4.4: Sugar and the Haitian Revolution

Introduction 

The Haitian Revolution, more than almost any other, had a significant ripple effect on slavery and slave owners throughout North American and Caribbean colonies, mainly due to its successful conclusion with the end of slavery and renaming of the territory. Taking place in 1791, it occurred a mere two years after the French Revolution and only eight years after the end of the American Revolution, with both events contributing to the inspiration for the uprising. However, while all events involved a belief in oppression and a desire for freedom from that oppression, the Haitian Revolution was the most unique in that the people seeking freedom were being physically held against their will and forced to labor, which was the largest driving force for the revolution. Figure 4.4.1 is an 1813 painting of Toussaint Loverture, the leader of the Haitian Revolution. The western part of Hispaniola, St. Domingue, was under colonial rule in the late eighteenth century. Starting in 1791, Toussaint Louverture led the only successful slave revolt in history. This painting depicts him as a confident general in his military uniform. 

Figure 4.4.1: Portrait of Toussaint Louverture, leader of the Haitian Revolution, in his uniform, Alexandre François Louis, comte de Girardin, in the Public Domain.

Sugar Rush

Named Saint Domingue by the French, what would be renamed Haiti after the revolution was a colony in the Caribbean.  Their main economy involved the processing of sugar since the climate was conducive to growing this labor-intensive and highly sought-after commodity. France wasn’t the only European country to have sugar plantations in this area either; both Britain and the Netherlands also maintained a strong presence there to feed the Afro-Eurasian appetite for this relatively new product.  During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, sugar had been exclusive to the upper classes, used by royalty and nobility to showcase power through the culinary arts, being hard to grow. However, colonization and updated growing techniques made it available to all classes, which in turn promoted the growth of these plantations. Slave labor was therefore an integral part of the success of this particular commodity since the work was difficult at best and shortened life spans at worst (see Figure 4.4.2).  

Figure 4.4.2: “A Representation of the Sugar Cane and the Art of Making Sugar,” a picture of a sugar plantation for a magazine in the eighteenth century, Popular Graphic Arts, in the Public Domain.

Due to the nature of the work on a sugar plantation, an enslaved person's life expectancy was very short.  The days tended to be long, hot, and humid, and the work exhausting, so the majority of the labor force was made up of men.  Sugarcane is a member of the bamboo family, and thus difficult to work with.  The stalks grew thick and became tough to harvest, and the sap within the poles needed to be forcefully removed by hand in order to be cooked down into the crystals of sugar.  Sugarcane also did not have specific planting and harvesting seasons like cash crops further north – it often grew at different points throughout the year depending on weather and once grown, would have to be harvested quickly in order to get the best product. Figure 4.4.2 depicts sugarcane processing on a plantation in the Caribbean. A white plantation owner with a stick in left hand is looking and pointing in the direction of a few slaves who are engaged in processing the cane. Sugarcanes, palm trees, and a man in a boat are also seen in the image.

As a result, slaves often dropped dead from exhaustion within three years of arrival on the plantation. The weather remained hot and humid at night, so the enslaved people had little recovery time in the sparse sleeping quarters they were allotted. During heavy harvests, enslaved people often worked for several days in a row with little, if any, rest. Some enslaved people with special skills in sugar, molasses, or rum production could find themselves in marginally better situations, but the majority of the enslaved people were only used for their labor until they could work no more. Plantation owners could have changed their practices, but the reduced profits would have exceeded the replacement costs of the enslaved people, so planters chose to work their enslaved people to death quickly and buy more. This caused the enslaved people to resent not only the plantation owners but also the white French government who allowed this treatment in the name of profit. 

The Revolution

Encouraged by the French Revolution, enslaved people on sugar plantations in French San Domingue rebelled in 1791 and overthrew the predominately white French European government of the island. The rebellion was violent and bloody, with the enslaved people taking out their anger and resentment on their mainly white and free owners, the owners’ families, and government officials. Port cities in the United States were flooded with news, along with those fleeing the violence; slaveholding "refugees" from Haiti arrived in Virginia with their enslaved laborers after July 1793. Although the new country attempted to keep news of the revolution quiet, word still spread quickly, especially through the enslaved people's ranks in slave-holding states and regions. 

Slavery in French colonies was then abolished by the Jacobins in 1793, and the army of former enslaved people fought a British invasion to a standstill in a five-year war ending in 1798. But after declaring himself Emperor of the French, Napoleon reinstituted slavery and sent troops to retake the island for France. This would end up a mistake by Napoleon, who would find his troops and money running out as a result of this attempt. This led to the sale of the French territories of Louisiana in 1803 to the fledgling United States for more money to continue his takeover of Europe, until his disastrous march into Russia in 1812. 

Napoleon’s army, which outnumbered Haitian forces two to one, captured l’Ouverture, seen in Figure 4.4.1, in 1803 and transported him to a French prison where he died, but the revolution continued under l’Overture’s lieutenant Jean-Jacques Dessalines. The formerly enslaved people defeated the French and established the Republic of Haiti in 1804. Thomas Jefferson was President of the United States when Haiti became the first ever nation created by formerly enslaved people who gained their freedom in armed rebellion and only the second American republic to free itself from European colonialism. However, the author of the Declaration refused to recognize Haiti’s independence. The slavery-supporting South actually blocked recognition of Haiti by the U.S. government until the Civil War, when a North-only Congress and President Lincoln finally established diplomatic relations in 1862.

Aftermath and Black Activism

The Haitian Revolution inspired free and enslaved black Americans and terrified white Americans. Free people of color embraced the revolution, understanding it as a call for full abolition and the rights of citizenship denied in the United States. Over the next several decades, Black Americans continually looked to Haiti as an inspiration in their struggle for freedom. For example, in 1829 David Walker, a Black abolitionist in Boston, wrote an Appeal that called for resistance to slavery and racism. Walker called Haiti the “glory of the [B]lacks and terror of the tyrants” and said that Haitians, “according to their word, are bound to protect and comfort us.” Haiti also proved that, given equal opportunities, people of color could achieve as much as whites. 

In 1826 the third college graduate of color in the United States, John Russwurm, gave a commencement address at Bowdoin College, noting that, “Haytiens have adopted the republican form of government . . . [and] in no country are the rights and privileges of citizens and foreigners more respected, and crimes less frequent.” In 1838 the Colored American, an early Black newspaper, professed that “no one who reads, with an unprejudiced mind, the history of Hayti . . . can doubt the capacity of colored men, nor the propriety of removing all their disabilities.” Haiti, and the activism it inspired, sent the message that enslaved and free Black people could not be omitted from conversations about the meaning of liberty and equality. Their words and actions—on plantations, streets, and the printed page—left an indelible mark on early national political culture.

The Black activism inspired by Haiti’s revolution was so powerful that anxious white leaders scrambled to use the violence of the Haitian revolt to reinforce white supremacy and pro-slavery views by limiting the social and political lives of people of color. White publications mocked black Americans as buffoons, ridiculing calls for abolition and equal rights. The most (in)famous of these, the “Bobalition” broadsides, published in Boston in the 1810s, crudely caricatured Black and African Americans. Widely distributed materials like these became the basis for racist ideas that thrived in the nineteenth century. But such ridicule also implied that Black Americans’ presence in the political conversation was significant enough to require it. The need to reinforce such an obvious difference between whiteness and Blackness implied that the differences might not be so obvious after all.

The effects of the Haitian Revolution would last for decades after it took place, inspiring a number of other revolts and rebellions not only in the United States but also in other Latin American and Caribbean countries where slavery was still present.  The Haitian Revolution represented hope for freedom from oppression for enslaved people everywhere, particularly Black and African slaves, although there is evidence that it also offered a similar opportunity to indigenous peoples to rise up against the colonizers and those taking their land.

Review Questions

• What made this revolution so...revolutionary? How and why was it unique?
• How did it affect the continued development of the Atlantic world?