World History: The End of Slavery: Abolition, Rebellion, Successes, Failures

The symbol of abolition 'Am I Not a Man and a Brother?'

Slavery has been a common stain on society throughout human history. Most societies which we have looked at on World History have practised slavery in some way or another, and the last time that we looked specifically at slavery was when we discussed the Atlantic Slave Trade. Today we're looking at how the slave trade and slavery came to an end, and how there were limitations to abolition. Due to how endemic slavery was, and how many forms it took, we cannot discuss the entire history of anti-slavery in just the 1700s and 1800s alone - for example, we'll be discussing the end of serfdom in Russia and slavery in the Ottoman Empire in future posts. Today we're looking at the end of slavery, and the movements against slavery, since the 1700s.

Anti-Slavery before 1700

As long as there have been slaves there have always been an anti-slavery movement. Anti-slavery in the Americas had for a longtime been condemned by both Europeans and the Americas, however, not in a way that we would imagine. Originally in the Americas the indigenous population was enslaved which proved to be one of the prime reasons for the Great Dying - where 90% of the indigenous population were killed thanks to colonialism. The original criticisms of slavery were directed at the enslavement of indigenous peoples - in 1609 Philip III of Spain spoke of 'the great excesses that might occur if slavery were to be permitted in any instance' and in 1639 Pope Urban VIII threatened excommunication for anyone practising slavery. Some of it was pragmatic though - slavery was evidently wiping out the indigenous communities which in turn was wiping out available labour. The enslavement of black Africans were seen as being fine; despite condemning the enslavement of indigenous communities Bartolome de Casas argued that Africans were 'natural' for hard labour. Slavery had also been brought to an end by several areas across Europe - 1315 France banned slavery and the idea of 'English Law' created an anti-slavery impulse on the continent. This was actually used to free slaves - 1755 to 1769 saw several court cases in Britain where slaves arriving in Britain used this idea to obtain their freedom, and Thomas-Alexandre Dumas in 1776 got his freedom when he was sent to France. These ideas were planted and would come into fruition later on. Also, before we move onto abolitionist movements it should also be noted that quite a few Christian denominations opposed slavery on moral grounds - the Quakers in the US are a particularly good example.

Abolitionist Movements

A depiction of the Zong Massacre

One of the key aspects of the end of slavery is the importance of abolitionist groups raising public awareness of the horrors of slavery. As expected, abolitionist movements had existed for a longtime but it was following the Zong Massacre in 1781; a Liverpool slave ship, the Zong, sailed by Luke Collingwood set sail from Sao Tome in September 1781 with 442 slaves, but on their way to Jamaica they got lost. With resources running scarce, and with many slaves dying of illness, and for every slave that died it would be on his head, unless if there was a risk to the crew. As a result, Collingwood had the surviving 133 slaves 'thrown alive into the sea, [so] it would be the loss of the underwriters.' These events were common but it managed to go to court in 1783, and major abolitionist, Granville Sharp, got other abolitionists to spread the word of the massacre. Thomas Day composed a poem entitled The Dying Negro, Dr Beilby Porteus issued sermons denouncing slavery, and George Gregory denounced slavery in Essays Historical and Moral. Although at this stage the general public seemed disinterested, it did influence abolitionists - especially after 1788 when Parliament passed an act for the first time to try and control the Slave Trade. Particularly in the Anglo-American world the Zong Massacre influenced a rise in abolitionist movements. The most notable was the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade which was founded by Quakers as well as Sharp and publisher Thomas Clarkson. However, the most famous member was William Wilberforce - an evangelical philanthropist and politician he provided a key leadership role in the abolitionist movement.

This image of Gordon the slave was distributed by American abolitionists

How did abolitionists get support? Largely it was through public speeches, publications, the funding of African accounts of slavery, and funding anti-slavery missionary societies. Granville Sharp and Wilberforce are the best know abolitionists due to this - their presence in parliament and public society, thanks to their wealth, made them publicly known. Josiah Wedgewood could use his wealth to make the famous 'Am I Not a Man and a Brother?' which became adopted across the abolitionist movement. Women were very important to the abolitionist movement - especially in the United States. Especially wealthy women, like Hannah More and Mary Wollstonecroft in the UK and Susan B Anthony in the US, were integral in publishing anti-slavery publications. From 1787-8 it is estimated that 10% of subscribers to the Abolition Society were women. A female version of Wedgewood's ceramic was also produced. It is important to not overlook the working-class aspect to abolition. In the UK working-class abolitionists, although sidelined in the movement, could help by boycotting produce made through the slave-trade. The religious Great Awakening in the United States in the North allowed working-class Americans to oppose slavery on moral terms - by 1838, after five years of existence, the American Anti-Slavery Society obtained 250,000 members. The American anti-slavery movement could be more radical. First published in 1831 The Liberator journal featuring the writing of William Lloyd Garrison savaged the American system of slavery ,and even called for abrogating the Constitution and dissolving the Union to end the US' complicity in slavery.

'Am I Not a Woman and a Sister?'

Continental Europe and Brazil abolitionist societies were fairly different from their English-speaking counterparts. The French abolitionist societies, such as the Amis de Noirs formed in 1788, were a more wealthy, elite movement preferring to work within the system and acting as brokers with external pressure groups. This is particularly noted in Brazil whose 'three stages of abolition' (abolishing of the trade in 1851; 'freedom of the womb' in 1871; and the 'Golden Law', abolition for all in 1888) were largely done behind closed doors. Of course, from the 1860s there was a grassroots abolitionist movement, and free and slave black opposition, so it is important to not ignore this aspect. The more radical nature of the French Enlightenment also brought in abolitionist ideas - as David Hume in Edinburgh and Thomas Jefferson in the US criticised but not condemned slavery, whereas Denis Diderot in the Encyclopedie overtly denounced it. In the US and Latin America their independence movements had used the rhetoric of freedom and liberty. As we saw when we looked at Latin America slaves used this language to justify their freedom, but it also caused a conundrum. How could people call for liberty as they kept slaves? Across parts of Latin America and the Northern US slavery came to an end when slaves successfully showed their own enslavement went against these ideas - Elizabeth Freeman in 1780 used the Constitution to get slavery abolished in Massachusetts as an example.

Black Abolition

Olaudah Equiano, the key abolitionist

Abolition was far from a white movement - in fact white abolitionists sometimes hindered black attempts to bring about their own emancipation. Slave uprisings, especially the Haitian Revolution, were at times condemned by white abolitionists, including Olympe de Gouges, and were even dehumanised. Especially female slaves were stripped of agency - in an attempt disprove the idea that black Africans were violent they were stripped of humanity. As a result black abolitionists, with perhaps the exception of American abolitionists, have been overlooked. The best known individual is perhaps Olaudah Equiano, also known as Gustavus Vassa. Equiano, in his account, was born around 1745 in what is now Nigeria - some historians have argued that he was born in South Carolina and combined narratives of African slaves, although it is heavily debated. Equiano lived a truly fascinating life - traumatised by being taken from his sister, he became a slave, a sailor, a devout Christian, and then an abolitionist. In 1794 he published a story of his life, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African, where he showed the horrors of slavery, and the trauma of being separated from his sister, and it became a bestseller. Like many abolitionists he was a devout Christian and that is shown in his text - Equiano later was a key figure in the London Missionary Society. His text was so controversial that pro-slavery individuals tried to smear it as being fictitious. Equiano was very important in the abolitionist movement before he was published - Sharp learnt about the Zong Massacre due to Equiano. Britain had the Sons of Africa - an abolitionist group, working closely with Wilberforce etc, made up of freed slaves. In 1731 Ignatious Sancho arrived in the UK where he managed to published speeches denouncing slavery along a Christian lens, and there was also Ottabah Cuguano. Born in Ghana he was freed in 1752 in Grenada and went to Britain where he published Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species. Here he denounced slavery, and argued it was morally right for slaves to resist their masters.

Frderick Douglass, c.1879

In Cuba, the independence movement became closely tied with abolition. In 1868 Carlos Manuel de Cespedes declared that 'The Cuban Revolution...could hardly accept the great contradiction of limiting these to only one part of the population of the country.' There were limits to this - pro-independence slaveowners could keep their slaves - but former slaves, or their descendants, became leaders in the movement. The US is particularly known for black abolitionists. Largely this was due to the Underground Railroad which by 1850 is believed to have helped 100,000 escape. Harriet Tubman was a key figure in the Railroad; born into slavery herself she operated under the name of 'Moses' and managed to free over seventy individuals. Southern police could not fathom the idea that a black woman could be the mysterious Moses which aided in her success, as well as her own intelligence. Frederick Douglass has been cited as being one of the most important US abolitionists. Born a slave he taught himself to read and managed to make his way to New York and freedom - his books, like Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), became instant bestsellers. In his Narrative his depiction of the brutality of slavery, both physical and emotional, resonated with audiences, and his discussion of how a friendly old lady, who owned him, was forced to keep him illiterate by her husband showed how destructive slavery was. It destroyed the humanity of even the owners. However, we get a skewed image of slavery through many narratives - mostly young men from a few states had the opportunity to free themselves. Other narratives are exceptional - Solomon Northup was free but taken as a slave, Harriet Jacobs hid in an attic (tragically she had to downplay sexual violence enacted on her to be published), and Henry 'Box' Brown managed to mail himself to Philadelphia. Hence, we only have a small account of what lives of slaves were like.

Rebellion

The statute of Samuel Sharpe

Often it is overlooked how important slave rebellions were in bringing an end to slavery. As mentioned earlier, and a previous World History post, was the Haitian Revolution. Slaves in the French colony Saint-Domingue rose up, defeated European powers, established a black republic, and defeated Napoleon's brother-in-law. Due to the success of the Haitian revolutionaries, such as Toussaint L'Ouverture, fighting French forces for the Spanish and British the French republicans finally abolished slavery in 1794. Napoleon hoped to bring back slavery to enrich his empire so tried to reintroduce slavery and restore French rule to the island - France was roundly defeated. It would take until 1848, however, for France to abolish slavery across the entire empire. Haiti offered a beacon across the enslaved world - freedom was possible. Meanwhile, despite abolishing the slave trade in 1807 Britain continued the practice in its empire; the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was transformed in 1823 by William Wilberforce into the Anti-Slavery Society. The emergence of black deacons, including Baptists, in Jamaica gave slaves increased independence on religious lines. On Christmas Day 1831 a black Baptist preacher, Samuel Sharpe, encouraged slaves to strike and between 60,000 and 300,000 slaves took part in one of the largest slave rebellions. Although suppressed it shattered the colonial system - Hugh Thomas places it as one of three reasons why slavery was abolished in the British Empire (the other two was the willingness of a reformist Whig government, and a renewal of the anti-slavery movement with Thomas Fowell Buxton in parliament). Spain similarly abolished slavery in Cuba for similar reasons - hoping to keep a lid on Cuban nationalism Spain abolished slavery to show that it could be reformist. 

The United States and Brazil saw numerous slave rebellions - if anything it was traditional in Brazil with the quilombos. Unlike in Haiti, Jamaica, and Cuba slave rebellions did not bring abolition in Brazil and the US. The spectre of Haiti hung over both slave states - the US was keen to hamstring the Haitian economy to prevent it inspiring other slave rebellions - and reaction against slave rebellions were harsh. In the US, rebellions in Richmond (1800), Louisiana (1811), and Charleston (1822) were just some rebellions brutally crushed. The most famous one was Nat Turner's Rebellion in Southampton Valley, Virginia on August 22 1831. Turner was a slave preacher and upon seeing an eclipse (albeit he originally wanted to lead a revolt on July 4) led a revolt attacking white families and plantations - despite the idea that he ordered all white people killed he actually called for Quakers and the Dutch to be spared. It was crushed and Turner hung stating just before he died, 'Was not Christ crucified?'. A fear of 'a Turner being in any family' swept the South - Virginia through out a plan to gradually emancipate slaves, blacks (slave and free) were banned from being preachers, and slaves were prohibited from being taught to read. Slave rebellions could see success, however. An abolitionist from Sao Paulo in 1918 recalled how a slave named Pio allowed around 100 slaves to flee, and then there was the Amistad. The Amistad was moving from one Cuban port to another in 1839 when 53 slaves took over the ship and demanded that they been returned to Africa. The captain instead took them to Long Island, New York, and while the president wanted to return the slaves to Cuba abolitionists, including former president John Quincy Adams, convinced the Supreme Court that the Amistad had violated international laws against the slave trade. The slaves were returned to Africa. Albeit it was to Sierra Leone - not where they came from. 

Anti-Abolition

Slavery existed because it was popular and profitable. As argued by Hugh Thomas, the Industrial Revolution in Liverpool and Glasgow were funded thanks to the profits from sugar plantations in the Caribbean. Planters had considerable political power - profits from sugar, tobacco and coffee. In the British Caribbean in the 1770s profits came to £3.8 million (£450 million on today's money), and Saint-Domingue held most of the French wealth. Those who owed their wealth to slavery in Britain, France, Spain, Brazil, the Netherlands, and the US offered a very strong bulwark against abolition. During Cuba's Ten Years' War (1868-1878) support for independence was far less strong in the sugar plantation dominated west compared to the east. Similarly, opposition to abolition was strongest in states reliant on slavery, and slave-states in the US were even willing to secede in order to preserve slavery. Modern racism, partially, emerged thanks to the slavery. As abolitionists dehumanised slaves by stripping them of agency pro-slavery propaganda portrayed the free slave as a mindless brute prone to murder and rape. Fears of racial mixing were pervasive in colonial societies. Haiti, and other slave uprisings, caused hysterical fears of a race war. Haiti freed its slaves and there was violence, we therefore cannot free our slaves. During the Ten Years' War Spain, and loyalist Cubans, portrayed the revolt as a black insurrection wanting to establish a black republic along the lines of Haiti.

The US and the Civil War

African-Americans in the Union Army

I want to devote a World History post to the Civil War so I won't go into too much detail here. Contrary to the 'Lost Cause' myth the US Civil War was about slavery. Naturally, there were other factors, Northern economic domination and states' rights, but even then they were due to slavery - slavery kept the Southern economy rural and it was states' rights to keep slaves. Autonomy and pride in your own state helped convince everyday people in the South to the Confederacy but so was slavery. There are three reasons for this: there was a hope that a regular farmer could own slaves in the future; there was a fear that emancipating slaves would create competition for manual work; and poor whites had the knowledge that they weren't at the bottom of society. Since independence there had always been tension between the North and South - Washington D.C. was even built as a compromise - and the growth of abolition in the North angered the South. Tensions continued to grow as Abraham Lincoln was elected. The Republican Party had emerged as a Northern, abolition supporting party and although it is debated if Lincoln was an abolitionist the South definitely viewed him as one - the Republicans didn't even appear on Southern voting tickets. The South seceded and the Civil War began. The war would end slavery. One part pragmatism and one part genuine abolition Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 declaring slaves in seceded states freed. African-Americans were then encouraged to enlist in the Union army, and in 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery - to an extent.

Africa and Abolition

A British depiction of a Dahomian sacrifice ceremony, c.1793

A key region that we have yet to discuss is Africa. As argued by Walter Rodney, the slave trade had made West African states heavily reliant on the slave trade. Britain in 1807 banned the slave trade and used its navy to enforce its ban across the Atlantic - Brazil quickly abolished slavery in 1851 due to British pressure. As a result, West African states saw a crisis - they had been made dependent on the slave trade and now it was throttled. Different states reacted differently. Asante, in modern Ghana, was receiving over 5,000 slaves a year between 1807 and 1816 but now they lost the ability to sell their slaves. Naturally, slaves disliked being enslaved and were starting to riot in the capital of Kumasi. Then Asante had a stroke of luck - to the north the Sokoto Caliphate was established. In need of slaves, gold, and kola nuts, to make a non-alcoholic drink, Sokoto offered a new market for Asante. Slaves were used en masse in gold mines and nut farms, Akan goldfields produced 27,000 ounces of gold in 1807 to 35,000 after 1850, and other slaves were sold to Sokoto. Local leaders who made a fortune through farming and mining bought slaves as a way to show economic power. Meanwhile, Dahomey (in modern Benin) suffered. Due to British pressure Dahomian king Gezo had started restricting slavery and human sacrifice - two things needed for legitimacy. Instead he placed less emphasis on slavery and more on palm oil exports losing him domestic support. In 1858 he was ousted in a coup by his own son.

Britain was keen to stamp out the slave trade in Africa and German writer Goethe described it best: Everybody knows their declamations against the slave trade; and, while they have palmed off on is all sorts of human maxims as the foundation of their proceedings...they themselves use the blacks. Anti-slavery was used as an excuse to exert British, and later European, power over Africa. As we saw already they intervened in Asante and Dahomey to control their economies and many famous explorers were integral in British rule. For example, the Universities' Mission to Central Africa (UMCA), formed by David Livingstone in 1857, prided itself on combating slavery in Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania - they often failed to mention that their first converts were bought by them. For centuries African slaves had been taken to the Arabian peninsula and India via Zanzibar. Britain established its own interests on Zanzibar, ostensibly to end slavery, in order to also monopolise trade in other goods. Slavery exploited Africa and abolition was used as a way to create a new exploitation.

A sketch of Granville Town

Finally, we also have colonisation in the name of abolition. Granville Sharp had read a pamphlet by Danish botanist Henry Smeathman called Plan of a Settlement to be made near Sierra Leona, on the Grain Coast of Africa. Sharp believed that charity was not enough to help freed slaves and convinced parliament that repatriation was needed. In May 1787 290 men and 41 women arrived in Africa and formed the settlement of Granville Town in land bought from a local sub-chief nicknamed King Tom. Things went bad quickly. Disease and rains wiped out half of the town's population and there was an issue of settlers going off to join slave traders! A new sub-chief, King Jimmy, in 1790 gave the settlers an ultimatum after his village had been attacked: leave in three days because I'll attack. Despite this, in 1791 the Sierra Leone Company was formed and 1,190 volunteers from Nova Scotia (mostly freed during the American Revolution) and 119 Europeans formed a new colony. Equiano even aided in this but was dismissed when he complained of financial mismanagement. Despite being burnt by the French in 1794 the colony soon grew and whenever Britain raided a slave ship they sent the slaves to Sierra Leone. Meanwhile, the US in 1820 formed the American Colonization Society - close to Sierra Leone Monrovia was formed in 1822 which grew to 5,000 occupants by 1840. 

Limits

A sketch of three members of the KKK in Mississippi, c.1871

Despite abolition there were immense limits to the end of slavery. When slavery was ended now freed slaves saw very little change. Britain chose to pay £20 million, about 40% of the treasury or £16.5 billion in today's money, in bailing out former slave owners - many of Britain's wealthy elite today, including former prime minister David Cameron, owe some of their wealth to this. Similar occurrences happened across the world. Brazilian former slaves often had to stay on their old plantations or became a significant portion of the urban poor. The Republicans after the Civil War attempted a policy called 'Reconstruction' to help former slaves, however, government intransigence and Southern opposition prevented its success. The Ku Klux Klan emerged in 1865 to terrorise and murder former slaves and their allies - centuries of slavery gave way to a century of Jim Crow. Racism as we know it today emerged in this time period. Africans in India was classified as 'Untouchable' and the bottom of society, and former slaves, and their descendants, were treated with contempt in society.

India indentured labourers in Mauritius, 1917

Slavery continued in another form in the British empire as they were exerting power over Africa on the pretence of ending slavery. Indians had been taken as slaves since the 1600s and a series of famines in the 1700s caused thousands to tens-of-thousands of Indians to be sold into slavery. Around a third of slaves in the Cape Colony were Indians and 500 were sold as weavers in Sri Lanka. When slavery was abolished indentured servitude was created. People would work for several years and be paid in a lump sum, but the employer basically owned their employee. Flogging, despite government restrictions, was common, the work was the same that slaves once did, and movement was restricted - the only difference was there was a chance that they would get paid after several years. From 1833 until around 1920 this policy took over 3.5 million Indians across the world creating a large Indian diaspora from Kenya to Guyana to Fiji. For example, by the 1940s 60,965 Indians lived in Fiji; 238,909 were in Mauritius; and 453,063 were in Mauritius. Mauritius' first prime minister was Indian, and his father had been an indentured labourer. 

Conclusion

Today we've only just glanced at the end of slavery and its repercussions. When we look at attempts to reform Russia and the Ottoman Empire, as well as the American Civil War, we'll focus more on certain aspects of the end of slavery. The end of slavery is often taught in schools, but it is often a simplified aspect - when I learnt about it we focused heavily on William Wilberforce, and it took until I went to university to learn of the Jamaican Rebellion. Women and men of all classes and races were instrumental in the end of slavery regardless of whether it was violent, peaceful, or otherwise. However, it is hard to imagine how ingrained slavery and its legacy remains today. Racism in its current form was born from slavery, and few attempts to improve the situation of freed slaves means that two centuries on their descendants are still suffering under oppression. Slavery still continues today. Mauritania only banned slavery in 1980 and its very likely that people are still enslaved, as we speak speak black Africans are being sold in markets in Libya, and human trafficking has once again become a global issue. Looking at how abolition and the end of slavery occurred in the nineteenth century we can maybe understand how to deal with the modern crisis and why inequality persists today.

The sources I have used are as follows:

-Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870, (London: Macmillan, 1998)

-Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty! An American History, Fourth Edition, (New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 2014)

-Martin Meredith, The Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000 Year History of Wealth, Greed, and Endeavor, (London: Simon & Schuster, 2014)

-Seymour Drescher, 'Brazilian Abolition in Comparative Perspectives', The Hispanic American Historical Review, 68:3, (1988), 429-460

-Robert Edgard Conrad, (ed.), Children of God's Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983)

-Ada Ferrar, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1999)

-Paul Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)

-Vincent Carretta, (ed.), The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings of Olaudah Equiano, (London: Penguin, 2003)

-Solomon Northup, 12 Years a Slave, (London: Collins, 1852/2014)

-David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823, (London: Cornell University Press, 1975)
-Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, (Dar es Salaam: Bogle-L'Ouvurture Publications, 1973)

-Marina Carter, ‘Slavery and Unfree Labour in the Indian Ocean’, History Compass, 4, 5 (2006), 800-813

-Megan Vaughan, ‘Slavery and Colonial Identity in Eighteenth-Century Mauritius’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 8 (1998), 189-214

Thank you for reading and I hope you found it useful. The next World History posts will look at the jihadi movements in West Africa in the early-1800s. For other World History posts please see our list here. For future blog updates please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.

World History: The Haitian Revolution

A painting of the 1803 Battle of Vertieres

On World History at the moment we're looking at the Age of Revolution where from the late-1700s to the mid-1800s revolutions, (political, social, and economic), ended up drastically changing the world we live in. Today we're looking at a unique revolution: the Haitian Revolution. This revolution saw the abolishing of slavery and the independence of Haiti, however, its perception has changed over the years. Originally it was seen as merely a successful slave revolt which had reactionary anti-white elements to it until the coming of the landmark The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James which highlighted the influences of the French Revolution. James also highlighted the African elements of the Revolution which has now been brought back into the historiography. The Haitian Revolution shows how those lacking agency in a society can obtain it more pertinently than what we saw in the French and American Revolutions. 

Background

Free Women of Color with their Children and Servants, by Agostino Brunias, Dominica, c. 1764–1796. Although not from Haiti this scene was replicated in the pre-Revolution colony

The Haitian Revolution took place in the French colony of Saint-Domingue on the island of Hispaniola, the island where present day Haiti and Dominican Republic are. Colonised in the late-1600s Saint-Domingue was a plantation economy growing a variety of crops, largely sugar and coffee. In 1787 the island had 655 sugar plantations producing 131,000,000 pounds of sugar; 1,962 coffee plantations; and 398 cotton and indigo plantations. Saint-Domingue became extremely rich as a result as it provided most of the coffee and sugar to Europe becoming known as the 'Jewel of the Antilles'. Cities like Le Cap Francois and Port-au-Prince were larger than many cities in what would become the United States. The colony was heavily divided along regional, (North, South and West), lines as each competed for economic superiority. Society was also split into three groups: whites, gens de couleur, and slaves. Even then each group could be further divided. Les blancs numbered around 24,000 individuals and were heavily divided by class - planters, despite very small in number, dominated Saint-Domingue society compared to the more numerous petit blancs who served as labourers, small merchants, and workers on plantations. The plantation owners replicated their wealthy aristocratic counterparts in France embodying the finery of the aristocrats; French traveller Jean-Bernard Bossu told a story how some sailors went for dinner at the invitation of a plantation owner. Their host was decked out in fine clothing with rich food so they assumed a wedding was happening until their host told them that this was just a normal dinner. The gens de couleur were made of freed slaves and mixed-race individuals; most of the original colonials were male so would take advantage of female slaves. They could own property and some even owned slaves including the later hero of the Revolution, Toussaint Louverture (also spelt L'Ouverture). There was great tension between gens de couleur and petit blancs for various reasons. Although the 1685 Code Noir made them French citizens they were still legally barred from political activity where over the next century their political rights were eroded. In neighbouring Spanish America at this time it was possible for a wealthy mixed-race individual to 'buy whiteness' and it was possible for gens de couleur to do so as well, however, they had to be three generations removed from their last black ancestor. Meanwhile, petit blancs in theory were 'superior' to gens de couleur but as they often lacked property, and worked for gens de couleur, they heavily resented this and expressed this through racism. Women also took part in this racism fostering hostility to neighbours who entered interracial relationships or businesses.

A modern depiction of Vodou, even today you can see the synchronicity of Catholicism and West African imagery, https://adventure.com/real-vodou-haiti/  

Finally, we have the slaves who made up 90% of Saint-Domingue's population. As we saw when we looked at the Atlantic slave trade this time period was the height of the slave trade. In 1787 there was at least 408,000 slaves and in 1788 alone 29,506 slaves were imported to the colony. Due to harsh living conditions most slaves died at a young age, 50% died in their first year of arriving at the colony, so most had to be imported in. The Code Noir was on the surface benevolent, or as benevolent as a pro-slavery law could be, but in practice it was regularly violated. With the exception of market day slaves had to work long hours in the Caribbean sun and could be subjected to physical abuse, mutilation, and, for women, rape. Grands blanc owned them, petit blancs wanted to own them, and gens de couleur both owned and resented them - slaves reminded them of their black skin and apparent inferiority. Slaves did have some agency. Sometimes kind owners offered slaves the opportunity to buy their freedom. Slave rebellions did occur - maroon settlements existed and before the Haitian Revolution there were slaves uprisings. In 1700 300 slaves near the capital of Le Cap Francois rose up and between 1751 and 1757 a Vodou priest called Francois Mackandal led a popular rebellion until he was burnt at the stake in 1758. Slaves also got agency in less overt ways. They knew that they were worth something to their masters so would poison themselves, or others, to spite them. Go-slows were common as well. They also formed their own culture - most slaves came from the Kongo in modern Angola or the Bight of Biafra so a wide variety of different cultures, languages and religions were brought together. At times a slave could go through several owners in Africa before they were sent to the Caribbean. The journey was traumatic but not enough to destroy their heritage so all came together uniting old and new, shared ones. In particular, the imposition of French and Catholicism merged into this. Vodou, or voodoo, emerged from this combining Catholicism with West African belief. If you look at Vodou ceremonies you can see the Catholic influences such as chanting and holy water in purification rituals. However, as it combined African and Christian beliefs it was instantly distrusted by the pious French Catholics, and at times slaves could use this distrust for agency. Vengeful slaves at times cast curses against harsh overseers and owners. 

No that is the situation at the dawn of the Haitian Revolution. Each group distrusted one another in a colony that was extremely wealthy, albeit most of that wealth was in the hands of a small group, but based on chattel slavery. Historian Paul Fregosi describes it well 'Haiti was hell, but Haiti was rich.'

Beginnings of the Revolution

Normally we see the start of the Revolution as beginning in 1791 but in reality we must trace it back to 1789 to properly understand the ideology of it. Tensions in France fed into tensions on Saint-Domingue. Seeing that in 1788 the king was having to bring back the Estates-General the North seized the opportunity to grant themselves further rights and power. They formed a committee, illegal according to French law, to send to Paris wanting to abolish military justice, have legislation and taxes to be voted by a provincial assembly subject to only the king and Colonial Committee, and that they should elect their own delegates. However, as they restricted representation to property owners which excluded women and petit blancs. Gens de couleur did manage to send their own deputies, separate from whites, to Paris to negotiate their own freedom. There they made alliances with Parisian allies and an abolitionist group called the Amis de Noirs, formed 1788. Like their counterparts in Britain and the US they were largely an elite group who opposed slavery but they faced an issue in Revolutionary France. A large part of the French Revolution's rhetoric involved property rights and this was a society which viewed slaves as property, not people, and several key coastal cities had an economy reliant upon the slave trade, like Nantes. The gens de couleur's delegates offered the perfect way to boost their support. As they were also fighting for their liberty the Amis des Noirs could indirectly attack slavery. However, the colonial delegates remained deeply divided and the creation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen terrified white delegates; it paved the way for emancipating the gens de couleur, and they initially embraced the revolutionary ideas. A way to get higher in society for non-whites was to take part in the colonial militia - in 1789 104 out of 156 companies were largely made of gens de couleur. They adopted the red cockade of the Revolution and started modelling themselves after the National Guard. Soon enough the support for the slavers started waning after those in France noticed the hypocrisy of demanding freedom while denying it to gens de couleur, however they remained quiet about slavery and women's rights. The Count of Mirabeau declared:

You claim representation proportionate to the number of inhabitants. The free blacks are proprietors and tax-payers, and yet they have not been allowed to vote. And as for slaves, either they are men or they are not; if the colonists consider them to be men, let them free them and make them electors and eligible for seats; if contrary to the case, have we, in appointing deputies according to the population of France, taken into consideration the number of our horses or our mules?

When news of the Fall of the Bastille arrived in the colony it served as a spark to a powder keg. Petit blancs, calling themselves Patriots, started their own political clubs which forced the Intendant to flee, while they attacked gens de couleurs and slaves protesting for rights. The French Assembly began slowly edging towards emancipation of gens de couleurs but due to them dragging their feet, and with continued white opposition, this upset many delegates. One delegate, Vincent Ogé, returned to Saint-Domingue to replicate the events in France in October 1790. He planned to lead a revolt of male gens de couleur and with between 250-350 men planned to lead a revolt. However, as argued by C.L.R. James, he was a 'good Liberal' he did not seek allies with the slaves and he was more a politician than a revolutionary. Ogé was soon defeated and in February he was brutally executed firing the flames of revolt. As Patriots forced the governor from Port-au-Prince the French Assembly on May 15 decided to emancipate the gens de couleurs. However, this angered the whites and the slaves remained in chains. In August things would change. On 22 August, quoting Thomas Ott, 'The slaves had joined the Haitian Revolution'.

The Slave Revolution

An image of slave leader Biassou

When the slaves entered the Revolution it became the largest slave revolt in history since Spartacus's revolt against the Romans, and it would turn out to be one of the few successful slave revolts. In August a Vodou priest named Dutty Boukman, and possibly a female religious figure called Cecil Fatiman, did a religious ceremony at Bois Caiman vowing that Saint-Domingue's slaves would be freed under the command of Jean-Francois Pappillon, Jeannot and Georges Biassou. This ceremony had much African folklore mixed in with Catholicism. James has argued as such a conspiracy on such a large scale had not been discovered serves as a 'testimony to their solidarity'. Not long after at a ceremony during a storm on August 22 1791 signalled the beginning of the slave rebellion. It has retroactively been descried as a Vodou ceremony although we cannot be sure how much Vodou influenced this ceremony. From the Noe plantation in the North slaves started rising up in their thousands often taking their revenge on their former masters. Within a few weeks 100,000 slaves were in revolt burning down plantations and killing several thousand whites. However, this was not universal. Some slaves opted to defend their masters through various and personal reasons including the future leader of the revolution, Toussaint Breda (later Louverture). Before he joined the slaves Toussaint made sure that Madame Bayou de Libertas went safely to Le Cap. Toussaint is a semi-unique case - he managed to gain his own freedom around 1776, became well educated very quickly, and even owned his own plantation and slaves. Despite the slaves being under-equiped they had their own armies. John Thornton is just one historian who has stressed an actual African origin of this - many male slaves were captured soldiers so were already used to military formations. The slaves were led by three main individuals: Jean-Francois, an intelligent maroon leader from long before the revolution; Biassou, a bold fighter who had belonged to a religious establishment instead of the regular planters; and Jeannot, a slave who readily enacted revenge on whites and gens de couleur. Directly quoting James 'Jeannot was a cruel monster who used to drink the blood of his white victims and commit abominable cruelties'. The African origins of the slaves, the solidarity among them, and efficient leadership ensured that the slaves were not immediately crushed as many others were. Although not a major player yet Toussaint acted in the background under Biassou offering advice. A letter from Toussaint on 15 October 1791 advised that 'make sure with the spy you have sent to have him clearly explain where the powder works are in Haut du Cap so we can succeed in taking the powder works.' 

As slaves rebelled in the North gens du couleur joined them in the West and some made common ground in September when the May decree was annulled. However, there were distrust among them. At times gens du couleur forced slaves to fight for them, and these slaves became known as 'Swiss', and slaves who surrendered themselves to their masters (through fear or being tired of fighting) were killed on sight. Clashes between whites and free blacks, and mixed-race individuals, actually caused Port-au-Prince to be set on fire in November which women took part in. Like the French Revolution we see the Haitian Revolution as a male affair but many women took part in both the fighting and radicalising of the revolution. As the slave revolt spread from the North France sent a new governor to bring the peace. Leger-Felicite Sonthonax was a radical Jacobin, although no abolitionist, and aimed to preserve the French Revolution in France, remove Royalism, bring racial equality, and quell slave uprisings. Although Thomas Ott's assertion that Sonthonax was 'anti-white' is hyperbolic (Sonthonax wanted to retain slavery as to not alienate whites) he did want to curb white power as he saw it as blocking equality. Sonthonax started enforcing the May 15 decree and exiled even radical whites if they opposed racial equality. He even barred whites from entering the militia at times as he thought this would allow white dominance and possible Royalism. However, he still kept in place slavery and then matters worsened when Britain and Spain declared war in 1793. In the Caribbean revolution was just as terrifying to them as it was in Europe. There was a fear that slave revolts could spread to Jamaica, Cuba, Santo Domingo and other slave economies inspired by Saint-Domingue as slave revolts had also broken out in the French colonies of Guadeloupe and Martinique. Jamaica's governor Lord Effington restricted entry to the colony in case revolutionary ideas, both French and slave, spread there as well. The British and Spanish both wanted Saint-Domingue to crush the revolt and to seize its wealth. Key leaders including Biassou and gens du couleur Andres Rigaud ended up joining the Spanish for various reasons.

African Ideology and the Revolution

It is curious how those inspired by the French Revolution ended up joining Britain, Spain, and French Royalists. After sacking Le Cap in June 1793 slave leader Macaya wrote that 'I am the subject of three kings: of the King of Congo, master of all blacks; of the King of France who represents my father; of the King of Spain who represents my mother. These three Kings are descendants of those who, led by a star, came to adore God made Man.' James saw this royalism as being part of a backward looking African thought which Toussaint Louverture weaned them out of. John Thornton has looked at the African royalism in a different way; many slaves were royalists but their royalism differed to European royalism. Many of Saint-Domingue's slaves came from the Kingdom of Kongo, such as Macaya, which saw turbulent times in the 1700s. A series of civil wars broke out over the power of the king; all accepted that there should be a king but a king's rule had to be tempered by generosity and selflessness. Christianity had been introduced to Kongo around three centuries prior and it had blended with local institutions and ideas. A member of the Antonian movement in Kongo, Beatriz Kimpa Vita, sought to end the civil wars by saying the king should be decided by Saint Anthony, and the selfishness of the rulers had to end for Jesus to allow a ruler to basically lead. Slaves often coalesced in groups from the region they came from so these ideas continued, even amongst creole communities, so at least amongst Kongolese slaves a form of royalism continued. As we saw earlier Vodou was formed through a mix of different West African beliefs so it is not out of the question to believe that this idea could have the potential to spread outside Kongolese communities. Of course, we also have Vodou's influence. It served as a way to connect each slave community by combining beliefs with Catholicism.

War, Abolition, and Toussaint

A posthumous painting of Toussaint Louverture

In May 1793 Biassou and Jean-Francois joined the Spanish forces taking their armies with them.  From 1793 to 1798 there is a lot of switching sides so I'll have to do a broad overview. Toussaint, now changing his name from Breda to Louverture, made his mark during this time. In June his force of 600 defeated a much larger French force putting Northeast Saint-Domingue under his control. As mentioned earlier Toussaint was educated in everything from economics to history to military strategy making him an ideal general. A big reason why the Spanish had so many early victories was due to Toussaint. Meanwhile, the British and Spanish were having issues thanks to supplies and disease. Yellow fever devastated their forces so they resorted to offering freedom to any slave who joined them, a tactic Britain also used during the American Revolution. Thanks to this the British troops ended up having more black than white troops. However, this did not stop intense violence - the British massacred insurgent slaves who had surrendered at La Charbonier and when Fort Dauphin was captured by Jean-Francois in July 1794 he had his troop kill as many French whites as they could. However, it was very evident since the slaves joined the Spanish in 1793 that the only victory they would accept involved the abolition of slavery.

Beset by the Spanish, British and French royalists, as well as the skills of figures like Toussaint, Sonthonax was desperate. He knew that slavery was the main concern of the insurgent slaves and their allies, not British or Spanish rule. In August he issued a decree abolishing slavery in the North and by October 1793 he had expanded it to include the entirety of Saint-Domingue. By this time the radical Jacobin faction had seized control of France and its leaders, like Robespierre, were sympathetic to abolition. Now in February 1794 the Convention abolished slavery in France and all of its colonies. However, this was more due to pragmatism as to appear more morally righteous compared to Britain. Sometime in the spring of 1794 Toussaint joined the French. Historians still do not know why Toussaint unexpectedly swapped sides but abolition must have been a major factor. The gap between his defection and the decree may have been due to Toussaint scoping to see if the abolition was genuine. Thomas Ott has suggested it was a mixture of abolition and pragmatism which caused the switch. Toussaint was blocked by Biassou and Jean-Francois so a switch to the French side would allow his promotion, and abolition convinced him that the French side were just. However, we may never know his exact reasoning. Despite almost being captured by an ambush by either Jean-Francois or Biassou, which killed his brother Pierre, in March 1794 his 4,000 troops proved highly useful for the French. Several key and skilled leaders joined him as well including Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Toussaint became popular for his intelligence and his willingness to work with whites and gens du couleurs. Toussaint fought the Spanish as Andre Rigaud fought the British and by 1798 both powers had been forced from Saint-Domingue, albeit with a lot of help from yellow fever, or the 'black vomit' as the British called it. Biassou and Jean-Francois went into exile by November 1796 and in 1795 France even took over Santo Domingo putting all of Hispanola under French control.

Toussaint in Control

An 1802 engraving of Toussaint

Even before the British and Spanish were defeated Toussaint had started to move himself into power in the North and West. Defending Governor Laveaux from a coup by gens du couleur soldiers in March 1796 this allowed him to become deputy-governor; Laveaux would declare him the 'black Spartacus, the negro Raynal [an earlier writer] predicated would avenge the outrages done to his race'. When he was declared Commander in Chief in May 1797 he used this to oust Sonthonax and when the British were defeated in 1798 he had enough power to sign a trade, and non-aggression, treaty with them. However, in 1799 he clashed with Andre Rigaud. Rigaud was a threat in two ways: first, he was a powerful figure controlling a large section of Saint-Domingue; and, Rigaud wanted a society where gens du couleurs were on top of blacks despite his respect for Toussaint. For almost a year, June 1799-July 1800, the 'War of Knives' was waged between the two resulting in Rigaud to flee to France and Dessalines to massacre mixed-race troops; Toussaint even chastised him saying that he didn't want him to 'tear up the roots'. In 1801 he also invaded Santo Domingo formally annexing it into Saint-Domingue. However, he started to become a ruler. Toussaint at this stage was not willing to declare independence but he knew that he had to create a state. What they had done was ambitious and there was a widespread belief in Europe that blacks were mentally inferior to whites. He wanted to show that they could hold revolutionary ideals while making Saint-Domingue a thriving and wealthy state.

In this section we see his radicalism and his moderation. As early as 1797 he had planned to resuscitate the plantation system, something James refers to as one of his few mistakes. Many former slaves wanted to divide the former plantations into smaller holdings for subsistence farming or regional markets. Toussaint feared that if Saint-Domingue's economy failed this would bring back slavery, and he saw this desire to break the plantation economy as allowing that. Using the military he made sure former slaves remained on the plantation, would allot people found vagrant to a plantation, and even offered white planters a return of their property if they renounced slavery. Naturally this was very unpopular and his own adopted nephew, Moyse, supported a revolt in October 1800 against the plantation system. Moyse was later executed for his role. Like his contemporary Napoleon, he is sometimes referred to as 'the Black Napoleon', he also made himself governor-for-life. However, at the same time he was fairly radical. In May 1801 a constitution was declared which vowed that slavery should never return, an Assembly shall be voted in every two years, prohibiting racial discrimination, and equality before the law. It did have its limits - equality only applied to men and divorce was prohibited. Like in the US and France citizenship was for active men. Racial equality, nevertheless, was a radical idea for this time period.

Independence

An 1845 painting of the Battle for Palm Tree Hill

The radicalism of the constitution made Britain and the US fearful, and both informed Napoleon that they would not do anything if he wanted to depose Toussaint. Napoleon wanted to build a French empire to rival Britain and to do that he needed two things: Saint-Domingue and slavery. Saint-Domingue was very important to the French economy and empire; now that Louisiana was back in French hands it served as a useful link to protect the American continental holdings. Napoleon sent his brother-in-law Charles Emmanuel Leclerc on February 1802 with a force of 1,200 to bring back French power over the island. Toussaint saw Napoleon's attack as a violation of the ideas that they had fought for. He ordered Henry Christophe to burn down Le Cap and wrote to Dessalines saying:

Do not forget, while waiting for the rainy reason which will rid us of our foes, that we have no other resource than destruction and fire. Bear in mind that the soil bathed with our sweat must not furnish our enemies with the smallest sustenance. Tear up the roads with shot; throw corpses and horses into all the foundations, burn and annihilate everything in order that those who have come to reduce us to slavery may have before their eyes the image of the hell which they deserve.

He saw how well yellow fever had ravaged European forces so all he did was wait for disease to take its toll before attacking. It proved to be a good tactic. France sent around 80,000 battle hardened troops to Saint-Domingue of which 50,000 died of disease, including Leclerc himself. However, Toussaint would not see French defeat. At Gonaives he was betrayed and arrested by Leclerc; we do not know who betrayed him and one theory is that Dessalines did so. He told his captors:

In overthrowing me you have cut down in Saint Domingue only the trunk of the tree of liberty; it will spring up again from the roots, for they are numerous and they are deep.

The hero of the revolution would die in a French prison on 7 April 1803 through malnutrition, infection and exposure. Dessalines soon took over and continued the fight, and when war in Europe began again in May Napoleon decided to abandon Saint-Domingue. On 31 December Saint-Domingue declared its independence as a new nation called Haiti. Rejecting its European name it took an indigenous name reflecting the island's mountainous geography. Dessalines soon began a massacre of the white population claiming up to 5,000 victims, declared himself emperor, and continued the plantation system with some debating whether they were still slaves.

An 1806 engraving depicting Dessalines as a brute holding the severed head of a French woman

Aftermath and Conclusion

Haiti's first steps to independence were fragile. The rigid plantation system continued, the mixed-race population monopolised power, Dessalines was soon assassinated, and the Santo Domingo half would try to break away (it eventually did so as the Dominican Republic). Haiti's economic prosperity soon came to an end. Colonial powers feared that Haiti would inspire slave revolts in their lands, and occasionally it did fund slave revolts. To ease peace between the two Haiti had to pay France 150 million francs, (bearing in mind it sold Louisiana Territory to the US for just 80 million), so Haiti had to turn to the US for a loan. The US forced them to take such a large loan that it took until 1947 to pay off. Furthermore, Haiti hoped to trade with its old trading partners of France, the UK, and the US who all refused to do so - for a long time they continued to blockade the island. They only recognised independence when each state abolished slavery, and as late as 1898 US politicians were warning about the Haitian threat. Everything about Haiti was distorted into being negative. For example, in the North Atlantic world we see Vodou as a superstitious, devil-worshipping cult where its followers create zombies and do sacrifices for the spirits - a very different view of what Vodou is.

Ann Whitney's 1870 carving of Toussaint

However, the Haitian Revolution had a truly revolutionary aspect to it. For one, it was a successful slave revolt which tried to bring about racial equality - this was at a time when slavery was seen as morally right by many people. Abolitionists even pointed to Haiti as a way to bring their aims about; either they were encouraged by it as there was a chance that a slave revolt could be successful, or as a warning to what happens when slavery continues. Haiti was not only Latin America's first successful independence revolution but also when an 'other' truly succeeded. A marginalised group in society managed to overthrow their oppressors and bring about a new society. It explains why many Afro-Caribbean writers and historians are still inspired by the Haitian Revolution. Afro-Trinidadian historian C.L.R. James wrote The Black Jacobins and a play about Toussaint to bring the Haitian Revolution back into view instead of just being a slave revolt on the world's periphery. Truly that is the radical legacy of the Haitian Revolution.

The sources I have used are as follows:

-David Geggus, (ed.), The Haitian Revolution: A Documentary History, (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2014)

-C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, Second Edition, (New York: Vintage Books, 1963)

-Jean-Bertrand Aristide, (ed.), Revolutions: Toussaint L'Ouverture, The Haitian Revolution, (London: Verso, 2008)

-David Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies, (Indianapolis: Indian University Press, 2002)

-Jeremy Popkin, Your are All Free: The Haitian Revolution and the Abolition of Slavery, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)

-Thomas Ott, The Haitian Revolution: 1789-1804, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1973)

-Carolyn Fick, 'The Haitian Revolution and the Limits of Freedom: Defining Citizenship in the Revolutionary Era', Social History, 32:4, (2007), 394-414

-John Thornton, '"I Am the Subject of the Kong of Congo": African Political Ideology and the Haitian Revolution', Journal of World History, 4:2, (1993), 181-214
-'The Haitian Revolution', In Our Time, BBC

Thank you for reading. Next time on World History we'll be looking at perhaps the most important revolution which created our modern world: the Industrial Revolution. For other World History posts please see our list here. For future blog updates please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.