LIfe after Slavery

In Haiti, slavery ended when the Revolution ended and the French were driven off the island. No longer would the black people be controlled by the white people in that country. To help ensure that the Haitians did not become reenslaved, Dessalines, the new leader of Haiti, ordered all Frenchmen on the island killed. These mass murders created a precedence of violence in Haiti. Leaders were quickly overthrown and killed, including Dessalines. The never ending rise and fall of leaders threw Haiti into a cycle of turmoil for several years.

The murders also caused problems with other nations around the world.  Countries such as the United States and especially France refused to recognize them as a country and would not trade with them.

A problem that arose out of the Revolution was what do we do now.  The country was made up of largely uneducated slaves. It also needed a way to put people to work and create a profit, yet no one could think of a way to accomplish that goal. The only solution the early leaders could think of was putting the people back on plantations to grow sugar. The citizens would not stand for it. To them if it looked like slavery and acted like slavery, it was putting them back into slavery. The only difference between the old and new orders was that now they received a portion of the crop.

The former slaves rose up and overthrew Dessalines in 1806. They refused to be treated like slaves in the new order. Now another economic system and set of laws was again in the works. The leaders Henri Christophe and Alexandre Pétion could not agree on how to govern the island. They fought for many months and eventually ended their differences by splitting the country in half, North and South.

Christophe governed in the North, and he continued the new forced labor system.  He ruled with a heavy hand. The one beneficially thing he did for Haiti was  set up new schools for the children to attend. His subjects did not like him. To the South, Pétion created a new order. He divided up the former plantations and gave some land to each of the former slaves. The new landowners usually just grew small farms and provided enough for their family. It was a poor life, but the former slaves were much happier than their Northern counterparts.

In 1820 after both Christophe and Pétion died, Boyer rose to power and reunited the country. He instated Pétion’s policies in the North. Haiti was now a happy country with each man working for himself, but it was still a very poor country.

Haiti still was not recognized by other countries. To gain France’s recognition, Haiti had to pay France 150 million francs. The money was basically a payment to the planters for the property and profits they had lost through the Revolution.

Throughout the years after the Revolution, Haiti struggled to become reestablished and find its place in the world.

Sources:     

Girard, Philippe R,. Paradise Lost Haiti's Tumultuous Journey from Pearl of the Caribbean to Third World Hot Spot. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Robinson, Randall. An Unbroken Agony: Haiti from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2007.

New World Order

Once upon a time back in 1791, there arose a revolution heard around the world. Several revolutions had been occurring around this time, American and French, so one would think that another one would not be anything new. However, this revolution was something new. The slaves of Haiti were not revolting to become a country of their own, but instead they were revolting for their freedom.

A voodoo priest by the name of Dutty Boukman was the man who started it all. He decided that the enlightenment theory of equality for all included slaves too and that slaves should fight for their freedom. One late August night, Boukman called slaves from across the island to a bonfire ceremony were they all swore a pact, sealed in blood, to revolt.   

On August 21, 1791, small revolts sprang up all over the island at different plantations. The slaves made sure to only kill white French citizens. While many slaves revolted, it was not in one unified unit. In light of the disorganization, the whites of the island were able to put the slaves back on the plantations for a very short period of time in 1792.

Then in 1793, the British and Spanish invaded the island colony in hopes of taking the Caribbean pearl away from France. In order to repeal the attackers, the French leader of the colony, Sonthonax, freed the slaves anticipating that they would join the French in fighting the British and the Spanish. This decision was later confirmed by the National Assembly in Paris and expanded to include all French holdings. Therefore, France was the first to completely abolish slavery.

The slave leader that stood out among all the rest was Toussaint Louverture. He began life as a slave but spent most of his life as a freedman. Since he lived most of his life as a freedman, some slaves did not believe that Toussaint knew enough about life as a slave to be fully committed to the cause of freedom.  He did prove to be one of the most effective and unifying leaders of the slave revolt. The French even put him in charge of the whole colony. This power eventually went to his head and he tried to reign with absolute control like a dictator. He got rid of anyone who tried to oppose him.

It was an extremely violent and bloody revolution.

As this picture shows, this war was every man for himself. It was not civilized war with two sides marching at each other and firing shots, but instead it was guerilla warfare.  

It is estimated that as many as 100,000 blacks and 25,000 whites were killed in the revolution. Many were captured and hung as this picture portrays. If you notice, the number of gallows extends far up the hillside. Also shown in this picture is the enjoyment the slaves received from hanging their former masters.

After Toussaint wrote a declaration for Haiti, Napoleon Bonaparte thought that Toussaint was becoming too power mad and had him captured and exiled to France. The French then thought about reinstating slavery in the colony. Slaves received wind of this and revolted again ending the tenuous peace that had existed for a short while. This time the revolution stuck and with the help of a yellow fever outbreak slaves completely controlled the colony and ended slavery in 1804.

Sources

Girard, Philippe R,. Paradise Lost Haiti's Tumultuous Journey from Pearl of the Caribbean to Third World Hot Spot. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Dubois, Laurent. Avengers of the New World: the story of the Haitian Revolution. First Harvard University Press, 2005.

First image provided by http://www.google.com/imgres?q=bloody+haitian+revolution&hl=en&sa=X&biw=1024&bih=677&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=m94wmTnlKy64jM:&imgrefurl=http://blackpast.org/%3Fq%3Dtree/Geography

Second image provided by

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My Life as a Slave

Today we have a guest blogger. Her name is Belinda Daniel and she was once a slave on a Haitian plantation. She started out in the fields but then became a housekeeper in the master’s house.

My name is Belinda and I’m here to tell you about being a Haitian slave. It was hard work in the fields. Rows and rows of sugar cane stretched as far as the eye could see. I was young when I first started field work so we had work like weeding and topping the cane before harvest. The work never seemed to end always something to be done day in and day out especially around harvest.

Many slaves went into the sugar works and came out missing an arm or leg, some even died. Sugar harvest was one of the saddest times of the year for the plantation slaves. We lost many good people to the sugar works.

When I was about sixteen, my mistress needed more help in the house for a big party she was throwing. I had helped our cook sometimes when she needed a few extra hands so I was taken out of the fields and put into the big house to work. I learned how to scrub floors and make beds and shine silver ‘til you could see your reflection in it.

My mistress knew exactly how she thought everything should be done and if you did not obey orders she would slap you so hard it would make your head spin. I tried to follow every order and do everything just like she liked it so I would not get hit. When mistress got in a bad mood, it was best to stay away. When she felt cruel, she would give the servants so many chores that there was no way to complete them all. Then she would beat us and call us stupid and lazy. Mistress’s most common form of torture was pinching. Anytime she felt like it, she would pinch me and remind me to be a good slave. Sometimes I went home at night with huge bruises from her pinches.

Since I worked in the big house, I received better food and clothing than the field slaves because mistress needed the house slaves to look good for company. I wanted to learn how to speak better and learn correct grammar so I listened to how the whites talked and tried to imitate them.  My desires to better myself lead the field workers to resent me and say that I was uppity and thought that I was better than everyone else.  I knew that I was not any better than any other slave, but my dream was to runaway and I believed that the more educated I seemed the more people would help me. I knew that it would be hard but I wanted to make it to a maroon community where they could protect me and not send me back.

I never had a chance to run away the revolution came before I could make a break for freedom, but that’s another story. Thank you for listening!

Sources:

Glymph, Thardia. Out of the House of Bondage. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Clinton, Catherine. The Plantation Mistress, New York: Pantheon Books, 1982.

Labor in Saint Domingue

 Saint Domingue grew to be the wealthiest colony in the Caribbean. The colony was considered the jewel in France’s Caribbean crown. What made the colony so profitable you might ask? It was the sweet, white stuff we put in all desserts and coffee, sugar. The tiny colony settled on just one-third of what used to be called Hispaniola came to be the world’s leading sugar and coffee exporter. Producing sugar was not easy. It took a large labor force and many long hours. To supply this need, plantation owners eventually turned to one of the world’s oldest solutions of cheap labor, slavery.

In the early years, plantation owners imported indentured servants from Europe to work the fields. These servants had their trip to the Caribbean paid for in exchange for a term of service to a plantation owner. This service could last from anywhere between three to seven years or longer. After their service was completed, they were given a small plot of land or money and sent on their way to make their own fortune. Many servants came to the island because they saw an easy fortune to be made. It was possible, although as the years went on the chance grew slimmer, that a servant who completed his term could become a plantation owner, but that was for the lucky ones who survived.  

Sugar was not an easy commodity to produce. Harvesting was a twenty-four hour a day job that occurred several times a year. The sugar canes themselves were very sharp and painful to work with. It was also a very hot climate on Saint Domingue, and many workers died their first year on the island. In light of these harsh conditions, many Europeans did not desire to go to the Caribbean and workers were scarce. Many of the servants who did come did not come by choice. Ship captains needing to meet their quota of servants roams the city streets of Europe looking for unlucky people, especially men, who they could snatch up and impress into service in the Caribbean.

Eventually the supply of servants grew smaller and smaller and the demand for sugar grew larger and larger. Europeans had an insatiable appetite for sugar. They put it on every type of food imaginable. They kept massive piles of it in storehouses as a symbol of their wealth. To keep the supply coming, a new source of workers had to be found and needed to be found quickly.

To solve this shortage of labor, the Saint Domingue plantation owners turned to African slaves. It was the perfect solution. They had a seemingly endless supply which was needed because the mortality rate was still astronomical, and they could keep them for life. At its peak, Saint Domingue would have over 800,000 slaves living on its plantations. In contrast there were only 30,000 whites living on the island. Before too much time had passed, owners would realize what a massive mistake they had created with this imbalance.

Sources:

Fick, Carolyn. The making of Haitian:the Saint Domingue revolution Revolution from below. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1990, Chapter 1.

 Stanley L. Engerman (1983). Contract Labor, Sugar, and Technology in the Nineteenth Century. Journal of Economic History, 43 , pp 635-659 doi:10.1017/S002205070003028X

Priest or Potion?

The country of Haiti has two main religions: Roman Catholicism and Voodoo. Roman Catholicism is the official religion of Haiti while Voodoo is the more underground religion.  “Roman Catholicism of Haiti is typically Haitian in its institutional forms, its colorful and formal rituals, and its strict doctrinal emphases; it represents an extensive effort on the part of the clergy to respond to the religious, social, and cultural needs of Haitians. Concurrently, Voodoo is the folk religion on Haiti that pervades the framework of Haitian culture.”[1] While it seems the religions should compete, they actually manage to work harmoniously together in this country.

Roman Catholicism was first introduced to Haiti by Columbus. It continues to be the religion of the elites and officials of the island. As such, it is also financially supported by the government. Catholicism is a very ritual based religion, and worshippers know what to expect at each service. Priests serve as intermediaries between humans and God. It is a very spiritual religion and depends on the faith of the follower instead of hard reality.  

When people think of voodoo, the image conjured up in the minds of most people outside of the religion is of crude dolls with pins in them, and old women priestesses bent over cauldrons throwing in herbs and unidentifiable animal parts to brew up potions. Voodoo is thought to be a very dark mystical religion. It is mainly the religion of the lower classes which helps support the misconceptions.

Voodoo came to the island from the African country the Kongo by slaves imported by the European plantation owners. It is not a strict religion like Catholicism. The practice of Voodoo differs in each location.  It is also a very individualistic religion. While there are Voodoo priests, they serve as teachers and leaders and not intermediaries between humans and the gods. Each person communicates directly with the Iwa, the Voodoo gods. Worshippers want to be possessed by an Iwa by having the Iwa “mount” them and control their actions. By having a possession, it shows the worshipers commitment to Voodoo and raises their religious authority in the community.  

 

Put side by side, it seems that these two religions are entirely incompatible. How could a highly idealized, elite religion ever be harmonious with a mystical, peasant cult? As contradictory as it would seem, some Haitians practice both Catholicism and Voodoo. In their lives, Catholicism serves as an overarching theology and Voodoo acts as an everyday practical religion. This is often the result of a government push against the practice of Voodoo.

The government of Haiti and the Catholic priests do not approve of the practice of Voodoo. They have often scourged Haiti hunting down and destroying Voodoo paraphernalia and imprisoning followers of the religion. This threat has forced Voodoo and its followers underground. Voodoo temples are often undistinguishable from other buildings and do not look like other houses of worship. Followers of the religion do not usually disclose the fact that they practice Voodoo to the public at large.

In spite of the contradictions and the government, both religions are still an integral part of life in Haiti. 

   

Sources  

Desmangles, Leslie. The Faces of the Gods Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.

Dayan, Hoan. Haiti, History, and the Gods. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

Pictures courtesy of: http://blackwasp19.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/princess-and-the-frog-voodoo-evil/ and http://climbthepeak.net/index.php?p=1_22_Holy.

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[1] Desmangles, Leslie. The Faces of the Gods Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992, 1.

The Split of Hispaniola

Hispaniola in the 17^th century underwent many changes. It started out under Spanish rule. Then after piracy became prevalent, the Spanish gave up a third of the island that was closest to the island of Tortuga a safe haven for pirates. The French saw their opportunity to gain a foothold in the new world. So, they came and inhabited the part of the island the Spanish had given up causing a split in Hispaniola that still exists today.   Who would think that all this conflict started over a few pirates and some cows?

The Spanish, through Christopher Columbus, claimed Hispaniola for themselves on his first voyage to the New World. The Spanish set up their Caribbean capital on Hispaniola, but they rarely paid attention to Hispaniola except to make sure that they kept a tight trade reign on the island. They ignored Hispaniola because, while it may have been the first settlement, it was not the most profitable.

Hispaniola served as an excellent stopping point for pirates on their way to Tortuga. The pirates, who roamed the Caribbean preying on the Spanish treasure ships, took advantage of the Spanish’s lack of attention and frequently stopped at Hispaniola to get supplies. The citizens of the island were farmers and breeders of livestock, especially cows. The pirates bartered with the citizens for supplies and livestock. The Spanish tried to keep the pirates off of the island but to no avail. So, the Spanish officials moved the citizens inland to towns where they could not have access to the coast to trade with the pirates and abandoned the western third of Hispaniola in 1603. This relocation caused the citizens to turn their cows loose to roam over the island because they would not have the land to let their cows graze properly in such close confinement.  Now with cows loose all over the island, the pirates had even easier access to beef, and they no longer had to purchase it.

Louis XIV of France also took advantage of the Spanish relocation to move in on the third of the island that the Spanish abandoned. The French also claimed the island of Tortuga, the pirate stronghold. The Spanish refused to recognize the French claim on part of the island. That changed with the Treaty of Rhyswick.

This map shows the different countries claims on Hispaniola with the western French claim in red and the eastern Spanish claim in gold. The Nine Years’ War, which was known as King William’s War in North America, settled the dispute between France and Spain over Hispaniola. The war was the result of France’s King Louis XIV territory grab in Europe. Most of the fighting occurred in Europe, but it did have repercussions in Hispaniola. The Treaty of Ryswick which ended the war in 1697 forced the Spanish to recognize French control over the western third of the island. Although the official border was not set until 1777 by the Treaty of Aranjuez, the events of the 17th century ensured that Hispaniola would continue to be a divided island.

Sources:

Guitar, Lynne. "History of Dominican Republic." Last modified 2010. Accessed September 25, 2011. http://www.hispaniola.com/dominican_republic/info/history.php.

O'Neil, Daniel. "Gold, cows, and pirates: the story of how the island of Hispaniola (or Quisqueya) ended up split into two countries: 1492-1777." Creating border Opportunities in Dominican Republic and Haiti (blog), September 02, 2009. http://nuestrafrontera.org/wordpress/2009/09/gold-cows-and-pirates-the-story-of-how-the-island-of-hispaniola-or-quisqueya-ended-up-split-in-two-countrie (accessed September 25, 2011).

Picture courtesy of http://www.google.com/imgres?q=map+hispaniola&hl=en&sa=X&biw=1024&bih=677&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=dqZJJtYlIALIpM:&imgrefurl=http://www.printsold

Misconceptions of the Spanish

In 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, he tried to find a new route to China. However, he did not consider there would be a landmass in between Eastern Europe and Western Asia. So when Columbus found land, he believed it was India and the outer lying islands of Asia. Columbus immediately claimed the new found land for Spain.

The island, soon to be known as Hispaniola, was already inhabited by a group of people now known as the Tainos. Columbus thought that these people were India natives so he called them Indians. To the Europeans, these people were primitive and were thrilled to meet the Europeans. 

  

As seen in this painting, the Tainos curiously watch as Columbus claims the land for Spain. The differences between the two groups are easy to see. The Europeans are portrayed with rich clothes and flags and even a priest, but the Tainos are naked, fewer in number, and mesmerized by the newcomers. This painting was created by Dioscoro Teofilo Puebla Tolin in the mid to late 1800s. So, it is a painting made of myth and legend rather than actual events.

Other Europeans who were alive when Columbus discovered the Caribbean also had misconceptions about the island natives. Allegretto Allegretti, who never actually went to the Caribbean, wrote, “The people were happy to see the king of Spain’s men and welcomed them with great honor, kindnesses, presents, and gifts. They hold our men to be gods.” What did happen was the Spanish attempted to replaced the Tainos gods, the zemis, with their God and Christianity. Many of the natives did convert because those who did not were killed, but even after they were converted many natives continued to practice their previous religion or even a hybrid of native religion and Christianity.

The Europeans also saw the Caribbean as the land of plenty. They were amazed at the abundance and lushness of the flora and fauna of the islands. They also thought that gold was everywhere. As Morelletto Ponzone said, “And under their rocks, by lifting them up one finds plenty of gold, which is beautiful, and it only needs to be refined.”  Peter Martyr wrote, “The gold had been collected with no great toil from the river sand.” In reality, there is little gold in the Caribbean. The Spanish were so concerned with finding riches in the new lands that they latched onto any glimmer of gold.

The Europeans also misunderstood the natives and believed that some of the natives on the other islands were cannibals. This was never proven to be true. The cannibal myth exploded in Europe and it was widely spread. The Europeans even believed the cannibals had rules like they were not allowed to eat women. As wild and troublesome as the Caribs were thought to be, they were supposed to be peaceful amongst themselves.

These examples just show how confused different cultures can be when they encounter a different culture with limited communication.    

Sources  

Symcox, Geoffrey, and Blair Sullivan.Christopher Columbus and the Enterprise fo the Indies. Boston: Bedford/St. Martian's, 2005.

Alaeddine, Joseph. "Not Spanish, Not Natuhal." Last modified 2006. Accessed September 18, 2011. http://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/jspui/bitstream/1794/2924/1/alaeddine.pdf.

Picture courtesy of http://www.johnwilliamwaterhouse.org/painting-dioscoro%20teofilo%20puebla%20tolin-the%20first%20landing%20of%20christopher%20columbus%20in%20america-56254.htm