Article from: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5018/
U.S. marines occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. By 1919, Haitian Charlemagne Péralte had organized more than a thousand cacos, or armed guerrillas, to militarily oppose the marine occupation. The marines responded to the resistance with a counterinsurgency campaign that razed villages, killed thousands of Haitians, and destroyed the livelihoods of even more.
American organizations such as the NAACP opposed the U.S. occupation of Haiti. They sent delegations that investigated conditions and protested the blatant racism and imperialism of U.S. policy in Haiti in the early 20th century. An article from 1920, by NAACP leader James Weldon Johnson, countered the standard justifications for U.S. occupation of Haiti.
In writing of my visit to Haiti for Crisis readers, I should like to tell all that I learned about political, economic and social conditions there, and to give, as well, the information and impressions I gained about the country and the Haitian people themselves. This, of course, will not be possible, for either of these phases of the subject, fully treated, would make a complete article. I have decided that something about each phase will be more interesting and more comprehensive than all about one. Therefore, what I say will of necessity be rather sketchy.
The Historic Background
I should like the reader, first of all, to take a swift glance at the historical and cultural background of the Haitian people. In order to fully understand present and actual conditions, it is necessary to be familiar with the fact that the Haitian people have a glorious history behind them. Haiti was the first of the American Republics, after the United States, to gain its independence. The story of the war for Haitian independence is one of the most thrilling chapters in the history of the world. If one reads only what alien historians have written, he gains the idea that the Haitian struggle was nothing more than the massacre of outnumbered whites by hordes of semi-savage blacks. There was massacre and savagery but it was on both sides. But the war itself was one which suffers very little in magnitude by comparison with the American Revolution. There were times when the French troops and the Haitian troops engaged, aggregated more than 80,000 men. The French troops were the best that Napoleon could send. The Haitian troops were not a band of lawless guerrillas but were well drilled and well officered. There were battles in which these troops compelled the admiration of the French for their valor, and their commanders, for their military ability and gallantry.
It should also be borne in mind that the Haitian Revolution was not merely a political revolution. It was also a social revolution. There was a complete overturn of both the political and social organization of the country. The man who had been the chattel became the ruler. The great estates of the colonial slave holders were cut up into small parcels and allotted among the former slaves. This last fact has a direct bearing on present conditions in Haiti, to which I shall refer later.
Haiti gained her independence 116 years ago and maintained her complete sovereignty down to 1915, the year of American intervention. None of the Latin-American Republics had the
difficulties in maintaining their independence that Haiti encountered. The Black Republic did not receive from the United States the support which it had a right to expect. Haiti had fought France, England and Spain, but the United States was the last of all the strong nations to recognize her independence, when, indeed, she should have been the first.
Christophe
Even intelligent colored Americans are apt to feel indulgent or embarrassed over the subject of Haitian history. No doubt many of them have smiled or felt ashamed at the generally accepted story about King Christophe in his palace at Sans Souci and his court of dukes and counts. The popular picture of Christophe’s court is that of a semi-savage ludicrously playing at king, surrounded by a nobility that took their titles from the names of things they liked best to eat and drink. Christophe was a remarkable man, and a ruler of great intelligence and energy. He declared himself king because he felt that most could be accomplished for Haiti under the strongest possible form of government. Under his direction, the northern part of Haiti underwent great development. I visited Christophe’s palace at Sans Souci. It has fallen into ruins, but there is still enough left to show that it was indeed a palace. The buildings and grounds were copied after the palace at Versailles, and were constructed by the best European architects and builders. There is no doubt that when it was erected, it was the most palatial residence on the western hemisphere.
But a yet more wonderful testimony of Christophe’s energy and greatness is the citadel which he built with the idea of its being the last stronghold against the French if they should attempt to reconquer Haiti. He built this citadel on the top of a mountain more than three thousand feet high, which towered up above his palace at Sans Souci, and dominated the fertile plains of northern Haiti which stretch around for miles. I made the trip to the citadel. The journey requires more than two hours on horseback up a narrow and precipitous mountain path. After I had ridden for an hour and a half, I reached a sudden turn in the path and caught the first view of the structure. The sight was amazing. It was dumbfounding. I could hardly believe my own eyes. There, from the pinnacle of the mountain, rose the massive walls of solid brick and stone to a height of more than one hundred feet. On three sides of the citadel the walls are sheer with the sides of the mountain. The other side is approached by the path.
This path, Christophe had commanded by fifty solid brass cannon, each one about thirty feet long. How he got these guns up to the top of the mountain nobody seems to know. The Haitian Government has had offers for them as metal, but nobody seems to know how to get them down. Getting them up was a super-human accomplishment, as it is not an easy matter to get up to the citadel with an ordinary basket of lunch. I spent more than two hours going through this vast fortress without pausing a moment, and the more I saw of it, the more the wonder grew on me not only as to the execution but the mere conception of such a work. In many places the walls are from eight to twelve feet thick. An idea of its size may be gained from the fact that it was built to quarter 30,000 soldiers. It is the most wonderful ruin in the western hemisphere, and for the amount of human energy and labor sacrificed, can well be compared to the pyramids of Egypt. As I stood on the highest point, where the sheer drop from the walls was more than 2,000 feet, and looked out over the rich plains of northern Haiti, I was impressed with the thought that if ever a man had the right to feel himself a king, that man was Christophe when he walked around the parapets of his citadel.
It is a people of Negro blood, who have produced a Christophe and a Dessalines, who have given to the world one of its greatest statesmen, Toussaint L’Ouverture, who have behind them a history of which they have every right to be proud, that are now threatened with the loss of their independence; that have now fallen not only under American political domination, but under the domination of American prejudice. Haiti is ruled today by martial law dispensed by Americans. There are nearly three thousand American Marines in Haiti, and American control is maintained by their bayonets. In the five years of American Occupation, more than three thousand innocent Haitians have been slaughtered.
There are three grounds on which the attempt is made to justify American intervention and the military occupation of Haiti. The first is that such a state of anarchy and bloodshed had been reached as could no longer be tolerated by the civilized world; the second, that the Haitians have demonstrated absolute unfitness to govern themselves; and the third, that great benefits have been brought to Haiti by American control.
Alleged Anarchy
As to the first: The United States Government has wished to make it appear that it was forced on purely humane grounds to intervene in Haiti because of the tragic overthrow and death of President Vilbrun Guillaume, July 27–8, 1915, and that this government has been compelled to keep a military force in Haiti since that time to pacify the country maintain order. The fact is that for nearly a year before the coup d'état which overthrew Guillaume, the United States had been bringing pressure on Haiti to compel that country to submit to American control. Three diplomatic attempts had been made by three different missions. It was in May, 1915, that the third attempt was made. The United States sent to Haiti Mr. Paul Fuller, Jr., with the title “Envoy Extraordinary”, on a special mission to apprise the Haitian Government that the Guillaume Administration would not be recognized by the United States unless Haiti agreed to sign a covenant similar to the one which this country had with Santo Domingo. The two governments were interchanging views on this proposition when the events of July 27–8 took place.
On July 27, President Guillaume fled to the French Legation. On the same day, political prisoners in the prison at Port-au-Prince were executed. On the next morning, Guillaume was killed, and that afternoon, an American man-of-war dropped anchor at Port-au-Prince and landed American forces. Immediately after the killing of Guillaume, Port-au-Prince was as quiet as though nothing had happened, and it should be borne in mind that through it all, the life of not a single American citizen had been taken or jeopardized. The overthrow of Guillaume and its attending consequences did not constitute the cause of American intervention in Haiti; it merely furnished an opportunity for which this government was waiting. There never have been the grounds for intervention in Haiti that there have been in Mexico.
Fitness To Rule
The unfitness of the Haitian people to govern themselves has been the subject of propaganda for the last century. Books and pamphlets and articles have been written, and lectures have been delivered many times over to prove that the Haitians not only were incapable of advancement, but were steadily retrograding into barbarism. An observation of the city of Port-au-Prince is sufficient to refute this oft made assertion. Port-au-Prince is a clean, well paved, well lighted city. Its newer business buildings are constructed of concrete and brick. The wooden shanties which one so often sees in magazines and books illustrating the business section of the town are relics of the old French régime. The residential section of Port-au-Prince is built on the slopes of the hills that rise back of the city. The homes of the well-to-do people are beautiful villas with well kept grounds, and there are hundreds of them.
This section of Port-au-Prince is superior to the residential section in any of the cities of the Central American republics. In fact, Port-au-Prince is one of the most beautiful of the tropical cities which I have seen. Haiti has been independent for more than a century and if the people had been steadily retrograding into barbarism during all of that time, Port-au-Prince today would be an aggregation of filth and decay instead of the city that it is. In Port-au-Prince one will meet Americans who, in response to the exclamation, “Why I am surprised to see what a fine city Port-au-Prince is!” will answer, “Yes, but you should have seen it before the Occupation.” The implication here is that the American Occupation is responsible for making Port-au-Prince a paved and well kept city. It is true that only one or two of the principal streets of Port-au-Prince were paved at the time of the intervention—five years ago—but the work had already been begun and contracts for paving the whole city had already been let by the Haitian Government. The American Occupation did not pave, and had nothing to do with the paving of a single street in Port-au-Prince. The regulations instituted by the American Health Officer may have something to do with the regularity with which the streets are swept, but my observation showed me that the Haitians have a “sweeping habit” which they must have acquired long years before the American Occupation.
I made a five-day trip through the interior, traveling day and night in an automobile. I noticed in the early morning hours, as I passed cabin after cabin in the rural districts, the women carefully sweeping the yards until they were as clean as a floor. In fact, nowhere in the rural districts of Haiti did I see the filth and squalor which may be observed in any backwoods town in our own South.
The smaller cities of Haiti are replicas of Port-au-Prince. Whatever the Haitians may not be, they are a clean people. Many may be dressed in rags and tatters, but the rags and tatters are periodically washed. A filthy Haitian is a rare exception. On this point, I recall a remark made by a white American who conducts one of the biggest mercantile businesses in Haiti. He was speaking to me about the cleanliness of the Haitians and he made an observation which struck me quite forcible. He showed me statistics to prove that Haiti imports more soap per capita than any country in the world. He told me that three of the largest soap manufacturers in the United States maintain headquarters at Port-au-Prince.
Another point in the propaganda which has been so long circulated to prove the unfitness of the Haitians, is the statement that the people are congenitally and habitually lazy. Not long ago I saw a magazine article on Haiti, and one of the illustrations was a picture of a Haitian man lying asleep in the sun, and under it was the title “the Favorite Attitude of Haiti’s Citizens.” I would wager that the photographer either had to pay or persuade his subject to pose especially for him, because in all of my six weeks in Port-au-Prince, I never saw anybody lying around in the sun asleep. On the contrary, the Haitians are quite a thrifty people. What deceives some observers is the fact that their methods are primitive. The mistake is often made of confounding primitive methods with indolence. Anyone who travels the roads of Haiti will be struck by the sight of scores and hundreds and even thousands of women, boys and girls filing along, mile after mile, with the produce of their farms and gardens on their heads, or loaded on the backs of animals, to dispose of them in the markets of the towns. I do not see how anyone could accuse such people of being lazy. Of course, they might market their stuff more efficiently if they had automobile trucks; they have no automobile trucks, but they are willing to walk. For a woman to walk eight or ten miles with a bundle of produce on her head which may barely realize her a dollar is, undoubtedly, a wasteful expenditure of energy, but it is not a sign of laziness.
The Haitian people have also been accused of being ignorant and degraded. They are not degraded. I had ample opportunity to study the people of the cities, and the people of the country districts, and I found them uniformly kind, courteous and hospitable, living in a simple and wholesome manner. The absence of crime in Haiti is remarkable, and the morality of the people is strikingly high. Port-au-Prince is a city of more than 100,000, but there is no sign of the prostitution that is so flagrant in many Latin-American cities. I was there for six weeks and in all that time, not a single case of a man being accosted by a woman on the street came to my attention. I heard even from the lips of American Marines tributes to the chastity of the Haitian women.
The charge that the Haitians are ignorant is only partly true. They are naturally quick witted and have lively imaginations. The truth, however, is that the great mass of the Haitian people are illiterate. They are perhaps more illiterate than the people of any Latin-American country, but there is a specific reason for this. For a reason which I cannot explain, the French language in the French-American colonial settlements containing a Negro population divided itself into two branches—French and Creole. This is true of Louisiana, Martinique and Guadeloupe, and also of Haiti. The Creole is an Africanized French, and must not be thought of as a mere dialect. The French-speaking person cannot, with the exception of some words, understand Creole unless he learns it. Creole is a distinct language, a graphic and very expressive language, and in some respects, is, for Haiti, a language superior to French.
The upper Haitian classes, say approximately 500,000, speak French, while the masses, probably 2,000,000, speak Creole, and though Haitian Creole is grammatically constructed, it has not been generally, reduced to writing. Therefore, these 2,000,000 people have no way of communication through the written word. They have no books to read. They cannot read the newspapers. They cannot communicate with each other by writing. The children of the masses study French the few years they spend in school, but French never becomes their every-day language. In order for Haiti to abolish illiteracy and thereby reduce the ignorance of her masses, Creole must be made a written, as well as a spoken language for I feel that it is destined to remain the folk language of the country. This offers a fascinating task for the Haitian intellectuals. Before I left, I talked with a group of them concerning it.
I had the opportunity of being received into the homes of the cultured and wealthy people of Port-au-Prince, to attend several of their social affairs and to visit the clubs. Even the most prejudiced writers of Haiti have had to make an exception of this class of Haitians, for they compel it. The majority have been educated in France. They have money. They live in beautiful houses. They are brilliant in conversation and know how to conduct themselves socially. The women dress in fine taste, many of them importing their gowns directly from Paris. Refined people from no part of the world would feel themselves out of place in the best Haitian society. Many of these women are beautiful and all of them vivacious and chic. I was deeply impressed with the women of Haiti, not only the society women, but the peasant women. I should like to give my impressions, but space will not allow.
American “Benefits”
The third ground offered as justification is that great benefits have been brought to Haiti by American control. I made an honest effort to find out what things the Americans have done for the benefit of Haiti, during the five years of Occupation. I found that only three things could be advanced, and they were: The Improvement of the public hospital at Port-au-Prince; enforcement of rules of modern sanitation; and the building of the great road from Port-au-Prince to Cape Haitian. The improvement in the hospital is a worthy piece of work but cannot be made to justify military occupation. The enforcement of certain rules of sanitation is not quite so important as it sounds, for the reason that Haiti, under native rule, has always been a healthy country and never subject to the epidemics which used to sweep the countries circling the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.
The building of the road from Port-au-Prince to Cape Haitian is a monumental piece of work, but it is doubtful whether the Occupation had in mind the building of a great highway for the benefit of Haiti, or the construction of a military road which would facilitate the transportation of troops and supplies from one end of the island to the other. At any rate, the manner of building this road was one of the most brutal blunders made by the American Occupation in Haiti. It was built by forced labor. Haitian men were seized on the country roads and taken off their farms and put to work. They were kept in compounds at night and not allowed to go home. They were maltreated, beaten and terrorized. In fact, they were in the same category with the convicts in the Negro chain gangs that are used to build roads in many of our southern states. It was largely out of the methods of building this road that there arose the need for “pacification”. The Haitians rebelled. Many of them made their escape and fled to the hills and armed themselves as best they could for revenge. These refugees make up the greatest part of the “caco” forces, and it has now become the duty and sport of American marines to hunt these “cacos” with rifles and machine guns. I was seated at a table one day in company with an American captain of marines and I heard him describe a “caco” hunt. He told how they finally came upon a crowd of natives having a cock fight and how they let them have it with machine guns.
There was one accomplishment which I did expect to find. I expected to find that the Americans had at least made an attempt to develop and improve the system of public education in Haiti. This, at least, they have done in other countries where they have taken control. But I found that the American Occupation has not advanced public education in Haiti a single step. No new school buildings have been erected or new schools established. Not a single Haitian youth has been sent away for training and not a single American teacher, white or colored, has been sent to Haiti to teach.
The United States has absolutely failed in Haiti. It has failed to accomplish any results that justify its military Occupation of that country, and it has made it impossible for those results ever to be accomplished because of the distrust, bitterness and hatred which it has engendered in the Haitian people. Brutalities and atrocities on the part of American Marines have occurred with sufficient frequency to bring about deep resentment and terror on the part of the Haitian people. There have been needless killings of natives by marines. I was told that some marines had cut a notch in the stocks of their rifles for each native killed. Just before I left Port-au-Prince, an American marine caught a Haitian boy stealing sugar on the wharf, and instead of arresting him, he battered his brains out with the butt of his rifle.
I learned from the lips of American marines, themselves, of a number of cases of rape on Haitian women by marines. But, perhaps, the worst phase of American brutality in Haiti is, after all, not in the individual cases of cruelty, but in the American attitude. This attitude may be illustrated by a remark made by a marine officer at another time when I was seated at a table with some Americans. We were discussing the Haitian situation when he said, “The trouble with this business is that some of these people with a little money and education, think they are as good as we are.” The irony of his remark struck me quite forcible since I had already met a number of cultured Haitians in their homes.
The Americans have carried American prejudice to Haiti. Before their advent, there was no such thing in social circles as race prejudice. Social affairs were attended on the same footing by natives and white foreigners. The men in the American Occupation, when they first went down, also attended Haitian social affairs, but now they have set up their own social circle and established their own club to which no Haitian is invited, no matter what his social standing is. The Haitians now retaliate by never inviting Americans to their social affairs or their clubs. Of course, there are some semi-social affairs at which Haitians and Occupation officials meet, but there is a uniform rule among Haitian ladies not to dance with any American official.
A great deal of this prejudice has been brought about because the Administration has seen fit to send southern white men to Haiti. For instance, the man at the head of the customs service is a man who was formerly a parish clerk in Louisiana. The man who is second in charge of the customs service is a man who was formerly Deputy Collector of Customs at Pascagoula, Miss. The man who is Superintendent of Public Instruction was formerly a school teacher in Louisiana. It seems like a practical joke to send a man from Louisiana where they have not good schools even for white children down to Haiti to organize schools for black children. And the mere idea of white Mississippians going down to civilize Haitians and teach them law and order would be laughable except for the fact that the attempt is actually being made to put the idea into execution. These Southerners have found Haiti to be the veritable promised land of “jobs for deserving democrats”. Many of these men, both military and civilian officials, have moved their families to Haiti. In Port-au-Prince many of them live in fine villas. Many of them who could not keep a hired girl in the United States have a half-dozen servants. All of the civilian heads of departments have automobiles furnished at the expense of the Haitian Government. These automobiles seem to be used chiefly to take the women and children out for an airing each afternoon. It is interesting to see with what disdain, as they ride around, they look down upon the people who pay for the cars. It is also interesting to note that the Haitian officials and even the cabinet officers who are officially the superiors of these various heads have no cars. For example, the Louisiana superintendent has a car, but the Haitian Minister of Public Instruction has none. What the Washington Administration should have known was that in order to do anything worth while for Haiti, it was necessary to send men there who were able and willing to treat Negroes as men, and not because of their ability to speak poor French, or their knowledge of “handling niggers”.
The United States has failed in Haiti. It should get out as well and as quickly as it can and restore to the Haitian people their independence and sovereignty. The colored people of the United States should be interested in seeing that this is done, for Haiti is the one best chance that the Negro has in the world to prove that he is capable of the highest self-government. If Haiti should ultimately lose her independence, that one best chance will be lost.
Source:
James Weldon Johnson, “The Truth about Haiti. An N.A.A.C.P. Investigation.” Crisis 5 (September 1920): 217–224.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Bandits or Patriots?: Documents from Charlemagne Peralte
Article from: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4946/
In 1910, an international consortium of banks refinanced Haiti’s international debt and took control of the country’s treasury. In 1914, the bank refused to issue gold payments to the Haitian government and asked the U.S. military to protect the gold reserves. On December 17, 1914, U.S. marines landed in Haiti and moved the gold to the bank’s New York vaults. Eight months later, the marines again landed in Port au Prince, Haiti’s capital, this time claiming the need to protect foreign lives and property. They placed Port au Prince under martial law, ruthlessly subdued armed resistance in rural areas, and began training a new Haitian militia. Charlemagne Péralte led a resistance movement. In this “call to arms” and letter to the French minister, Péralte attacked President Wilson as a hypocrite for claiming to respect the sovereignty of small nations of Europe while occupying Haiti and urged Haitians to resist the Americans.
People of Haiti!
Soon a day like the 1st of January 1804 will rise. For four years the [American] Occupation has been insulting us constantly. Each morning it brings us a new offense. The people are poor and the Occupation still oppresses us with taxes. It spreads fires and forbids us to rebuild wooden houses under the pretext of keeping the city beautiful.
Haitians, let’s stay firm. Let’s follow the Belgian example. If they burn our cities, it doesn’t matter! As the inscription on the tomb of the great Dessalines states: “At the first canon shot, giving the alarm, cities disappear and the nation stands up.”
The holy battle in the North is led by brave citizens. The South is only waiting for the right man to follow its wonderful example. Don’t worry, we have the arms. Let’s get rid of those savage people, whose beastly character is evident in the person of their President Wilson—traitor, bandit, trouble maker, and thief.
Die for your country.
Long live Independence!
Long live the Union!
Long live the just war!
Down with the Americans!
From Charles the Great Massena Peralte High Commander of the Revolution in Haiti to The
French Minister in Haiti
Port-au-Prince
****
Honored Minister,
Despite the principles, of international law usually adopted by civilized nations, and coming out ofGreat War in Europe, the American Government got involved in the internal affairs of the small republic of Haiti and imposed a rule whose approval by the Haitian Parliament was guaranteed enforced by military occupation.
We were ready to accept this rule and follow its obligations, despite the threat to our autonomy and the dignity of our free and independent people. But the false promises, given by the Yankees, when they invaded our land, brought in almost four years of continuous insults, incredible crimes, killings, theft and barbarian acts, the secrets of which are known only to Americans.
Today we lost patience and we reclaim our rights, rights, ignored by the unscrupulous Americans, who by destroying our institutions deprive the people of Haiti of all its resources and devour our name and our blood. For four years, cruel and unjust Yankees brought ruin and hopelessness to our territory. Now, during the peace conference and before the whole world, the civilized nations took an oath to respect the rights and sovereignty of small nations. We demand the liberation of our territory and all the advantages given to free and independent states by international law. Therefore, please take into consideration that ten months of fighting has been in pursuit of this aim and that our victories give us the right to ask for your recognition.
We are prepared to sacrifice everything to liberate Haiti, and establish here the principles affirmed by President Wilson himself: the rights and sovereignty of small nations. Please note, honored Consul, that American troops, following their own laws, don’t have any right to fight against us.
Dear Sirs (sic), please, accept our distinguished salutations.
Signed by the High Commander of the Revolution
M. Peralte
followed by 100 other signatures
In 1910, an international consortium of banks refinanced Haiti’s international debt and took control of the country’s treasury. In 1914, the bank refused to issue gold payments to the Haitian government and asked the U.S. military to protect the gold reserves. On December 17, 1914, U.S. marines landed in Haiti and moved the gold to the bank’s New York vaults. Eight months later, the marines again landed in Port au Prince, Haiti’s capital, this time claiming the need to protect foreign lives and property. They placed Port au Prince under martial law, ruthlessly subdued armed resistance in rural areas, and began training a new Haitian militia. Charlemagne Péralte led a resistance movement. In this “call to arms” and letter to the French minister, Péralte attacked President Wilson as a hypocrite for claiming to respect the sovereignty of small nations of Europe while occupying Haiti and urged Haitians to resist the Americans.
People of Haiti!
Soon a day like the 1st of January 1804 will rise. For four years the [American] Occupation has been insulting us constantly. Each morning it brings us a new offense. The people are poor and the Occupation still oppresses us with taxes. It spreads fires and forbids us to rebuild wooden houses under the pretext of keeping the city beautiful.
Haitians, let’s stay firm. Let’s follow the Belgian example. If they burn our cities, it doesn’t matter! As the inscription on the tomb of the great Dessalines states: “At the first canon shot, giving the alarm, cities disappear and the nation stands up.”
The holy battle in the North is led by brave citizens. The South is only waiting for the right man to follow its wonderful example. Don’t worry, we have the arms. Let’s get rid of those savage people, whose beastly character is evident in the person of their President Wilson—traitor, bandit, trouble maker, and thief.
Die for your country.
Long live Independence!
Long live the Union!
Long live the just war!
Down with the Americans!
From Charles the Great Massena Peralte High Commander of the Revolution in Haiti to The
French Minister in Haiti
Port-au-Prince
****
Honored Minister,
Despite the principles, of international law usually adopted by civilized nations, and coming out ofGreat War in Europe, the American Government got involved in the internal affairs of the small republic of Haiti and imposed a rule whose approval by the Haitian Parliament was guaranteed enforced by military occupation.
We were ready to accept this rule and follow its obligations, despite the threat to our autonomy and the dignity of our free and independent people. But the false promises, given by the Yankees, when they invaded our land, brought in almost four years of continuous insults, incredible crimes, killings, theft and barbarian acts, the secrets of which are known only to Americans.
Today we lost patience and we reclaim our rights, rights, ignored by the unscrupulous Americans, who by destroying our institutions deprive the people of Haiti of all its resources and devour our name and our blood. For four years, cruel and unjust Yankees brought ruin and hopelessness to our territory. Now, during the peace conference and before the whole world, the civilized nations took an oath to respect the rights and sovereignty of small nations. We demand the liberation of our territory and all the advantages given to free and independent states by international law. Therefore, please take into consideration that ten months of fighting has been in pursuit of this aim and that our victories give us the right to ask for your recognition.
We are prepared to sacrifice everything to liberate Haiti, and establish here the principles affirmed by President Wilson himself: the rights and sovereignty of small nations. Please note, honored Consul, that American troops, following their own laws, don’t have any right to fight against us.
Dear Sirs (sic), please, accept our distinguished salutations.
Signed by the High Commander of the Revolution
M. Peralte
followed by 100 other signatures
Prelude to the Revolution: 1760 to 1789, Bob Corbett
Article from: http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/history/revolution/revolution1.htm
The Whites
There were approximately 20,000 whites, mainly French, in Saint-Domingue. They were divided into two main groups:
The Planters
These were wealthy whites who owned plantations and many slaves. Since their wealth and position rested entirely on the slave economy they were united in support of slavery. They were, by 1770, extremely disenchanted with France. Their complaint was almost identical with the complaints that led the North American British to rebel against King George in 1776 and declare their independence. That is, the metropole (France), imposed strict laws on the colony prohibiting any trading with any partner except France. Further, the colonists had no formal representation with the French government.
Virtually all the planters violated the laws of France and carried on an illegal trade especially with the fledgling nation, the United States of America. Most of the planters leaned strongly toward independence for Saint-Domingue along the same lines as the U.S., that is, a slave nation governed by white males.
It is important to note at the outset that this group was revolutionary, independence-minded and defiant of the laws of France.
Petit Blancs
The second group of whites were less powerful than the planters. They were artisans, shop keepers, merchants, teachers and various middle and underclass whites. They often had a few slaves, but were not wealthy like the planters.
They tended to be less independence-minded and more loyal to France.
However, they were committed to slavery and were especially anti-black, seeing free persons of color as serious economic and social competitors.
The Free Persons of Color
There were approximately 30,000 free persons of color in 1789. About half of them were mulattoes, children of white Frenchmen and slave women. These mulattoes were often freed by their father-masters in some sort of paternal guilt or concern. These mulatto children were usually feared by the slaves since the masters often displayed unpredictable behavior toward them, at times recognizing them as their children and demanding special treatment, at other times wishing to deny their existence. Thus the slaves wanted nothing to do with the mulattoes if possible.
The other half of the free persons of color were black slaves who had purchased their own freedom or been given freedom by their masters for various reasons.
The free people of color were often quite wealthy, certainly usually more wealthy than the petit blancs (thus accounting for the distinct hatred of the free persons of color on the part of the petit blancs), and often even more wealthy than the planters.
The free persons of color could own plantations and owned a large portion of the slaves. They often treated their slaves poorly and almost always wanted to draw distinct lines between themselves and the slaves. Free people of color were usually strongly pro-slavery.
There were special laws which limited the behavior of the free people of color and they did not have rights as citizens of France. Like the planters, they tended to lean toward independence and to wish for a free Saint-Domingue which would be a slave nation in which they could be free and independent citizens. As a class they certainly regarded the slaves as much more their enemies than they did the whites.
Culturally the free people of color strove to be more white than the whites. They denied everything about their African and black roots. They dressed as French and European as the law would allow, they were well educated in the French manner, spoke French and denigrated the Creole language of the slaves. They were scrupulous Catholics and denounced the Voodoo religion of Africa. While the whites treated them badly and scorned their color, they nonetheless strove to imitate every thing white, seeing this a way of separating themselves from the status of the slaves whom they despised.
The Black Slaves
There were some 500,000 slaves on the eve of the French Revolution. This means the slaves outnumbered the free people by about 10-1. In general the slave system in Saint-Domingue was especially cruel. In the pecking order of slavery one of the most frightening threats to recalcitrant slaves in the rest of the Americas was to threaten to sell them to Saint- Domingue. Nonetheless, there was an important division among the slaves which will account for some divided behavior of the slaves in the early years of the revolution.
Domestic Slaves
About 100,000 of the slaves were domestics who worked as cooks, personal servants and various artisans around the plantation manor, or in the towns. These slaves were generally better treated than the common field hands and tended to identify more fully with their white and mulatto masters. As a class they were longer in coming into the anti-slave revolution, and often, in the early years, remained loyal to their owners.
Field Hands
The 400,000 field hands were the slaves who had the harshest and most hopeless lives. They worked from sun up to sun down in the difficult climate of Saint-Domingue. They were inadequately fed, with virtually no medical care, not allowed to learn to read or write and in general were treated much worse than the work animals on the plantation. Despite French philosophical positions which admitted the human status of slaves (something which the Spanish, United States and British systems did NOT do at this time), the French slave owners found it much easier to replace slaves by purchasing new ones than in worrying much to preserve the lives of existing slaves.
The Maroons
There was a large group of run-away slaves who retreated deep into the mountains of Saint-Domingue. They lived in small villages where they did subsistence farming and kept alive African ways, developing African architecture, social relations, religion and customs. They were bitterly anti-slavery, but alone, were not willing to fight the fight for freedom. They did supplement their subsistence farming with occasional raids on local plantations, and maintained defense systems to resist planter forays to capture and re-enslave them.
It is hard to estimate their numbers, but most scholars believe there were tens of thousands of them prior to the Revolution of 1791. Actually two of the leading generals of the early slave revolution were maroons.
The Whites
There were approximately 20,000 whites, mainly French, in Saint-Domingue. They were divided into two main groups:
The Planters
These were wealthy whites who owned plantations and many slaves. Since their wealth and position rested entirely on the slave economy they were united in support of slavery. They were, by 1770, extremely disenchanted with France. Their complaint was almost identical with the complaints that led the North American British to rebel against King George in 1776 and declare their independence. That is, the metropole (France), imposed strict laws on the colony prohibiting any trading with any partner except France. Further, the colonists had no formal representation with the French government.
Virtually all the planters violated the laws of France and carried on an illegal trade especially with the fledgling nation, the United States of America. Most of the planters leaned strongly toward independence for Saint-Domingue along the same lines as the U.S., that is, a slave nation governed by white males.
It is important to note at the outset that this group was revolutionary, independence-minded and defiant of the laws of France.
Petit Blancs
The second group of whites were less powerful than the planters. They were artisans, shop keepers, merchants, teachers and various middle and underclass whites. They often had a few slaves, but were not wealthy like the planters.
They tended to be less independence-minded and more loyal to France.
However, they were committed to slavery and were especially anti-black, seeing free persons of color as serious economic and social competitors.
The Free Persons of Color
There were approximately 30,000 free persons of color in 1789. About half of them were mulattoes, children of white Frenchmen and slave women. These mulattoes were often freed by their father-masters in some sort of paternal guilt or concern. These mulatto children were usually feared by the slaves since the masters often displayed unpredictable behavior toward them, at times recognizing them as their children and demanding special treatment, at other times wishing to deny their existence. Thus the slaves wanted nothing to do with the mulattoes if possible.
The other half of the free persons of color were black slaves who had purchased their own freedom or been given freedom by their masters for various reasons.
The free people of color were often quite wealthy, certainly usually more wealthy than the petit blancs (thus accounting for the distinct hatred of the free persons of color on the part of the petit blancs), and often even more wealthy than the planters.
The free persons of color could own plantations and owned a large portion of the slaves. They often treated their slaves poorly and almost always wanted to draw distinct lines between themselves and the slaves. Free people of color were usually strongly pro-slavery.
There were special laws which limited the behavior of the free people of color and they did not have rights as citizens of France. Like the planters, they tended to lean toward independence and to wish for a free Saint-Domingue which would be a slave nation in which they could be free and independent citizens. As a class they certainly regarded the slaves as much more their enemies than they did the whites.
Culturally the free people of color strove to be more white than the whites. They denied everything about their African and black roots. They dressed as French and European as the law would allow, they were well educated in the French manner, spoke French and denigrated the Creole language of the slaves. They were scrupulous Catholics and denounced the Voodoo religion of Africa. While the whites treated them badly and scorned their color, they nonetheless strove to imitate every thing white, seeing this a way of separating themselves from the status of the slaves whom they despised.
The Black Slaves
There were some 500,000 slaves on the eve of the French Revolution. This means the slaves outnumbered the free people by about 10-1. In general the slave system in Saint-Domingue was especially cruel. In the pecking order of slavery one of the most frightening threats to recalcitrant slaves in the rest of the Americas was to threaten to sell them to Saint- Domingue. Nonetheless, there was an important division among the slaves which will account for some divided behavior of the slaves in the early years of the revolution.
Domestic Slaves
About 100,000 of the slaves were domestics who worked as cooks, personal servants and various artisans around the plantation manor, or in the towns. These slaves were generally better treated than the common field hands and tended to identify more fully with their white and mulatto masters. As a class they were longer in coming into the anti-slave revolution, and often, in the early years, remained loyal to their owners.
Field Hands
The 400,000 field hands were the slaves who had the harshest and most hopeless lives. They worked from sun up to sun down in the difficult climate of Saint-Domingue. They were inadequately fed, with virtually no medical care, not allowed to learn to read or write and in general were treated much worse than the work animals on the plantation. Despite French philosophical positions which admitted the human status of slaves (something which the Spanish, United States and British systems did NOT do at this time), the French slave owners found it much easier to replace slaves by purchasing new ones than in worrying much to preserve the lives of existing slaves.
The Maroons
There was a large group of run-away slaves who retreated deep into the mountains of Saint-Domingue. They lived in small villages where they did subsistence farming and kept alive African ways, developing African architecture, social relations, religion and customs. They were bitterly anti-slavery, but alone, were not willing to fight the fight for freedom. They did supplement their subsistence farming with occasional raids on local plantations, and maintained defense systems to resist planter forays to capture and re-enslave them.
It is hard to estimate their numbers, but most scholars believe there were tens of thousands of them prior to the Revolution of 1791. Actually two of the leading generals of the early slave revolution were maroons.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
The Sugar Revolutions and Slavery
The sugar revolutions were both cause and consequence of the demographic revolution. Sugar production required a greater labor supply than was available through the importation of European servants and irregularly supplied African slaves. At first the Dutch supplied the slaves, as well as the credit, capital, technological expertise, and marketing arrangements. After the restoration of the English monarch following the Commonwealth (1642-60), the King and other members of the royal family invested in the Company of Royal Adventurers, chartered in 1663, to pursue of the lucrative African slave trade. That company was succeeded by the Royal Africa Company in 1672, but the supply still failed to meet the demand, and all types of private traders entered the transatlantic commerce.
Between 1518 and 1870, the transatlantic slave trade supplied the greatest proportion of the Caribbean population. As sugarcane cultivation increased and spread from island to island--and to the neighboring mainland as well--more Africans were brought to replace those who died rapidly and easily under the rigorous demands of labor on the plantations, in the sugar factories, and in the mines. Acquiring and transporting Africans to the New World became a big and extremely lucrative business. From a modest trickle in the early sixteenth century, the trade increased to an annual import rate of about 2,000 in 1600, 13,000 in 1700, and 55,000 in 1810. Between 1811 and 1870, about 32,000 slaves per year were imported. As with all trade, the operation fluctuated widely, affected by regular market factors of supply and demand as well as the irregular and often unexpected interruptions of international war.
The eighteenth century represented the apogee of the system, and before the century had ended, the signs of its demise were clear. About 60 percent of all the Africans who arrived as slaves in the New World came between 1700 and 1810, the time period during which Jamaica, Barbados, and the Leeward Islands peaked as sugar producers. Antislavery societies sprang up in Britain and France, using the secular, rationalist arguments of the Enlightenment--the intellectual movement centered in France in the eighteenth century- -to challenge the moral and legal basis for slavery. A significant moral victory was achieved when the British Chief Justice, Lord Mansfield, ruled in 1772 that slavery was illegal in Britain, thereby freeing about 15,000 slaves who had accompanied their masters there--and abruptly terminating the practice of black slaves ostentatiously escorting their masters about the kingdom. In the British Parliament, antislavery voices grew stronger until eventually a bill to abolish the slave trade passed both houses in 1807. The British, being the major carriers of slaves and having abolished the trade themselves, energetically set about discouraging other states from continuing. The abolition of the slave trade was a blow from which the slave system in the Caribbean could not recover.
Before the slave trade ended, the Caribbean had taken approximately 47 percent of the 10 million African slaves brought to the Americas. Of this number, about 17 percent came to the British Caribbean. Although the white populations maintained their superior social positions, they became a numerical minority in all the islands. In the early nineteenth century, fewer than 5 percent of the total population of Jamaica, Grenada, Nevis, St. Vincent, and Tobago was white, fewer than 10 percent of the population of Anguilla, Montserrat, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, and the Virgin Islands. Only in the Bahamas, Barbados, and Trinidad was more than 10 percent of the total population white. By sharp contrast, Trinidad was the only colony in the British Caribbean to have fewer than 80 percent of its population enslaved. Sugar and slavery gave to the region a predominantly African population.
This demographic revolution had important social consequences. Rather than being a relatively homogeneous ethnic group divided into categories based on economic criteria, Caribbean society had complex overlapping divisions of class and caste. The three basic divisions were free white persons, free nonwhite persons, and slaves.
Whites were divided along status lines based on wealth. In the British colonies these were called "principal whites" and "poor whites." In reality they formed three ranks. At the top, forming an elite, were families who owned slaves and successful plantations. Some of their names became important in the history of one or more islands, names such as Guy, Modyford, Drax, Sutton, Price, Bannington, Needham, Tharp, and Beckford in Jamaica; Drax, Hallet, Littleton, Codrington, and Middleton in Barbados; and Warner, Winthrop, Pinney, and Jeaffreson in the Leeward Islands. Next in rank came the merchants, officials, and such professionals as doctors and clergymen, who were just a shade below the big planters.
At the bottom of the white ranks came the so-called "poor whites," often given such pejorative names as "red legs" in Barbados, or "walking buckras" in Jamaica. This group included small independent farmers, servants, day laborers, and all the service individuals from policemen to smiths, as well as the various hangers-on required by the curious "Deficiency Laws." These were laws designed to retain a minimum number of whites on each plantation to safeguard against slave revolts. A Jamaica law of 1703 stipulated that there must be one white person for each ten slaves up to the first twenty slaves and one for each twenty slaves thereafter as well as one white person for the first sixty head of cattle and one for each one hundred head after the first sixty head. The law was modified in 1720, raising the ratios and lowering the fines for noncompliance, but the planters seemed more prepared to pay the fines for noncompliance than to recruit and maintain white servants, so the law degenerated to another simple revenue measure for the state. This was true throughout the British islands during the eighteenth century.
Regardless of rank, skin color gave each person of European descent a privileged position within plantation society. The importance of race and color was a significant variation from the norms of typical European society and accentuated the divergence between the society "at home" and that overseas.
Each slave society in the colonies had an intermediate group, called the "free persons of color," an ambiguous position. Governor Francis Seaforth of Barbados colorfully expressed this dilemma in 1802: "There is, however, a third description of people from whom I am more suspicious of evil than from either the whites or the slaves: these are the Black and Colored people who are not slaves, and yet whom I cannot bring myself to call free. I think unappropriated people would be a more proper denomination for them, for though not the property of other individuals they do not enjoy the shadow of any civil right." This group originated in the miscegenation of European masters and their African slaves. By the nineteenth century, the group could be divided into blacks who had gained their freedom or were the descendants of slaves, and the mixed, or mulatto, descendants of the associations between Europeans and non-Europeans. By the time of the abolition of slavery in the 1830s, the heterogeneous free nonwhite population represented about 10 percent of the population of Jamaica, 12 percent of the population of Barbados, and about 20 percent of the population of Trinidad. A number of these free nonwhites had been free for generations, if not centuries, and had carved a niche in the local societies as successful merchants, planters, professionals, and slave owners.
Throughout the British Caribbean the free nonwhites manifested a number of common traits. They were predominantly female, largely urban, and clearly differentiated from the slaves both by law and by custom. Although adult females outnumbered males, the free nonwhite population tended to be the most sexually balanced overall and was the only group that consistently reproduced itself in the British colonies during the era of the slave trade. Moreover, with the exception of Trinidad, where, as Bridget Brereton indicates, just as many free nonwhites lived in the rural parishes as in the towns of Port of Spain, San Fernando, and St. Joseph, the free nonwhites were strongly urban. After 1809, about 61 percent of all the free nonwhites in Barbados lived in the parish of St. Michael in the capital city, Bridgetown. More free nonwhites lived in Kingston, Jamaica, than in all the other parishes combined.
The free nonwhite population faced competition from both ends of the spectrum. At the lower end of the economic scale they had to compete with jobbing slaves, who were often working arduously to get enough money to purchase their freedom and so join the free group. At the upper end they competed with the artisan, commercial, and semi-skilled service sector of the lower orders of whites. The whites often used their political power--or in some cases their access to political power in Britain--to circumscribe the free nonwhites as much as possible. Laws distinguishing comportment, dress, and residence, denying nonwhites the right to practice certain professions, or limiting the material legacy of individual free nonwhites were common throughout the Caribbean. But at the time of the abolition of slavery, nonwhites were aggressively challenging the political hegemony of the whites, and their successes were very important in the subsequent development of British Caribbean society.
http://countrystudies.us/caribbean-islands/8.htmislands/8.htm
Between 1518 and 1870, the transatlantic slave trade supplied the greatest proportion of the Caribbean population. As sugarcane cultivation increased and spread from island to island--and to the neighboring mainland as well--more Africans were brought to replace those who died rapidly and easily under the rigorous demands of labor on the plantations, in the sugar factories, and in the mines. Acquiring and transporting Africans to the New World became a big and extremely lucrative business. From a modest trickle in the early sixteenth century, the trade increased to an annual import rate of about 2,000 in 1600, 13,000 in 1700, and 55,000 in 1810. Between 1811 and 1870, about 32,000 slaves per year were imported. As with all trade, the operation fluctuated widely, affected by regular market factors of supply and demand as well as the irregular and often unexpected interruptions of international war.
The eighteenth century represented the apogee of the system, and before the century had ended, the signs of its demise were clear. About 60 percent of all the Africans who arrived as slaves in the New World came between 1700 and 1810, the time period during which Jamaica, Barbados, and the Leeward Islands peaked as sugar producers. Antislavery societies sprang up in Britain and France, using the secular, rationalist arguments of the Enlightenment--the intellectual movement centered in France in the eighteenth century- -to challenge the moral and legal basis for slavery. A significant moral victory was achieved when the British Chief Justice, Lord Mansfield, ruled in 1772 that slavery was illegal in Britain, thereby freeing about 15,000 slaves who had accompanied their masters there--and abruptly terminating the practice of black slaves ostentatiously escorting their masters about the kingdom. In the British Parliament, antislavery voices grew stronger until eventually a bill to abolish the slave trade passed both houses in 1807. The British, being the major carriers of slaves and having abolished the trade themselves, energetically set about discouraging other states from continuing. The abolition of the slave trade was a blow from which the slave system in the Caribbean could not recover.
Before the slave trade ended, the Caribbean had taken approximately 47 percent of the 10 million African slaves brought to the Americas. Of this number, about 17 percent came to the British Caribbean. Although the white populations maintained their superior social positions, they became a numerical minority in all the islands. In the early nineteenth century, fewer than 5 percent of the total population of Jamaica, Grenada, Nevis, St. Vincent, and Tobago was white, fewer than 10 percent of the population of Anguilla, Montserrat, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, and the Virgin Islands. Only in the Bahamas, Barbados, and Trinidad was more than 10 percent of the total population white. By sharp contrast, Trinidad was the only colony in the British Caribbean to have fewer than 80 percent of its population enslaved. Sugar and slavery gave to the region a predominantly African population.
This demographic revolution had important social consequences. Rather than being a relatively homogeneous ethnic group divided into categories based on economic criteria, Caribbean society had complex overlapping divisions of class and caste. The three basic divisions were free white persons, free nonwhite persons, and slaves.
Whites were divided along status lines based on wealth. In the British colonies these were called "principal whites" and "poor whites." In reality they formed three ranks. At the top, forming an elite, were families who owned slaves and successful plantations. Some of their names became important in the history of one or more islands, names such as Guy, Modyford, Drax, Sutton, Price, Bannington, Needham, Tharp, and Beckford in Jamaica; Drax, Hallet, Littleton, Codrington, and Middleton in Barbados; and Warner, Winthrop, Pinney, and Jeaffreson in the Leeward Islands. Next in rank came the merchants, officials, and such professionals as doctors and clergymen, who were just a shade below the big planters.
At the bottom of the white ranks came the so-called "poor whites," often given such pejorative names as "red legs" in Barbados, or "walking buckras" in Jamaica. This group included small independent farmers, servants, day laborers, and all the service individuals from policemen to smiths, as well as the various hangers-on required by the curious "Deficiency Laws." These were laws designed to retain a minimum number of whites on each plantation to safeguard against slave revolts. A Jamaica law of 1703 stipulated that there must be one white person for each ten slaves up to the first twenty slaves and one for each twenty slaves thereafter as well as one white person for the first sixty head of cattle and one for each one hundred head after the first sixty head. The law was modified in 1720, raising the ratios and lowering the fines for noncompliance, but the planters seemed more prepared to pay the fines for noncompliance than to recruit and maintain white servants, so the law degenerated to another simple revenue measure for the state. This was true throughout the British islands during the eighteenth century.
Regardless of rank, skin color gave each person of European descent a privileged position within plantation society. The importance of race and color was a significant variation from the norms of typical European society and accentuated the divergence between the society "at home" and that overseas.
Each slave society in the colonies had an intermediate group, called the "free persons of color," an ambiguous position. Governor Francis Seaforth of Barbados colorfully expressed this dilemma in 1802: "There is, however, a third description of people from whom I am more suspicious of evil than from either the whites or the slaves: these are the Black and Colored people who are not slaves, and yet whom I cannot bring myself to call free. I think unappropriated people would be a more proper denomination for them, for though not the property of other individuals they do not enjoy the shadow of any civil right." This group originated in the miscegenation of European masters and their African slaves. By the nineteenth century, the group could be divided into blacks who had gained their freedom or were the descendants of slaves, and the mixed, or mulatto, descendants of the associations between Europeans and non-Europeans. By the time of the abolition of slavery in the 1830s, the heterogeneous free nonwhite population represented about 10 percent of the population of Jamaica, 12 percent of the population of Barbados, and about 20 percent of the population of Trinidad. A number of these free nonwhites had been free for generations, if not centuries, and had carved a niche in the local societies as successful merchants, planters, professionals, and slave owners.
Throughout the British Caribbean the free nonwhites manifested a number of common traits. They were predominantly female, largely urban, and clearly differentiated from the slaves both by law and by custom. Although adult females outnumbered males, the free nonwhite population tended to be the most sexually balanced overall and was the only group that consistently reproduced itself in the British colonies during the era of the slave trade. Moreover, with the exception of Trinidad, where, as Bridget Brereton indicates, just as many free nonwhites lived in the rural parishes as in the towns of Port of Spain, San Fernando, and St. Joseph, the free nonwhites were strongly urban. After 1809, about 61 percent of all the free nonwhites in Barbados lived in the parish of St. Michael in the capital city, Bridgetown. More free nonwhites lived in Kingston, Jamaica, than in all the other parishes combined.
The free nonwhite population faced competition from both ends of the spectrum. At the lower end of the economic scale they had to compete with jobbing slaves, who were often working arduously to get enough money to purchase their freedom and so join the free group. At the upper end they competed with the artisan, commercial, and semi-skilled service sector of the lower orders of whites. The whites often used their political power--or in some cases their access to political power in Britain--to circumscribe the free nonwhites as much as possible. Laws distinguishing comportment, dress, and residence, denying nonwhites the right to practice certain professions, or limiting the material legacy of individual free nonwhites were common throughout the Caribbean. But at the time of the abolition of slavery, nonwhites were aggressively challenging the political hegemony of the whites, and their successes were very important in the subsequent development of British Caribbean society.
http://countrystudies.us/caribbean-islands/8.htmislands/8.htm
Tortuga Island- Isle de la Tortue
These men were known for the meat that they barbecued (French for smoked meat is viande boucanee), and so eventually were named... Buccaneers. When these hunters learned that piracy was more profitable than selling meat, they were soon making regular raids on the Spanish ships sailing the local trade routes.
An early French governor named Jean le Vasseur used his training as an engineer to build a 24-gun fort by the harbor which helped to repel Spanish attacks. French governors preferred to use the buccaneers for local defense, as the British governors were later to do at Port Royal, and Tortuga Island became well-known for those men calling themselves the Brethren of the Coast.
The most notorious among the pirates of Tortuga was Francois L'Ollonais, a psychopath whose method of choice was often horrible tortures and murder. Sir Henry Morgan started his career of piracy from this very island.
Beginning in the early 1670's, Tortuga Island entered a period of decline after a series of Spanish and French raids, when some buccaneers went south to the better market in French Saint Dominique and some were drawn east to expand the defenses of Port Royal, Jamaica.
http://www.thepiratesrealm.com/Isle%20of%20Tortuga.html
An early French governor named Jean le Vasseur used his training as an engineer to build a 24-gun fort by the harbor which helped to repel Spanish attacks. French governors preferred to use the buccaneers for local defense, as the British governors were later to do at Port Royal, and Tortuga Island became well-known for those men calling themselves the Brethren of the Coast.
The most notorious among the pirates of Tortuga was Francois L'Ollonais, a psychopath whose method of choice was often horrible tortures and murder. Sir Henry Morgan started his career of piracy from this very island.
Beginning in the early 1670's, Tortuga Island entered a period of decline after a series of Spanish and French raids, when some buccaneers went south to the better market in French Saint Dominique and some were drawn east to expand the defenses of Port Royal, Jamaica.
http://www.thepiratesrealm.com/Isle%20of%20Tortuga.html
Sir Francis Drake
The city soon fell on hard times. With the conquest of the Aztecs and Inca complete, many of the new settlers preferred to go to Mexico or South America and the city stagnated. In January of 1586, notorious pirate Sir Francis Drake was able to easily capture the city with less than 700 men: most of the inhabitants of the city had fled when they heard Drake was coming. Drake stayed for a month, until he had received a ransom of 25,000 ducats for the city, and when he left he and his men carried off everything they could, including the church bells. Santo Domingo was a smoldering ruin by the time he left.http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/historyofthecaribbean/p/santodomingo.htm
Pirates and the founding of Saint-Domingue, Bob Corbett 1995
Most of you know a bit about the pirates on the island of LaTortue. It is my contention that the pirates contributed very little to the future history of Haiti, but, on the other hand, it was their de facto rule of the western part of the island that strongly encouraged the French to sue for the cession of that portion of Hispaniola in 1697. Below is the story in brief form as I understand it.
About pirates. In the early 16th century Spain was, of course, dominant in the so-called "New World." But, France, Great Britain and Holland joined to hire tough sailors called privateers to disrupt the Spanish shipping, steal the gold and silver and other precious items and give the largest share back to the supporting governments.
One of the central places for these privateers to hang out was the island of La Tortue, just off Haiti's north coast. If you look at a map you will see that this is the route of one path back to Europe from Central and South America. The other path, to the south of Puerto Rico, was too shallow and dangerous. Thus La Tortue, a rocky island with caves, was an excellent vantagepoint for the early privateers.
Later, by the 17th century when the privateers gave way to non-governmental groups of free lance criminals, the pirates were born. By this point La Torture was mainly the province of French pirates. The British pirates (Henry Morgan being the most famous of them) moved to
Jamaica. The Dutch sort of dropped out.
Now, back to an interesting complication. The island of Hispaniola was Columbus' second landfall in 1492, after San Salvador. He claimed the island for Spain, but it had very little gold, thus it was not too important at that time. As the Spanish moved into Central and South America Hispaniola was at first the breadbasket, where Indian and African slaves raised food for the conquistadors. Later, after the Spanish settled some areas of Central and South America, and the settlers started raising their own food, Hispaniola was virtually abandoned.
But there were Spanish on the eastern portion of the island where they raised some cattle, but the western portion (today's Haiti) was virtually abandoned. However, since this land was wildly fertile and formerly a place where animal farming went on, there were lots of wild cattle and pigs.
When the pirates weren't pirating, some of them began to cross the 16 km. over to Haiti to hunt meat. Since they cooked it over open fires they were called boukanier (the open fire men). But the British couldn't say that and that was the origin of the English term buccaneers. They weren't really pirates, but off-duty pirates, enjoying a barbarque!
Little by little these people settled in this area and built a French settlement in Spanish property. Disputes arose about this French infringement of Spanish land and these disputes were finally settled in 1697 when the Treaty of Rystwik, which settled a European war, granted the western portion of the island to France, which named it the colony of San Domingue. This French colony is basically the same boundaries as modern day Haiti.
The native Arawak/Taino Indians were completely wiped out by this time. But, by the early part of the 16th century the Spanish and then the French were importing African slaves to work the land.
The African slaves revolted many times, but the revolt of 1791 "stuck" and grew into a revolution that finally succeeded in late 1803. Jan. 1, 1804 the country of Haiti began, the only Republic ever formed by slaves after a victorious revolution.
Back to the pirates. They ultimately didn't make much of a contribution to the growth of either Saint-Domingue or Haiti, but they were the origins, the first French who settled there and began to farm. Most of them eventually tired of this sedentary life and drifted back to the sea and to pirating. But, other less adventuresome French came to settle this fertile land and to build settlements.
http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/history/pirates/piratesandom.htm
About pirates. In the early 16th century Spain was, of course, dominant in the so-called "New World." But, France, Great Britain and Holland joined to hire tough sailors called privateers to disrupt the Spanish shipping, steal the gold and silver and other precious items and give the largest share back to the supporting governments.
One of the central places for these privateers to hang out was the island of La Tortue, just off Haiti's north coast. If you look at a map you will see that this is the route of one path back to Europe from Central and South America. The other path, to the south of Puerto Rico, was too shallow and dangerous. Thus La Tortue, a rocky island with caves, was an excellent vantagepoint for the early privateers.
Later, by the 17th century when the privateers gave way to non-governmental groups of free lance criminals, the pirates were born. By this point La Torture was mainly the province of French pirates. The British pirates (Henry Morgan being the most famous of them) moved to
Jamaica. The Dutch sort of dropped out.
Now, back to an interesting complication. The island of Hispaniola was Columbus' second landfall in 1492, after San Salvador. He claimed the island for Spain, but it had very little gold, thus it was not too important at that time. As the Spanish moved into Central and South America Hispaniola was at first the breadbasket, where Indian and African slaves raised food for the conquistadors. Later, after the Spanish settled some areas of Central and South America, and the settlers started raising their own food, Hispaniola was virtually abandoned.
But there were Spanish on the eastern portion of the island where they raised some cattle, but the western portion (today's Haiti) was virtually abandoned. However, since this land was wildly fertile and formerly a place where animal farming went on, there were lots of wild cattle and pigs.
When the pirates weren't pirating, some of them began to cross the 16 km. over to Haiti to hunt meat. Since they cooked it over open fires they were called boukanier (the open fire men). But the British couldn't say that and that was the origin of the English term buccaneers. They weren't really pirates, but off-duty pirates, enjoying a barbarque!
Little by little these people settled in this area and built a French settlement in Spanish property. Disputes arose about this French infringement of Spanish land and these disputes were finally settled in 1697 when the Treaty of Rystwik, which settled a European war, granted the western portion of the island to France, which named it the colony of San Domingue. This French colony is basically the same boundaries as modern day Haiti.
The native Arawak/Taino Indians were completely wiped out by this time. But, by the early part of the 16th century the Spanish and then the French were importing African slaves to work the land.
The African slaves revolted many times, but the revolt of 1791 "stuck" and grew into a revolution that finally succeeded in late 1803. Jan. 1, 1804 the country of Haiti began, the only Republic ever formed by slaves after a victorious revolution.
Back to the pirates. They ultimately didn't make much of a contribution to the growth of either Saint-Domingue or Haiti, but they were the origins, the first French who settled there and began to farm. Most of them eventually tired of this sedentary life and drifted back to the sea and to pirating. But, other less adventuresome French came to settle this fertile land and to build settlements.
http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/history/pirates/piratesandom.htm
Excerpt from, "Haitian Creole: A Review Of Slavery And Creation"
Christopher Columbus claimed Haiti when he landed there in 1492. Arawak Indians were the original inhabitants of this island when Columbus arrived. Later, the island became a colony of England. Haiti remained virtually unsettled until the mid-17th century, when French colonists, importing African slaves, developed sugar plantations in the north. Under French rule from 1697, Haiti (then called Saint-Domingue) became one of the world's richest sugar and coffee producers. Soon, Haiti became a land of wealth with the vast use of slavery as their method of production. The rising demand for sugar, coffee, cotton, and tobacco created a greater demand for slaves by other slave trading countries. Spain, France, the Dutch, and English were in competition for the cheap labor needed to work their colonial plantation system producing those lucrative goods. The slave trade was so profitable that, by 1672, the Royal African Company chartered by Charles II of England superseded the other traders and became the richest shipper of human slaves to the mainland of the Americas. The slaves were so valuable to the open market - they were eventually called Black Gold. Plantation owners began to be represented in the colony either by their agents or plantation managers, who kept them, informed of production levels, profits, expenses, and the general operations of the plantation. The arrogance and conceit of these agents, or procurers, was that they were surrounded by a multitude of domestic slaves to satisfy every want or need of their own. The greater number of domestic slaves one may have entails a great amount of prestige for these people in their time of the early 1700's and no though was given to the immoral ways and acts taken by their race because they though it not an issue. Plantation owners and those of the like continued to be heavily involved in social aspects of culture and the French way of life. Commuting from their authoritatively constructed world of pleasure in France with wealth and prestige combined with the occasional visits to the plantation for business. The life of a plantation owner and those that surround him is of luxury and negative profusion. The Haitians are almost wholly black, with a culture that is a unique mixture of African and French influences. Haiti was a French colony until 1791 when, fired by the example of the French Revolution, the black slaves revolted, massacred the French landowners and proclaimed the world's first black republic. As noted, this is the first revolution of slaves against their owners and their success did not go unnoticed...
http://www.freeessays.cc/db/22/fmy38.shtml
http://www.freeessays.cc/db/22/fmy38.shtml
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