the crime to be national," he will say, "for everyone to dip their hand in
blood[...]. What matters to me the judgment of posterity on this measure
commanded by politics, provided that I save my country." [4]Each town, in turn,
was surrounded by the troops, and the soldiers entered the houses to kill
systematically, with bayonets. Without a shot, so as not to alert the next
locality. There were sometimes public celebrations and popular participation in
the killings, but also families who tried to hide the condemned. Once all the men
and male children were killed, we deliberated and then decided to slaughter the
women and girls as well. There were at least 3,000 dead.
Later, this massacre of civilians will revolt Haitian historians: "bloody
reprisals, like the crimes which provoke them, are the domain of barbarism",
wrote Beaubrun Ardouin, who saw it as the ultimate atrocity of a war that had it.
counted many others[5].
Dessalines crowned himself emperor in October 1804, and his authoritarianism soon
alienated from him both the peasantry who toiled under the cocomacac, the
bourgeoisie who exploited the plantations for rent, and some of his senior
officers who, like Alexandre Pétion and Henry Christophe, held him for a
brute[6]. From October 1806, the South was in revolt, and the emperor was killed
in an ambush.
Abandonment of the plantation economy
Alexandre Pétion (1770-1818)
This mulatto general close to André Rigaud did a lot to unify the resistance to
the French in 1802-1803. President after the fall of Dessalines, he embodies the
"normalization" of the revolution.
The Dessalines tomboys, however, could not come to an agreement. The republic,
restored in 1807, was quickly divided between Pétion, in the south, and
Christophe, in the north. Pétion, who embodied the return oftherather liberal "
mulatto party ", conceded to the peasantry the end of agrarian caporalism and the
hated large plantations. The lands were sold at a low price to the cultivators,
who lived there as they wished. Sugar and cotton production fell, with coffee
becoming the only export crop.
On the other hand, Christophe, tireless legislator and builder, prolonged
Dessalines, and made the black proletariat toil like never before: on the sugar
cane plantations, on the construction sites of its fortresses and its palaces.
Crowned king in 1811, when the revolt was already raging, he committed suicide in
1820, cornered by a revolution.
His northern kingdom then returned to the Haitian Republic, now chaired by
Pétion's successor, General Jean-Pierre Boyer. In 1822, he annexed the
Spanish-speaking east of the island, which since 1809 had resumed its autonomy
under the aegis of the former colonists, then placed itself under the protection
of Spanish imperialism. Haiti remained unified until 1844, when the East gained
its independence definitively under the name of the Dominican Republic.
By this date, the generation of revolutionaries of 1791-1803 was extinct. And the
Haitian Revolution was becoming a fascinating object of history.
Guillaume Davranche (UCL Montreuil)
SCANDAL OF THE "DEBT OF INDEPENDENCE"
During the decade 1815-1825, peace returned to Europe reopened the possibility of
French action against Haiti. Not a risky invasion, which was quickly dismissed by
the restored monarchy, but a maritime blockade, with a view to obtaining
compensation for settlers expropriated from their domains. According to historian
Beaubrun Ardouin, President Jean-Pierre Boyer feared that such a blockade would
precipitate a new secession from the East, or even from the North, which had just
been reunited with the Haitian Republic. He therefore considered planning to
"buy" the tranquility. In exchange for a peace treaty and recognition of
independence, Haiti would pay tribute.
The transaction was concluded in 1825, on disastrous terms. President Boyer
accepted both an astronomical indemnity (150 million gold francs, reduced to 90
million in 1838) and a 50% reduction in customs duties for French ships. To pay,
he got into debt with French banks. And to reimburse the banks, he squeezed the
peasantry. His Rural Code, in 1826, attempted to resuscitate "agrarian
caporalism" in an attempt as anachronistic as it was futile.
Perhaps Boyer hoped that this normalization-humiliation would be beneficial in
the medium term. On the contrary. It bled the population for decades. It sucked
in the income from coffee exports, the price of which was steadily declining,
then from timber exports, leading to dramatic deforestation. Two hundred years
later, Haiti still suffers from the delay due to the payment of the "independence
debt". Civil society is demanding "restitution and reparation".
Illustration: President Jean-Pierre Boyer, successor to Pétion, who accepted the
"debt of independence".
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Dossier-Revolution-haitienne-epilogue-Face-a-l-imperialisme-defier-ou-concilier
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