The American Revolution declared that all men were created equal. The French Revolution proclaimed the Rights of Man. In Haiti, enslaved people took those promises literally.
In 1791, a massive slave revolt erupted on the Caribbean island of Saint-Domingue (modern-day Haiti), the crown jewel of the French Empire. What followed was much more than a mere rebellion; it became the most far-reaching movement of the Age of Revolutions.
In this episode of Beyond Ideology, we trace the Haitian Revolution from its causes in the brutal plantation economy of Saint-Domingue through the rise of Toussaint Louverture, through Napoleon’s disastrous attempt to re-colonize the island, to end with Jean-Jacques Dessalines’s declaration of Haitian independence in 1804.
Along the way, we explore the contradictions of the Enlightenment as personified by Thomas Jefferson and his diplomatic response to the world’s first Black republic. We also unpack the economic forces behind slavery, class, and empire and examine why the Haitian Revolution went further than either the American or French Revolutions.
The story of the Haitian Revolution, perhaps the most consequential revolution in modern history, deserves to be more widely known. This is our humble attempt to right that wrong.
Next time: Allen takes us to South America for the extraordinary life of Simón Bolívar, the “Napoleon of the South,” and his struggle to destroy Spain’s empire in the Americas.
From Our Bookshelf
Want to dive deeper into the Haitian Revolution? Here are the two books that shaped this episode:
The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James:
The canonical classic that restored global awareness of the Haitian Revolution. First published in 1938, James, a Trinidadian Marxist academic and activist, wrote the book as a blueprint to inspire anti-colonial movements in Africa and the Caribbean.
Avengers of the New World by Laurent Dubois:
THE comprehensive modern history of the Haitian Revolution, tracing Saint-Domingue from the origins of the French colony through the slave uprising, the rise of Toussaint Louverture, and the long struggle that culminated in Haitian independence.
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