scot47

Pursuing my interests in History by working through
"Black Spartacus" by Sudar Hazareesingh.

The story of Toussaint L'Ouverture and the tragedies that led to Papa Doc, familiar to some of us through book by Graham Greene, and the film based on it.
A dilemma for French Revolutionaries in the 1790s - Did the rights of man extend to slaves ?

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-gr...8AM03420121123

uk_grenada

Haiti has always been a basket case of a country and this continues to today. When the UN imported cholera , the major earthquake, and the local murderous police being maybe the most recent occurances.

The french occupy a special place in hell for their actions over the centuries [when did they stop taxing the island for rebellion?] but local leaders have pretty much all been bastards too. Didnt L’overture keep slaves?

scot47

He did and he didn't. I recommend the book. I was surprised about the equivocal position of Bonaparte. And the role of Britannia in the shape of Scotland's own Henry Dundas.

uk_grenada

You are quoting the old british ‘scriptures’ about him. Take a read:On one matter Girard leaves no doubt, which is that L’Ouverture sometimes put his well-known talent for deceit to ruthless purposes. There was a moment in 1799 when, seeing an opportunity to curry favor with the British Empire and the hostile Americans, he treacherously betrayed an antislavery conspiracy in Jamaica — a coldblooded act if ever there was one, even if it served the narrow interest of the emancipated slaves in Saint-Domingue. Maybe L’Ouverture’s antislavery principles were more flexible than James could ever have suspected. L’Ouverture was himself a slave owner at one point (as his father had probably been in the Allada kingdom, Girard tells us), which is a fact that emerged only in 1977.

It is a little shocking to learn from Girard that at an early point in the revolution, when the antislavery cause seemed on the verge of collapse, L’Ouverture broached the idea of betraying his own emancipated followers by leading them back into bondage, in the hope of getting official protection for himself and one of his comrades. Ultimately he restored the slave trade in Saint-Domingue, after having abolished it — restored it because the plantations needed laborers, though he intended to free the newly purchased Africans after they had toiled for a number of years. Meanwhile he promulgated a labor code that in practice was only marginally better than slavery, even if it maintained the principle of emancipation.

L’Ouverture was not, in short, an “abolitionist saint.” He was a man of his time. L’Ouverture’s “equivocation was representative of an age that had to reconcile Enlightenment principles and the labor requirements of plantations. Like three other great figures of the Age of Revolutions — Thomas Jefferson, Simón Bolívar and Napoleon — he had conflicted views on the delicate matter of human bondage.” At least L’Ouverture brought a greater lucidity to his conflicted views than did Jefferson or Napoleon. He knew that his goal was double: to preserve Saint-Domingue’s prospects for wealth, and, even so, to uphold the abolitionist idea.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/b...liberator.html

scot47

The biography by Girard is now contested by Sudar Hazareesingh of Baliol. "Black Spartacus" is a more positive account than that of Girard.

https://www.balliol.ox.ac.uk/dr-sudhir-hazareesingh

Next I shall turn my attention to the life of Dessalines. Then I shall start that task I have avoided until now - a survey of the literature on Napoleon Bonaparte.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Dessalines

uk_grenada

What does ‘positive’ mean in this context? Frankly its an academic exercise, whether some person who died acling time ago was only a slight slave owner or a more major slave owner, the legacy of the rulers of that island has not been a positive one. At least both acknowledge the african / middle eastern heritage of slavery.

scot47

Toussant L'ouverture and his successor Dessalines played a part in liberating the slaves of Haiti. No doubt about that. the region is still mired i n poverty and oppression. Haiti needs a Guevara or similar ! What they gor was the Duvaliers,, pere et fils !

Gordon Barlow

Graham Greene felt frightened in Haiti in Papa Doc's time because he (GG) was writing a critical book. I spent a week there in 1966 as a backpacking tourist, and found it peaceful and very friendly - no doubt because I was not writing a book!

As for what Haiti needs... I think it needs the USA to keep out of the place. The country is way too far gone for it to ever develop democracy, but it might be better governed by the home-grown brownskin elite than by US or UN soldiers.

Gordon Barlow

This thread is dormant, which is a pity. Poor Haiti! A beautiful place and beautiful people - at least as i remember, from my week there fifty-odd years ago. That was in Papa Doc's time. It's gone downhill since then, unfortunately, under other gangster rulers usually backed by the USA. As a way of reviving the thread, let me offer a brief piece in my online journal that I wrote in 2013. You can find it if you Google "Eight o'clock white man's time". It contains a rough thumbnail sketch of the country's history. I hope this post of mine will prompt an update from some BE member who has been there more recently. Please?

uk_grenada

Just to also blame the French - they ruined the country centuries before any american influence. Imagine dominating a country, turning the population into slaves for the french government, who then rebelled. The french send in the gunboats, get most of the island back and extract annual 'reparations' for centuries for it. I believe their enforced payments to France only stopped in mid last century.

caretaker

Haiti took a wallop this morning, 7.2 on the Richter scale:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/haiti-...de-7-1.6141132

uk_grenada

Again - we have to pity poor haiti, not a lot seems to go right there, dont know if youve seen the evidence but there is a lot of killing going on by the police and criminal gangs now too. There is even canibalism in evidence as part of gang culture.

uk_grenada

And for their next issue, theres a tropical storm heading to them round now...