[babopeddy]

(few Americans are well-versed in the history of Hayti and how the current nation came to be. This two-part article should give a detailed background. It is a bit dated--from the early 1990's--but gives a good background nonetheless):


Bringing Democracy to Haiti

When Christopher Columbus touched shore, on December 6, 1492, on the West Indies island which he named La Isla Española (Hispaniola) and claimed for the Spanish crown, it was inhabited by Arawak Indians, whose own name for their island was Haiti.

The Spanish failed to develop their hold on the island in a systematic way, focusing their efforts primarily on the mining of precious metals in its eastern end and leaving the west unsettled, after annihilating most of the Arawaks there. During the 17th century French and English adventurers established their own presence on Hispaniola, especially in the western end of the island. By the latter part of the 17th century the French had de facto control of much of the west, and in 1697 this control was given de jure status by a formal agreement between the French and Spanish governments. The French renamed their western third of the island Saint-Domingue, while the Spanish called their colony on the eastern part Santo Domingo. The mountains and jungle of the interior provided a natural border between the French and Spanish parts of Hispaniola.

Unlike the Spanish, the French developed their new colony efficiently, establishing plantations and importing Black slaves from Africa as laborers. By 1750 sugar, coffee, cocoa, indigo, and cotton were being produced in such quantity that 700 ships were kept busy carrying these goods back to France. During the 18th century Saint- Domingue was the most prosperous of all the European colonies in the New World. Its fertile northern plain was dotted with the white manors of the French landowners, each surrounded by green fields and the dwellings of slaves; and its bustling cities, most notably Le Cap Français on the northern coast, were filled with fine, stone buildings.

In 1789, on the eve of the French Revolution, the population of Saint-Domingue was about 35,000 Whites and nearly 500,000 Black slaves. In addition there were approximately 25,000 free non-Whites, most of them mulatto offspring of the earliest White male colonists and Black female slaves. By the latter part of the century, however, enough women had arrived from France to balance the French population sexually, a color line was firmly established, and intimate relations across this line were taboo.

Saint-Domingue, alas, was not spared the intrigues and agitation which, in Europe, led to the disaster of the French Revolution. The Republicans and the Royalists both had their partisans among the colonists. In addition there were crazed zealots who deliberately sowed the seeds of rebellion among the Black slaves and the mulattoes. Some of these zealots were unhinged by the same egalitarian madness which led to the Reign of Terror in France; others, including a number of priests, seem to have been under the influence of radical Christian notions: together they were loosely organized in a semi-secret society known as Friends of the Blacks (Amis des Noirs).

The Whites could have saved themselves and the colony if they had united on the basis of race and hunted down and exterminated the Amis des Noirs. Unfortunately, class hatreds divided the Whites more strongly than their common racial interests united them. The middle-class Whites envied the wealthy landowners and the aristocrats, and the White rabble which had accumulated in the port cities envied all their betters.

The mulattoes and the Blacks also hated each other. The former were more intelligent and industrious than the latter, and many had taken advantage of their freedom to better themselves; more than anything else they dreaded being reduced to the status of the Blacks. The Blacks realized this and hated the mulattoes for it. This division between the mulattoes and the Blacks complicated the situation, but in the end it did not really matter. What mattered was that the Whites were outnumbered 15 to one; they refused to put their political and class differences aside until it was too late; and France, first torn by a self-destructive revolution and then preoccupied by a series of European wars, was unable to provide assistance when it was needed.

The first Black insurrection in Saint-Domingue occured in August 1791. Inspired by the Amis des Noirs and by their own Voodoo leaders, the latter of whom persuaded them that they were immune to the Whites' weapons, the slaves in the northern part of the colony began attacking their masters as they slept on the night of August 22. White men were hacked to death immediately, if they were fortunate; otherwise, they were butchered by the Voodoo-inflamed Blacks in ways too horrible to describe here. The fate of the White women was even worse. The Blacks who marched on Le Cap Français carried as their standard a White baby impaled on a spear.

(TBC)