On a few of our
many interconnections with the island neighbor.
I don’t know if
this is still true, but back when I was taking high school U.S. history our
textbook heavily emphasized one particular stateside impact of the late
18th century Haitian Revolution: that it so significantly changed
Napoleon Bonaparte’s New World empire—and perhaps more importantly his
perspective on that imperial enterprise—that he was willing to sell most of
the rest of the empire to the Jefferson Administration, in the transaction
that came to be known as the Louisiana Purchase. Given how much that purchase
impacted the new and evolving United States—not only by doubling the nation in
size, but also by fundamentally
changing our sense of the future and what it might include—it’s certainly
fair to say on those grounds alone that Haiti and its revolution were as
crucial to America’s fate as any other nation and event have been.
But on the other
hand, emphasizing that effect of Haiti’s thirteen-year
revolution only perpetuates the kind of US-centric vision of the hemisphere
and its histories on which I’m trying to push back in this week’s series. More
complex and multi-directional would be an emphasis on the way in which the
island’s slave revolution affected
the system of slavery in the American South, not only because it heightened
(or at least provided an excuse for) regional fears of slave revolts, but also
because it (and the
independent nation that was its result) revealed the fundamental falsehood
at the heart of most justifications for slavery: that slaves and/or African
Americans were a lesser species, not fully human, incapable of meaningful
collective action and community, much less of self-government. Haiti, that is,
didn’t just become the first African-American nation in the new world—it did so
through an organized, sustained
uprising of slaves and former slaves, a community that fought off multiple
waves of European response in order to carve out this new space and
possibility.
There’s at least
one more meaningful way to connect the Haitian Revolution to the U.S., and it
involves the leaders of that uprising. A great deal has been written about the
most prominent such leader, Toussaint
L’Ouverture, and rightfully so; he’s one of the most complex, interesting,
and inspiring historical figures. But I’m not sure we Americans have
sufficiently considered just how precisely parallel
L’Ouverture and his colleagues were to our revolutionary leaders and generation.
Of course race and slavery represent significant distinctions, but to my mind
the similarities are nonetheless more striking: a vastly outnumbered and
overpowered small community who pushed back on a dictatorial European empire,
weathered a decade of conflict and challenges and setbacks, and with the
inspiration of philosophical
ideals of equality and liberty succeeded in changing the course of history
and producing a new nation on the world’s stage. What would it mean if we could
consider our revolution as deeply similar and entirely complementary to Haiti’s?
I’d respond: what wouldn’t it?
Next connection
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other connections you’d share?
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