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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/kumm01192010.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/kumm01192010.html<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">January 19,
2010<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>Haiti's
Robespierre <br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">The
Tragedy of Toussaint L'Ouverture
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By BJÖRN KUMM
<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">W</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>hile the mass graves are being filled up in
Haiti and international opinion devotes some fleeting moments of
attention to this unhappy nation, all we hear about is misery, poverty,
corruption, chaos. This of course was to be expected. Haiti is seen as
simply another "failed state" one can only feel sorry for and
which will need international intervention. Few people remember – if they
ever knew – that Haiti has a glorious past. It was the people of Haiti
who two hundred years ago made the first serious attempt to turn
the lofty principles of the French into palpable reality.<br><br>
Towards the end of the eighteenth century, Haiti, in those days Saint
Domingue, was France´s richest colony. Haiti´s sugar-plantations and
Haiti´s African slaves provided the economic backbone also of
revolutionary France. After the fall of the Bastille, both Haiti´s white
slave-owners and emancipated Haitian mulattoes sent representatives to
the revolutionary convention in Paris. Haiti´s slave and plantation
owners were relieved that the French monarchy and French commercial
controls had collapsed which opened up an interesting new market in
neighboring United States. Haiti´s mulattoes were enthralled by French
revolutionary principles. A Haitian mulatto leader, Lacombe, insisted
that freedom, brotherhood and equality were principles which ought to be
observed also in Haiti. He was immediately hanged by irate French slave
owners.<br><br>
Haiti´s popular majority, hundreds of thousands of African slaves, sent
no representatives to revolutionary Paris. Instead they organized
themselves, using the cover of voodoo sessions, which were tolerated by
French plantation owners who thought their slaves were merely gathering
to dance and worship their African gods. But, says the foremost historian
of the Haitian revolution, Trinidadian author C.L.R. James, Haiti´s
slaves were already a modern proletariat, collectivized by their work on
the big plantations. And they too heard the rumors from France and the
signals of the revolution.<br><br>
The first Haitian slave rebellion took place in the month of August 1791.
Twelve thousand slaves in the northern parts of Saint Domingue rose up,
ransacked the plantations and hanged their oppressors from the nearest
palm trees. And this is where Toussaint L´Ouverture, Haiti´s
revolutionary leader, enters world history. He was a literate, black
supervisor on a plantation where his French master seems to have been
fairly tolerant and was protected by Toussaint against
rebellious slaves. For a while Toussaint was seen as a benign Uncle Tom,
but he had read his Julius Caesar and realized that the slaves needed
military organization. He raised a black army and had the satisfaction of
defeating two European invasions, first the troops sent out by
revolutionary France to quell the slave rebellion, after that one hundred
thousand British soldiers, dispatched by prime minister William Pitt the
younger. The invaders were thoroughly beaten by Haiti´s African defenders
and by yellow fever.<br><br>
In France, especially the Jacobins showed a great deal of sympathy for
revolutionary Haiti, and in 1793 slavery was banned. However, after
assuming power, the First Consul, Napoléon Bonaparte, decided to
reintroduce slavery and, as he put it, "rip the epaulettes off the
shoulders of the Negroes". Napoléon sent new invasion forces. Haiti
did survive as an independent nation but was under perpetual pressure
from France, England, the United States and Spain. Toussaint
L´Ouverture died in a French dungeon. <br><br>
Haiti, it could truly be said, drew the ultimate consequences of
the French revolution. In the United States and in France
freedom was born for white people. In Haiti freedom was born for
everybody.<br><br>
But why did everything later go wrong? C.L.R. James in his marvellous
<i>The Black Jacobins, </i>published in 1938, suggests that Toussaint
L´Ouverture in fact remained too much of a loyal French citizen. He
wanted the formerly enslaved Haitians to become exemplary
Frenchmen. He wanted to show the world that black men could build a
civilized state. French should be spoken as correctly in Port au Prince
as in Paris. And he intervened brutally against his own followers, who
began wondering if they would have to go on slaving for French plantation
owners, white and mulattoes, who had been invited back to Haiti by
Toussaint L`Ouverture. <br><br>
C.L.R. James sadly concludes that Toussaint L´Ouverture, Haiti´s
revolutionary leader, was in fact a Black Jacobin, a Caribbean
Robespierre, radical but authoritarian, not inclined to listen to his
people. Instead of mobilizing the population of Haiti to claim their
rights, Toussaint first of all wished to be accepted by the contemporary
international establishment and be seen as a reliable upholder of the
colonial economy. After Toussaint, the leaders of Haiti turned out to be
less respectful – concerning the ruthless Dessalines C.L.R. James
famously comments: "His ties to French civilization were of the
slenderest". But they successfully fought Napoleon´s forces and in
1804 declared independence. However. in order to be accepted by what has
sometimes been called the civilized world, independent Haiti had to pay
damages to France and to the white slave-owners who had already made
gigantic profits from France´s richest colony. In order to pay, Haiti had
to borrow enormous sums from French banks. Haiti remained in the hock for
more than a hundred years, with sad consequences for the Haitian economy.
The final payment to France was made in 1947. <br><br>
We now hear Barack Obama talk about the common history that joins Haiti
with the United States. Am I the only one who sees a certain resemblance
between Toussaint L´Ouverture, struggling for respectability, and the
current US president who is so overly respectful in his relations with
Wall Street and other rulers of the world? I suggest Obama, in addition
to Eduardo Galeano´s
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0853459916/counterpunchmaga">
<i>The open veins of Latin America</a></i>, handed to him by Hugo Chavez
a few months ago, should also read C.L.R. James
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679724672/couinterpunchmaga">
<i>The Black Jacobins</a> </i>to remind him how lofty ideals were once
translated into reality.<br><br>
<b>Björn Kumm</b> is a journalist living in Malmö, Sweden. He can
be reached at <a href="mailto:kumm@telia.com">kumm@telia.com</a>
<br><br>
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