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Haiti's first and only king
00:52:14
Marlene L Daut charts the extraordinary life of the Haitian revolutionary leader – who went on to become a traitor, ruler, and then monarch
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That's cool. Then Marvel Studios Thunderbolts the New Avengers, rated PG 13. Now streaming on you guessed it, Disney Plus. Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine. Born to an enslaved mother in the British Caribbean, in the tumultuous world of the late 18th century, Henri Christophe's remarkable life saw him become first revolutionary, then traitor, and finally monarch as he rose to prominence following his key role in the Haitian Revolution, which saw enslaved Africans rise up against French colonial rule. Marlene L. Doubt's Kundal Prize nominated book, the first and Last King of Haiti explores this extraordinary story as well as Christophe's tragic final days. I caught up with her to find out more. Marlene, your book the first and Last King of Haiti tells a remarkable story of the rise and the fall and the afterlife of an extraordinary figure. Before we delve into some of that story, could you give listeners a really brief snapshot of who and talking about here to set the scene for people who might be coming to this completely fresh?
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B
Absolutely. So Henri Christophe, true to the title of the book, was the first and last king of Haiti. But actually, if you fold back and look at his early life, there's really very little that would suggest that he would ascend to this position. He was actually born on the British island of Grenada in the Caribbean, which was colonized by Great Britain at the time, and from there he found himself fighting in the American Revolutionary War at the Battle of Savannah. So in Georgia, on the North American continent. And his fortunes were seeming to decrease after that. He ended up on the island of Saint Domingue, which is of course today Haiti. And soon the Haitian Revolution breaks out and it's a very bloody 13 year war. But Christophe is able to actually rise through the ranks and eventually become a general. And he helps the the Haitian revolutionaries get independence from France in 1804.
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A
Some extraordinary events here set against a backdrop of a really tumultuous and conflict ridden period. You've already alluded to some of the contours there, so let's go into some of them a little bit. Quite often when I talk to someone about a biography, the circumstances of the person's birth we can move on from quite quickly. But I think there's a bunch of uncertainty here that I think speaks to some of the conflicts of the period. Can you tell us a little bit about the world into which he was born and the way in which that impacts on our ability to know about his birth?
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B
Yes, for sure. So we believe that Christophe was like so many other black children in colonies of the Caribbean colonies, enslaved at birth. His mother, by most accounts, was an enslaved black woman. We don't really know much about his father. But the island of Grenada at the time also has a really important history that plays into this and contributes to the things that we don't know. So after the Seven Years War, the island of Grenada changes hands from being a French colony to being a British colony. And Christophe is on this island most likely when the French try to recapture it in 1779 at the siege of Grenada. And this is most likely how Christophe goes from being in Grenada to, to being on the North American continent. Because the French general who led that siege is the one who's also going to lead the famous strike in Savannah that they actually lose. And so it's this kind of very complicated geopolitical world where the world powers are just kind of trading around their American colonies as almost trading pieces or trading cards, with each new conflict leading to a new world power in charge of an area.
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A
And did the way in which the slavery system worked at this point in time mean that he himself was also enslaved?
- [05:27]
B
Yes. So in general, children followed the condition of their mother just because of what was called womb laws. And so even if Christophe had a father who was a free man, either a free man of color or a white enslaver, a planter, he would in general follow the condition of his mother. And because we believe his mother was enslaved, that would suggest he was as well. There's Also the fact that he separated from her quite early. I didn't mention that. He's just a child, in essence, when he goes to fight, he's only 12 and then 13 at the battle of Savannah. And so even if he had somehow gained free status, it would have been extremely hard for him to keep it, particularly once he got to San Doming, which had the reputation at the time of being the cruelest slave colony in the world.
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A
Can we just pause to talk here about the fact that we think he was 12 years old when he was fighting in this war?
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B
He's wounded also something I didn't mention. He's wounded there, as were so many of the people he fought around. If he's on the battlefield, you know, on October 9th, which is when the huge battle happens, but there were conflicts before that as well. But if he's on the battlefield, right on October 9th, he is seeing everyone around him drop dead. He is seeing grown men weeping and crying out in pain, and he himself is wounded. The general, Comte d', Estaing, who's leading this battle, is wounded twice. And then they have to get on a ship, and life on ships was extremely difficult. And on these ships, they didn't have enough provisions, they hardly had water, they hardly had food. So he would have arrived on Saint Domingue in a pretty terrible state. And then you think about him just being a child, and as you said.
- [07:17]
A
He arrived back in Saint domingue in the 1780s. What do we need to understand about this island and its history to make sense of what happened next?
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B
Yes. So this island, similar to what I was talking about with Grenada, it starts out as a Spanish colony, of course, Christopher Columbus famously landing there in 1492 and claiming the island for Spain. But at the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697, the French are going to gain control over the western third of the island, roughly what is now the country of Haiti. And they are going to, in one century's time, take this sort of ragtag colony that the Spanish are not really paying attention to, and turn it into the fiercest plantation society, the most robust, most profitable slave colony in the entire Atlantic world. Just to put things in perspective, from 1697 to 1799, 1791, when the Haitian Revolution begins, the French forcibly transport nearly 900,000 captive Africans to this island. In the same time period, they do less than 200,000 to Martinique, which had been previously kind of the center of French operations in the Caribbean. And so this world that Christophe gets dropped into is an unsafe world for a Child. It is an unsafe world for an adult. The life expectancy of an enslaved African born on the island is 16 years old.
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A
Are some of the reasons that it was such a cruel and severe situation in this particular location, because of the resources that were available on the island?
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B
Yes. So I mentioned the island being extremely profitable, which is one of the reasons why they keep forcibly transporting More and more captive africans. And their greatest crop is sugar. And to the colonists, the island becomes known as the pearl of the antilles. It is producing a massive amount of sugar to be consumed back home in Europe, Far more, once again, than any of the other colonies. And so this meant that as long as there was a kind of endless supply of captive Africans to force over, the French were completely willing to do that because it was so profitable. And they just kept the system going for as long as they could. But because of all that cruelty, the flip side of that was that there was a lot of unrest. There was constant fugitivity, what we call maronnage, People running away. And there were constant revolts and rebellions. And of course, that turns into a greater literal conflagration. In August 1791, when the captive africans have had enough and they begin the Haitian revolution.
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A
I wanted to pause and think about the consequences of another revolution that was happening in the years before the insurrection in this part of the world. Can we think about the French revolution? And were there ways in which that revolution's ideals directly inspired the black population of Saint Domingue?
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B
So, the French revolution, of course, famous revolution in 1789. But I prefer to think of the french revolution and the Haitian revolution As kind of parallel events, because, of course, we all know about the storming of the bastille prison and the declaration of the rights of man in August 1789. And it is certainly true that free people of color on the island of Saint Domingue, some of whom are literally watching events unfold in France because they live there, they have moved there not only to be educated, but to escape the color prejudices in the colony. The colony of Saint Domingue was a hugely prejudicial place, not just for enslaved people, but for all people of color, because the white colonists ardently wanted to hold onto their idea of superiority, because they knew, and rightly so, that if they could admitted that free men of color were their equals, well, then what would be the justification for keeping Africans enslaved? Right. So they needed that sort of piece of the puzzle not to fit. And the free people of color are listening to the language of the declaration of the rights of man. And they're listening to the new laws that are and the proposed constitution. And then they decide, we're going to go back to San Domingue, we're going to take this information with us, and two free men of color are going to lead a strike against the white French colonists, Vincent Ogier and Jean Baptiste Chav. And when their brief strike, which is nonviolent, is squashed, the French reaction to it is so brutal that this actually does inspire the black freedom fighters, as I like to call them, to take action. They break these two men, the French do, on what is called the wheel, which is a medieval punishment where you literally tie them to boards and whip and break their bones and their bodies. And then, just to make it worse, the French decapitated both men and put their heads on pikes on the side of these major thoroughfare roads so that they would act as a warning. And enslaved people see this. Toussaint Louverture, the great famous Toussaint Louverture, mentions this in his speeches. So even though these free men of color are fighting only or arguing only on behalf of their own rights, the enslaved take from that and understand the brutality that they have been subjected to and say no more.
- [12:43]
A
Two years obviously passed between the start of the French Revolution and the rebellion in Saint Domingue. What happened when, as you describe it, the black led revolution burst forth? And how much of a surprise was it?
- [12:55]
B
Well, it was both a surprise and not a surprise, I would say. So on August 14, 1791, a group of enslaved men and women gathered together on a plantation in the north of Haiti near Mont Rouge. And they begin to plot what will eventually become, in just about a week's time, the beginning of the Haitian Revolution. And one of the things that they reference is they talk a lot about God. And this is often framed as kind of a Vodou ceremony. It's a religious assembly, spiritual ceremony. And they say, you know, we outnumber them, which is true, because something I haven't mentioned yet, which is an astonishing fact, is that in August 1791, there are about 450,000 enslaved Africans on this island. There are only about 30,000 French colonists and about the same number of free people of color. So they are outnumbered, and they quickly use that to their advantage, and they spread the Haitian revolution all across the northern plain. By the end of that year, 1791, they're burning down plantations all over. They have brought to a standstill that plantation economy. And the French are running scared, literally running scared.
- [14:08]
A
And you write that by 1792, whatever and wherever his initial origins, what we know is that for certain, Christophe had gone from being an enslaved child to a military officer participating in one of the momentous struggles for freedom the world has ever seen. At what point did Christophe emerge as a key figure in this conflict?
- [14:27]
B
In June 1793, there's this huge fire in Cap Francais. And one of the sort of discoveries I made. I hate to use that word, but a letter I uncovered, I'll say it like that, shows that Christophe was imprisoned just a few days before that fire happened in June. And in fact, in connection with information that he gives to the French commissioners who are there to stop the rebellion, to put things back in order, make this place profitable again, get the enslaved Africans back to. Well, Christophe provides some information to them about one of his fellow prisoners, and they let him out. But he now has to work on behalf of the French. And this is going to work out for him because the French have now realized they are in huge trouble with this. They're calling it an insurrection, but of course, now we call it the Haitian Revolution. And the commissioners are forced to abolish slavery in August, September and October of 1793 in various regions of the colony. So now Christophe working on their behalf is not really a kind of traitorous situation. Now he's an ally, and he's going to get rank in the military. It's sort of brilliant when you think about his calculations and the decisions he has to make and it working out on his behalf. He is able to get married after that as well, to his wife, Marie Louise, who eventually becomes the queen. He begins to have children, and then the French begin to give him responsibilities. And from that point forward, it's like he's unstoppable in his upward trajectory. He ingratiates himself, which is smart, on his behalf, to Toussaint Louverture. When Toussaint Louverture ends up being arrested and deported, Christophe ingratiates himself to Jean Jacques Dessalines, who's going to end up leading the war of Independence and is going to be the one to take the reins of government as Haiti's first head of state after independence.
- [16:24]
A
How unusual is this revolution in both its participants and its consequences?
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B
There's a reason why the Haitian Revolution continues to capture the imagination of scholars, of journalists, but also of playwrights and novelists and filmmakers around the world. And I think it's because this is a world historical event that is a time when enslaved people rose up en masse, not in short, regional areas or Small regional places which the world had seen before. For example, Tacky's revolt on Jamaica, revolutions in Berbice in other colonies. Of course, the United States will see many, many slave revolts and rebellions, some of them directly influenced by the Haitian Revolution. But what is very different about what happens in Haiti on Saint Domingue is the Haitian revolutionaries first defeat one of the fiercest armies in the world, Napoleon Bonaparte's army, when they come back to try to reinstate slavery. But then the Declaration of Independence and creating Haiti as the first modern nation to permanently abolish slavery. They changed the world. And I think that's what makes it so different from so many of the other conflicts and wars, because in essence, it is a war as well, a war of independence. Which, you know, brings to mind the War of Independence of the United States from Great Britain. Except that the American Declaration of Independence starts a huge war. In essence, the Haitian Declaration of Independence follows it. It comes at the end. It declares it as a fait accompli. Of course, as you know from reading the book, it won't be quite that simple. But that's how it unfolds in the beginning.
- [18:04]
A
If you've shopped online, chances are you've bought from a business powered by Shopify. You know that purple shop pay button you see at checkout, the one that makes buying so incredibly easy? That's Shopify. And there's a reason so many businesses sell with it, because Shopify makes it incredibly easy to start and run your business. Shopify is the commerce platform behind 10% of all e commerce in the U.S. sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today@shopify.com promo. Go to shopify.com promo. I wanted to talk a little bit about two complicating events that happened during this period. One is the events of January 1793, when the French revolutionaries executed King Louis XVI and declared war on Britain and Spain. This is a period of such a lot of global infighting, it's extraordinary. What impact did this moment have?
- [18:57]
B
It has not necessarily the impact one might imagine. The freedom fighters of Saint Domingue, the black freedom fighters, they weren't really that concerned with who's king of France and who is in charge in France. They're concerned with their own liberty. And this is pretty abstract to them, but they are pretty shocked. And then when these commissioners are sort of touting, the French Republic has been created shortly before, of course, the execution of King Louis xvi. And so they're touting these republican ideals, they're talking about liberty and equality. So now they're speaking the language of the freedom fighters before, when they were talking about priests and clergy and nobility and aristocracy. This is abstract act. But once the republican commissioners and the republican army of France begin to speak the languages of rights, equality, liberty, now they have the freedom fighters year. And Toussaint Louverture is going to be possibly one of the most ardent kind of republican French republicans of the time period. And initially, Christophe is as well, which is something that might seem surprising given the fact that later he, of course, becomes king of Haiti.
- [20:06]
A
And then the next event I wanted to get into during this period is in February 1794, which is when the French Revolutionary government declared the abolition of slavery all throughout France's overseas possessions. Can you talk us through a little bit why this happened and why it was a key factor in the outcome of the situation in Saint Domingue?
- [20:25]
B
Yes. So the French send these commissioners, right? Get this place back in order, get the plantation economy going. And these commissioners, Saint Donat and Peuvarrel being the most important ones in this time period, they take a look at what's happening around, and it's worse than the reports back in France. They see that no one is working, everyone is armed, and what are they going to do? So in August, Saint on says, you know what we're going to do? We're going to declare the end of slavery. Paul Varel follows that up in his regions he was in charge of in September and October. And now the French have a conundrum on their hands. The French Republic says, one and indivisible. That's their motto. You cannot have specific laws that pertain only to one colony and not in France, or to one colony and not into, not to the other colonies. And the French Revolutionary government does something that is actually quite astonishing in February 1794, declaring the end of slavery in all overseas French territories. And so from 1794 until 1802, when they do reinstate it, on Guadeloupe and other areas, these colonies are free, black and French.
- [21:35]
A
So by this point, the French had joined forces with Louverture and his troops, and they defeated the armies of both England and Spain. He sat as head of the colony under the title of Governor General. But what I'm really interested in is the relationship between him and the main character of your book. Can you talk us through some of the tensions here? Because this story is extraordinary.
- [21:57]
B
Yes. So Christophe and Toussaint Louverture have a contentious relationship in certain ways, because Christophe, he's very Smart. The British have come to invade the island to try to take the colony. The Spanish have invaded to try to protect their possession on the eastern side of the island, in what is now the Dominican Republic. And Toussaint Lierce is fighting them, and Christophe is fighting them as well and will be rewarded, in fact, for his participation in those struggles. But along the way, there are complaints about his behavior. He loves money. There are reports that he has a lot more money than Toussaint L'Verture. So they're raiding these plantations that have been abandoned by the French, who are fleeing in every direction to the United States, Jamaica, Cuba, Britain, where if they go to Britain because England and France are at war, they lose all their property claims and some of them back to France, certainly. And Toussaint is just getting all these reports about Christophe, but he likes the guy and he needs him because the cultivators, as they call the formerly enslaved population that is still working the plantations, are now called cultivators. Toussaint needs them because they don't really trust him. Toussaint Virtue had free status at the time the revolution broke out. He owned some plantations himself, so they don't really trust him all the way, but they trust Christophe. And so he needs him. And they go back and forth. Because when the French do come to invade to try to get rid of Governor General Louverture because of how powerful he is, it is going to be Christophe who opposes them. And this puts Toussaint Louverture in a really bad spot. If you are a French general, you can't be firing on the French army come from France. And yet this is what Christophe is going to do in the city of Cap Francais when he sets it on fire and burns the city to the ground.
- [23:52]
A
This seems to us quite a strong response. Can you talk us through some of the reasoning behind that and the impact it had?
- [23:59]
B
Yes. So again, as you mentioned, the geopolitical situation has such complications. Right. So the French republican government goes through all these changes and in 1799, no, Napoleon Bonaparte helps to overthrow one of those governments, the Directory, and he becomes established as First Consul. Now, Napoleon does not agree with this abolition of slavery. He says outright, that is insane. We need to basically reinstate slavery. And he knows that Toussaint is his obstacle. So Napoleon sends his brother in law, General Leclerc, and a man named General Rochambeau, who is related to a French general who fought in the American Revolutionary War. So these are very skilled generals. They go to the island with 30,000 French troops to put it in perspective, this is the largest expedition to ever set sail from France. And Toussaint Louverture has issued a standing order to all his generals that if they are to see, you know, large mounts of French troops, that they must inform him and they must not let those troops dock. And Christophe is in charge of Cap Francais. Toussaint Virture had rewarded him with that position. So he sees these troops and he thinks, nope, no way. And he gets into this back and forth with General Leclerc in which he says, you know, if you realize these threats to land these troops, essentially without Toussaint Wurcher's permission, then I will respond as an officer, General must, and I will burn this city to the ground. And even on the ashes, I will fight you. And the French think he's bluffing because Christophe helped rebuild the city, and yet he has it burned to the ground.
- [25:40]
A
And to get into some of this a bit more, you write, In April 1802, Christophe turned against the people he'd been fighting alongside to join the French. And that's not the first twist in this story. I just wanted to get into some of the psychology of this. What's your sense of why this happened?
- [25:57]
B
Yes. So in that back and forth I mentioned, you know, General Leclair is saying, we come in peace. And Christophe, and later Toussaint, once he learns of this and begins corresponding as well, says, if you came in peace, then why did you come with such a large army? It doesn't really make sense to bring that many troops with you. And so Christophe, unbeknownst to Toussainture, kind of keeps up this correspondence with the French. Remember I mentioned he's a likable guy. They like him. They think he's really smart, and they constantly remark upon how much he knows and that he's. He's the one, that if they need to turn someone, he's the one. And so Leclair has his army and soldiers and scribes saying, we're not going to reinstate slavery. We just want to put order in place. And so at the end of April, Kristof says, if you show me proof that you're not going to reinstate slavery, if you put out some statement, I will get all the other generals and officers to rejoin you, and I will get the cultivators to go back to work, to lay down their arms and start, you know, working on the plantations again. And the French, they think, great. And that's what happens. Except that Toussaint l' Iverture really views this as a Huge betrayal. And this is the beginning of Toussaint Virture's long spiral and downfall.
- [27:21]
A
So, as I alluded to earlier, this is a story with several more twists and turns. And in July 1802, something happened to prompt Christophe to switch sides again. Can you explain to people what happened?
- [27:34]
B
So Christophe decides that the French have not come to reinstate slavery. And in fact, in this time period, so convinced is he that he actually allows the French to take his son back to France to be educated in Paris at this kind of school for the children of prominent free people of color back in Paris. And this, of course, will end up being a tragic mistake. Christophe very quickly realizes the error of his ways, because in June, 1802, the French arrest Toussaint Louverture. They deport him with his entire family. And then they begin this crazy, genocidal campaign of drowning free people of color in the south, including some of the generals who were fighting on their own behalf. A man named Jacques Maupas, who's one of Christophe's good friends, for example. And Christophe realizes the error of his ways. And of course, in some ways, it's too late for those who've died and for Toussaint Verture, who will end up dying in that French prison later. But Christophe decides to fight again with the cultivators, many of whom have never put down arms, the freedom fighters. And now he's at war with France and with Napoleon's army.
- [28:50]
A
It's a remarkable turnaround. And then, on the 1st of January, 1804, the freedom fighters definitively beat the French. Can you talk us through how that happened and I suppose what was won in this victory?
- [29:02]
B
Yes, and I would say it's so interesting. I will talk about how this happened, but I want to say that it's so interesting how the Haitian revolutionaries talk about it. They talk about what they won, but they talk so much about what they lost and the number of family members. They say things like, if you had seen those bodies being dragged through the streets. So this war becomes extremely bloody and violent. The French, under Leclair, put together a plan. They use the word extermination. Their plan is to exterminate essentially all of the freedom fighters. In the words of General Leclair, asking for permission from the French government back home, they would like to eliminate anyone who has ever worn an epaulette, anyone over the age of 12 who has ever worn an epaulette. And the black freedom fighters, you know, they say things like, you forced us to wage war in spite of ourselves. They're tired of fighting at this point, and yet they must continue. And they forced the French actually to capitulate and surrender in November 1803. The French are wearied. Their soldiers are defecting. Their soldiers don't want to fight anymore either. They're being killed by yellow fever that's ravaging the island. Everywhere they go, cultivators are shooting at them from the mountains. They aren't engaged in sort of the laws of warfare. They're fighting to the death because the French are saying, we're going to kill all of you. And so on January 1, 1804, led by General Jean Jacques Dessalines, they are going to sign a Haitian declaration of independence. And Christophe, importantly, is one of those.
- [30:45]
A
Signatories you mentioned, Dessalines. There he is made emperor of the new empire of Haiti. And this is a period in which, as you say, Christophe, his trajectory continues upwards, but he himself suffered a series of personal tragedies. Can you talk us through some of those?
- [31:04]
B
So, as I mentioned, Christophe had sent his firstborn son with Marie Louise Francois Ferdinand to France. And in retaliation, after Haitian independence is declared, the French take all the children, the black children who are in this school, and they put them either in orphanage or they send them to other overseas colonies for hard labor. And Christophe had given money for his child, who had been accompanied by his aunt, his mother's sister, so that he wouldn't need to rely on the French government. But the French confiscate all of Ferdinand's belongings, they throw him into an orphanage, they force him to work for this kind of shoemaker who beats him and leaves him to die in the streets of Paris. And so I think this is one of the reasons why later on, when Christophe becomes head of state, the Haitians trust him. They know that he has suffered like they all have. And so when he tells them, I know what you're experiencing, I know the threat of the French, they believe him. And they know that it's not an abstraction for him, that he lost people as well, and that he's going to fight for Haiti's liberty and independence precisely because of that.
- [32:19]
A
His personal tragedies give him political gravitas, in a sense.
- [32:22]
B
Yes, absolutely. And I think this is something that was missing from his rival. I'll say it like that. Alexandre Petion, who was a free man of color during the colonial era, had a white French father, and he also signed the Haitian declaration of independence. But Petion couldn't argue that he'd been enslaved and make arguments on that basis. I know what you're experiencing, in fact, a lot of free people of color themselves had enslaved others. And so he's in a kind of more delicate position vis a vis the Haitian population.
- [32:56]
A
Going back to another figure you mentioned just then, which is Dessalines. Can you talk us through what happened to him on 17th of October, 1806, and how this also helped propel Christophe to leadership?
- [33:07]
B
Yes. So there are these factions. There had been factions in the revolutionary period, not just between, of course, the white French colonists and the enslaved or formerly enslaved population, but the free people of color as well there, because they were arguing at first only for their own rights and fighting for their own rights and wanting to keep enslaving. And there were regional differences, and they didn't evaporate with Haitian independence. And on October 17, 1806, conspirators from the southern part of Haiti, led by Alexandre Petion, will have Dessalines assassinated just outside Port au Prince, which is, of course, today Haiti's capital, on what is called the Pont Rouge. And Christophe is general in chief of the Haitian army. So he has to respond to this, and he ends up becoming interim head of. Of state. And from there, he will become. I always have to state the. The full title president and generalizimo of the forces of the Earth and Seas of the State of Haiti. But here's the kicker. He's only president of the north because Alexandre Petion is opposing him in the south, is going to declare the South a republic, and he will become president. So now Haiti has only been independent for about three years and has two.
- [34:28]
A
Presidents and is already plunged into another conflict, is that right?
- [34:32]
B
Yes. This starts a civil war. The aftermath of the assassination of Dessalines plunges Haiti into a civil war between the north and the South. It is sort of an eerie precursor to what happens in the United States, except that it's not a contest over slave states and free states. It's a contest over what kind of government will Haiti have. Is Haiti to be a republic after the fashion of the United States? Which is, of course, problematic to Christophe because he says, why would we want to be like the United States, a republic where there's slavery? Why would we want to be like France, a republic where there was slavery and then overthrown by Napoleon, who makes himself an emperor. Right. And I should mention that Dessalines had also been an emperor, and this was a sticky point for those southerners who wanted him gone. But Christoph does a sort of. He makes a remarkable turn between 1807 and 1811, when he's president, and they're plunged into this civil war. And then all of a sudden, in March 1811, he announces his intention to take the title of king. And the north of haiti will thereafter become a constitutional monarchy under his reign as king henry I. I wanted to.
- [35:45]
A
Ask you about some of the titles here. You've already talked about, that remarkable title that I'm not going to attempt to repeat, and the specificness of it, and then the fact that subsequently he chooses to become king. What's going on here with his choice of titles, and what does it tell us about his view of leadership?
- [36:01]
B
Christoph has, I think it's safe to say, a kind of authoritarian. I don't mean that in a sort of modern way. Authoritarian view of leadership. He's paternalistic. In all of his speeches. He speaks as a father to his children. That's how he speaks, Speaks to the people. He tells them what their duties are. He tells them, I love you, but I must reprimand you when you are not doing as you're supposed to, when you're not attending to your duties. And so his kind of what seems to us now bombastic title is meant to create an air of authority. And one of the reasons that he doesn't like the model that the united states has instituted and the one that he believes petion is trying to mimic, Is that this kind of sticking point of shared power, Christophe will make the argument in the north that the country is too young to have power parceled out in this way, and that they have some growing up to do. Which is then interesting that when he does take the title of king, his argument and that of his ministers writing on his behalf Is that it's the most common and oldest form of government in the world to have a monarchy. And so that becomes his justification. But something else also happened in between 1807 and 1811. One of Toussaint louverture's rivals, he had been a free man of color, Andre rigaud, who had also fought at the battle of savannah during the american revolutionary war. He comes back to the island, and a rumor spreads that he is there in the south to overthrow pion and to. To sell the country back to napoleon. And christophe uses this as a justification to take the title of king. He's making the argument that, look how napoleon overthrew the republic in france. Look at rigaud trying to overthrow the republic here. But, you know, it's more stable if you have a king. Now, if he had really thought about his logic a little more, he might have thought, well, the French killed their king. So it's obviously not something that it's impossible to happen. But that's the argument and the rhetoric that he uses.
- [38:09]
A
And does he. And does the area over which he governs change upon him becoming king?
- [38:15]
B
It really does. So already Christoph had, you know, made the economy robust. I mentioned that. He had the people of the north, you know, in his pocket. They have sympathy for him, they believe he has sympathy for them. And he tells them, I know what's best for you, and you've got to go back and work the land. And. And our greatest export is coffee. So basically, almost every single plantation is now going to be a coffee plantation. He redistributes these plantations to people who will later become nobles in his kingdom. And the wealth is astonishing. And in concert with that, he has a huge coronation. He has all these carriages, he's repaving roads, he's building all these infrastructures. He's going to instate a school system for girls and boys. But he also tells the people, be good Catholics. He outlaws Vodou, what we come to know as Haitian Vodou today. He says Catholicism is the only religion of the state. So life changes dramatically, but for some people, it changes for the better. Those nobles, those high ranking officers in the military, and for some people, perhaps life doesn't change in the way that they wanted it to. They're doing backbreaking labor on these plantations, tilling coffee, which is hard work in the hot sun. And Christophe, in those projects of repaving the roads and building his castles and fortresses, who's got to build them? Well, it's the people. And many of them, they don't want to do this labor. So Christoph institutes mandatory labor laws saying if you don't have another profession, you have to work on a plantation or work on the fort and work in the building community.
- [39:58]
A
How can we make sense of this tension, this almost what seems like irony, given the story we've charted over the past 40 minutes?
- [40:05]
B
You know, Christophe was really, he was a good rhetorician, I would say. He would tell the people, you have to labor to be free. And he would use this language that freedom doesn't mean idleness, passivity, laziness, that every single person must be employed in an occupation that benefits the state. And of course, that's very different from being employed in an occupation that might benefit your family or just you yourself. Right? And so he essentially says, this is for our freedom. The French keep trying to reinvade us. When Napoleon is forced to abdicate his throne, the first Time and the second time, and King Louis XVIII becomes king of France. They keep trying to restore slavery. They keep trying to send expeditions. So Christophe is able to use this as an argument to tell the people that they've got to keep making all this money for the state in order to ward off the French. But if you think about it from the perspective of the people, what do they see? Okay, they see this massive fortress being built, and they're told it's for their protection. But they also see that the king has had having huge parties, he's entertaining all these diplomats and foreign merchants in the country, that a lot of people are getting very rich, and it's not them. And you can see that they might start to think about this contrast in their position in his and begin to ask themselves, why must it be this way? Does it have to be this way?
- [41:37]
A
One of the later chapters in your book is slightly ominously titled Cracks in Kingly Authority. Can you talk us through some of these fissures and how they led to the tragedy at the end of this story?
- [41:49]
B
Yes. So I mentioned labor then. Also, of course, the civil war is still raging during all of this time. The French do not recognize Haitian independence, either in the south or the north, which is what allows them to continue to try to retake their colony. But because the French don't, neither will any other country. So Great Britain is the kingdom of Haiti's greatest trading partner, but they refuse to recognize Haitian sovereignty. So it's a little bit of a cat and mouse game there. And then Christophe has internal problems. There are sometimes revolts and rebellions from the populace itself, and he crushes them with an iron fist. He will send somebody up to his famous citadel, the largest fortress in North America, at the drop of a hat. Any mention of insubordination, and this creates unrest. Sometimes people try to leave and go and flee to the republic in the south, believing it will offer greater freedom. And then I mentioned all those foreigners. He's allowed to, yes, be in the country for the purposes of trading, for commerce, but also some of them are in his own administration and his government. The man who crowns him is a white French priest from Brittany named Father Corneille Brell. They had been great friends since the colonial era, but at one point, he gets in Christophe's crosshairs, and there are different stories about what happens to him. But let's just say Christophe announces the death of the archbishop of Haiti, the man he makes the archbishop of Haiti, and alludes to some conspiracy that Brell. Father Brell. Had been engaged in, and those kinds of conspiracies were unfortunately becoming increasingly common. And one last thing I'll mention is that when petion dies in March 1818, Christophe thinks, this might be great. I can go now and reunite Haiti. But Petion is succeeded by Jean Pierre Boyer, and he says, oh, we're not gonna reunite with the kingdom. In fact, we're gonna ramp up the war.
- [43:48]
A
And then amid all this political and military strife, there was a personal tragedy that sort of brings this story to its end. Can you talk us through some of the details of that? And I suppose how we should make is ending in light of all this strife we've talked about?
- [44:03]
B
Yes. So in August 1820, by this time, Khristoff is pretty resigned already to the fact that we're not going to reunite with the south at this time. And then he's at a church in Limonad to celebrate his wife's feast day, the Assumption. He's in a Catholic church, and he falls to the ground. He's had a stroke. He's got a doctor, a white Scotsman named Duncan Stewart there, and he's able to sort of revive Christophe Journey. He's breathing, and Christophe now has to convalesce there, though. And he's in the city of Limonade, which is just to the south of Cap Francais, or Cap Haitien, as Christophe renamed it, also, I should say Cap Henri. A conspiracy forms in his absence when he's away from the capital. And there's actually multiple conspiracies going on. But the one that Christophe is first going to get wind of happens in a city that is on the coast coast, the western coast of Haiti, called Saint Marc. And these soldiers are going to defect to the Republic of Haiti, and they're going to start moving north. Boyer views this as a time when he can now reunite Haiti by eliminating the king. And even though Christophe begins to get better, and in fact, by September, he's, like, back in the capital, and he seems to be governing, and people say he's riding his. His horse again. He seems to be okay. He can speak once more. Another conspiracy had formed of the nobles, led by a general named Jean Pierre Richard, whom Christophe had made commander over the city of Caponrie. And once those nobles turn against him, his fate is sealed. But he doesn't want to go out in assassination like Dessalines. And so on October 8, 1820, he shoots himself in the heart.
- [45:49]
A
It's an extraordinary end to what's been a huge and tumultuous story. As we've outlined. There are a couple of things I want to pick up on that just help us, I suppose, frame what happens next. Ten days later, after the king's death, I think I'm right in saying that soldiers executed his son and heir. What happened there? And how did that shape what happened next?
- [46:11]
B
Yes, and this is the period when we sort of shift to Marie Louise's perspective in the book. So she and her daughters are going to be taken to Port au Prince, the capital of the Republic of Haiti, but her son, as you mentioned, is executed by Boyer's troops 10 days later. And this is actually a problem for Boyer. The heir, Prince Victor Henri, he's just a teenager. He's just a kid. And this becomes public information. And now. Now Boyer has to kind of spin it. And so he creates this narrative where he says, we didn't mean for this to happen. I issued an order that his life should be spared, but the directive came too late and they executed him. It's kind of fudging with the truth there a little bit. But now Marie Louise has to live in Port au Prince, which, if you looked at a map of Haiti, is pretty far from Cap Henri, Cap Haitien, as it will now be renamed once more. And she now has to live among those who hated her husband, who call him a base usurper, a tyrant, who print every sort of insult. And she's there with her daughters and they're so sorrowful and they want to leave. And so Boyer gives them permission to go to England and they end up living for a time with the famous British abolitionist Thomas Clarkson. Dining with William. These were all great friends of Henri Christophe.
- [47:38]
A
That idea of spinning narratives, of taking control of the narrative, is really interesting in light of this, because one of the things that your book, I think, sets out to do is to try to recontextualise the life that it tells against what I understand is quite a lot of skewed views. In your opinion of this man, how would you like readers to understand his life, his legacy, and the period we begin talking about?
- [48:02]
B
You know, I always say Christoph was a visionary, but visionaries sometimes have visions that are at odds with their means and are at odds with what it would take to produce that vision, to make it a reality? And I think Christophe was thinking, I want to create this free, black sovereign state in the Americas that is protected, that is slavery free. How am I going to do that? I need massive amount amounts of money. Right. And so his vision is at odds with his means. He uses the people of Haiti. At the end of his life, you know, he says something very interesting to Duncan Stewart, to the doctor, he says, you know, think I used the people a little too harshly. You know, he knew. He knew what his mistakes were, but he also could see that he had produced this constitution, these labor laws that were considered at the time, time the most free labor laws in the world, because, of course, what they were compared to was chattel slavery. He produced a massive palace called Sans Souci, meaning without worry, that was renowned around the world. It was likened to Versailles, to the Louvre, to Tivoli. He produced the citadel La Ferriere, called Citadel Henry in his day, it is the largest fortress in North America. It was widely hailed as the eighth wonder of the world. And yet, because of all of the contradictions that existed, most of the reports that then were produced after his death and in its long wake, even those from, you know, writers who wanted to put his story on stage, they played with that tension and played up the tyrannical, despotic reign of Christophe, which really earned him the reputation as only that. And instead, he was a person who, like so many people and especially world leaders, contained all of these contradictions. And he's not that easy to understand his reign without fully understanding what he wanted and what he tried to build and why he failed at it.
- [50:03]
A
That was Marlene Doubt. Marlena is professor of French and African Diaspora Studies at Yale University, and her book the first and Last King of Haiti, the Rise and Fall of Henri Christophe, is nominated for this year's Cundle History Prize. To find out more about the Kundal Prize, go to www. Kundalprize.com. here we have the Limu Imu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
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