The Haitian Revolution

Summary

In Our Time: History – The Haitian Revolution

Original Air Date: October 23, 2014
Host: Melvin Bragg (BBC Radio 4)
Guests: Tim Lockley (University of Warwick), Karen Salt (University of Aberdeen), Kate Hodgson (University of Liverpool)

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Overview

This episode explores the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), the only successful slave uprising in history and the event that led to the creation of Haiti—the world’s first Black republic and the first independent nation in Latin America. The discussion covers the brutal plantation society of the French colony of Saint Domingue, the impact of Enlightenment and revolutionary ideals, the complex global context (involving France, Spain, Britain and others), and the revolution’s far-reaching legacy. The panel explores the strategists, shifting alliances, and the broader meaning of both resistance and emancipation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Background: Saint Domingue and Caribbean Society

• Economic Significance:

  • Saint Domingue (now Haiti) in the late 18th century was the crown jewel of France’s colonial empire, famed for its immense sugar output and wealth (02:37).
  • The plantation economy was built on the forced labor of 4-5 million Africans over the 17th and 18th centuries.
  • Two islands, Jamaica and Saint Domingue, absorbed over half of these enslaved people (02:37).

• Social Stratification:

  • The population was split:
    • 5% white elite (‘Grand Blancs’, plantation owners).
    • A similar percentage of free mixed-race (‘gens de couleur’), whose rights were being eroded.
    • 90% Black enslaved population, many recently arrived from Africa and knowing “freedom in Africa.”
      • “Most of them have… known freedom in Africa.” —Melvin Bragg (05:18)
  • Brutal violence enforced control; public, torturous executions were common to inspire terror (05:23–06:18).

2. Saint Domingue & France:

• The colony was vital to the French economy and culture—so much so that France kept it over Canada in the 1760s (06:26).
• The “exclusif” system forced all trade through France; this monopoly enriched the merchant class in France and fueled tensions on the island (06:26).

3. Spread of Revolutionary Ideas

• The French Revolution (1789) brought radical Enlightenment concepts—Liberty, Equality, Fraternity—across the Atlantic via news and ships (08:15).
  • The white elite sought more independence and economic freedom from France.
  • The mixed-race population hoped for restored and expanded civil rights.
  • The Black enslaved majority interpreted revolutionary ideas through their own cultural lens and aspired to outright freedom (09:22).

4. Origins and Uniqueness of the Slave Revolt

• Slave resistance existed long before 1791, often in subtle forms: slowing work, sabotage, poisoning, and other disruptions, not just open revolt (10:34-12:16).

• Enslaved communities were diverse, with various African languages, military experience, traditions, and syncretic religions (12:32).

• August 1791: The revolt began with widespread plantation burnings, possibly inspired by the Bois Caiman ceremony—a symbolic event tying resistance to spiritual and communal bonds (14:07–15:21).

  "This was a gathering in the woods amongst the slaves... talked through the questions and ideas... about liberty, supposedly then dedicated themselves to potentially freeing themselves from France." —Karen Salt (14:31)

5. Early Revolutionary Struggles (1791–1793)

• Multiple insurgent groups used guerrilla tactics, overwhelming the whites’ ability to respond. Slaves used seized weapons, hand-made arms, and sheer numbers (16:51–17:55).
• European powers intervened:
  • Spain allied with Black revolutionary leaders.
  • Britain sought alliances with white planters (18:46–19:47).

6. Leadership and the Turn Towards Emancipation

• Toussaint Louverture emerged as a pivotal, strategic leader, initially a free Black man who owned land and slaves, and who later joined and unified the rebellion (21:09).

  • He swapped sides between Spain and France, showing diplomatic and military flexibility (22:12–23:31).

• French Response: In 1793, facing disaster, France’s commissioner Sonthonax offered emancipation to win the support of the rebels (24:06), leading ultimately to the National Assembly’s abolition of slavery.

  "Once you've crossed that Rubicon, once you've offered freedom, there's no going back from it. And people will die to defend that right." —Tim Lockley (25:03)

7. Consolidation of Power and New Constitution (1798–1801)

• By 1798-1800, Toussaint was, in effect, ruler. He expelled the British and Spanish, and unified the island, including the Spanish part by 1800 (26:05–28:00).

• Tension existed between freedpeople’s desires (land, autonomy) and leaders’ compulsion to restore plantation labor for economic survival under new terms.

• 1801: Constitution of Saint Domingue

  • Outlawed slavery forever; declared all men free and French.
  • Asserted the potential for Black self-government and political equality (28:13–30:37).

  “This is the only document at this period that would link notions of political equality with racial equality...” —Karen Salt (29:05)

8. Napoleon’s Intervention and the Final War

• Napoleon, angered by the assertion of autonomy, sent 20,000+ troops to reclaim the colony and eventually reinstate slavery, under the guise of peace (31:03–32:29).
• Black generals (including Dessalines and Christophe) used strategic guerrilla warfare and waited for tropical disease to devastate the French army:
  • "Two or three weeks after the French forces arrive, they know that French force will be considerably weaker because they'll be sick... only 3,000 [of 50,000] ever leave." —Tim Lockley (34:12)
• French troops were demoralized; some even defected, notably Poles who settled in Haiti (35:04–35:23).
• Toussaint was eventually deceived, captured, and died in a French prison, but leadership continued under Jean-Jacques Dessalines.

9. Declaration and Birth of Haiti (1804)

• January 1804: Dessalines proclaimed independence, renamed the country Haiti (from an indigenous word), and issued a searing declaration rejecting France and inaugurating a Black republic (38:04–39:16).

• News sent globally signaled a paradigm shift, inspiring and threatening others.

  “If the shot does ring out, the rest of the World tries its best to put a silencer on that shot.” —Kate Hodgson (42:33)

10. Global Impact and Aftermath

• Immediate effects were ambiguous; abolitionists were both fearful and exhilarated. Haiti’s existence both inspired and terrified global societies dependent on slavery (39:23–40:53).
• Despite Haiti’s radical example, slavery persisted for generations in the Americas (41:16), with emancipation elsewhere shaped by different trajectories.
• Western powers blockaded, isolated, and economically strangled Haiti, demanding ruinous reparations, to discourage similar revolutions (42:06).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Haitian Revolution’s uniqueness:

  "The Haitian Revolution was the only successful slave revolt in history, an inspiration for generations..." —Melvin Bragg (01:08)

• On the brutality of plantation life:

  "They controlled this large mass of enslaved people... by terror tactics... public executions that would take a long time and send a very clear message..." —Tim Lockley (05:37–06:18)

• On the meaning of the revolution for the rest of the world:

  "You can't explain to them that... by definition of being this color, are incapable of doing all these wonderful things. That is what has changed now." —Melvin Bragg (45:30)

• On the global campaign to silence Haiti’s example:

  “If the shot does ring out, the rest of the World tries its best to put a silencer on that shot.” —Kate Hodgson (42:33)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [02:37] – Caribbean plantation economy; arrival of millions of Africans
• [04:38] – Stratification: elite whites, free mixed-race, enslaved Blacks
• [05:23] – Details of plantation brutality
• [06:26] – Saint Domingue's critical role for France
• [08:15] – Spread of revolutionary ideas to the colony
• [14:07] – Bois Caiman and beginnings of the 1791 revolt
• [16:51] – On-the-ground details of the fighting; guerrilla tactics
• [21:09] – Introduction of Toussaint Louverture
• [24:06] – French emancipation offer and its turning-point effect
• [28:13] – Toussaint’s 1801 constitution; political vision
• [31:03] – Napoleon's response; French invasion
• [34:12] – Disease as a weapon; attrition of French troops
• [38:04] – Declaration of Haitian independence
• [42:06] – Aftermath: blockades, reparations, and repercussions

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Tone and Language

The panel blends analytical depth with occasional rhetorical flair, making evident both the tragic intensity and revolutionary optimism of the Haitian struggle. Key contributors offer clarity about violence, shifting alliances, and the complexity of freedom, while grappling with both the ideals and the grim realities of the age.

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For Listeners New to the Haitian Revolution

This episode provides an accessible but thorough roadmap to why Haiti stands as a landmark in global history: the only instance where enslaved people overthrew their masters to create a new nation, changing the conversation about race, rights, and revolution—not just in the Caribbean, but worldwide.

Transcript

[Melvin Bragg]

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[Kate Hodgson]

Okay, only 10 more presents to wrap. You're almost at the finish line, but.

[Tim Lockley]

First.

[Kate Hodgson]

There the last one. Enjoy a Coca Cola for a pause that refreshes.

[Melvin Bragg]

Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time. For more details about In Our Time and for our Terms of Use, please go to BBC.co.uk radio4. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello. In the late 18th century, the French colony of Saint Domingue in the Caribbean was among the richest countries in the world, supplying Europe and America's insatiable appetite for sugar. But its wealth came at a high price. It was a plantation economy and ran one of the most brutal slave regimes in the world. By 1804, the slaves had risen up, thrown out the French, and established the first independent nation in Latin America under the name Haiti. The Haitian Revolution was the only successful slave revolt in history, an inspiration for generations of people living under forced labor in the New World and and a test case for enlightenment ideas about liberty, equality and the defeat of tyranny. But it was also an extraordinary brutal conflict that saw the Caribbean island drawn into a global war between Napoleonic France and her enemies, Britain and Spain. With me to discuss the Haitian Revolution are Tim Lockley, Reader in American Studies at the University of Warwick, Karen Salt, Fellow in English in the School of Languages and Literature at the University of Aberdeen, and Kate Hodgson, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in French at the University of Liverpool. Tim Lockley, can you give us a sketch of the Caribbean in the late 18th century, about the time when we come into play, towards the very end of the 18th century.

[Tim Lockley]

Yes, the Caribbean had for the previous sort of 150 years been developed by European powers into a plantation series of plantation economies based on the island, starting in Barbados and then moving into Jamaica and then into Saint Domingue. Those are the most important islands. Their plantation economies were organized around the production of sugar. That was an incredibly Profitable crop for the European planters who were growing it and shipping it to Europe. People were developing a sweet tooth and you could make a lot of money from sugar. However, sugar was also really labour intensive and required lots of people to work on it. And Europeans found that labor force initially in white indentured servants, but then very quickly replaced by black enslaved labourers imported from West Africa. And over the course of the 17th and 18th century, they imported 4, maybe 5 million Africans, about 40 to 50% of all those transported across the Atlantic in the slave trade. Those Africans went to the Caribbean. Four to five million just went to the Caribbean. And by far the most dominant islands were Jamaica and Saint Domingue, which is the western part of Hispaniola. And those two islands on their own, those two colonies on their own perhaps absorbed maybe 2 million of that 4 million. When they got there, those Africans, they were put to work planting, nurturing and then harvesting sugar and then processing it. Because sugar was a product that couldn't just be harvested and then shipped. It had to be processed on site. That in itself was skilled and dangerous work. The labor regimes were incredibly harsh and brutal. People working 12, 15 hour days. They were poorly fed, so they were malnourished, they were poorly housed, so they were suffering from various ailments, suffering to do with exposure. And because of the high death rates then planters had to continually import slaves in order to keep the populations up.

[Melvin Bragg]

What was the. Can you give us some idea of the stratification of society in Saint Domingue at that time? We're talking about 1780s.

[Tim Lockley]

Yeah. Saint Domingue splits really into three groups. There's a very small white elite who own plantations and run the. Run the colony within the whites. There are those who own obviously very large plantations, very small.

[Melvin Bragg]

Meaning 5%.

[Tim Lockley]

Yeah, 5% of the population. Then there's a similar sized population of free blacks, people who would. Were most likely the product of interracial relationships with whites in the previous hundred years. Over the course of the 1750s to 1780s, their civil rights are being eroded. So their, their position in society is going down. And then about 90% of the population of Saint Domingue is black and enslaved. And most of them are relatively recently imported from Africa.

[Melvin Bragg]

And so they're imported as adult slaves. And some of them have known freedom in Africa.

[Tim Lockley]

Yes, most of them have just to.

[Melvin Bragg]

Develop a little bit what you said in your opening remarks. And it was a particularly vicious slave holding that they had that we're talking about amputations and castration and killings and Burning even of the slaves.

[Tim Lockley]

Absolutely.

[Melvin Bragg]

On fear and violence.

[Tim Lockley]

Yeah. And that's how they controlled this large mass of enslaved people. They did it by sort of terror tactics. And those terror tactics have to be public and they have to be incredibly brutal in order to cow the other slaves into submission. And so minor infractions are punished harshly. More severe resistance is punished by execution. But the execution is not just hanging or straightforward, simple and quick. It has to be long, drawn out, torturous. It has to involve burning at the stake, breaking on the wheel, those kind of public executions that would take a long time and send a very clear message of terror that any kind of resistance to white authority would not be tolerated.

[Melvin Bragg]

Kate Domingue, St. Kate. Kate Hodgson. Sorry. Saint Domingue was a colony of France. What was the relationship between the two France and Saint Domingue?

[Kate Hodgson]

Well, Saint Domingue had only been a colony of France for less than a century at the time of the French Revolution. It became a colony of France officially in 1697. But it became extremely important to France to the extent in the 1760s, France chose to keep its Caribbean colonies and get rid of French Canada. It chose the Caribbean over French Canada. So it was very important to France. And the relationship was key then. The relationship was based, economically speaking, was based on a system called the exclusif, which was a trade monopoly. The colony could only trade with France, only sell and only buy from France. And they found that obviously very restrictive in that relationship.

[Melvin Bragg]

But at the same time, it put the Grand Blanc, the great whites, the 5%, in a position of great power inside the island.

[Kate Hodgson]

Yeah, absolutely, because they have the economic control and the relationship with France. And France is not only economically very powerful, it's also culturally very powerful within the colony. There's a great sense of emulation of France and the Grand Blanc trying to be as French as they possibly can, trying to send their children to be educated in France, trying to import the latest fashions, the latest news, the latest, everything coming from France. Of course, this relationship is also making the French bourgeois class in Nantes, in Bordeaux, it's making them extremely rich. And this is the merchant class, which then leads the way into the French Revolution. Leads the way in terms of.

[Melvin Bragg]

Wasn't the chief city in Saint Domingue the rich, richest city in the New World? Richer than Philadelphia at that time.

[Kate Hodgson]

It was certainly bigger than Philadelphia.

[Tim Lockley]

And it was.

[Kate Hodgson]

And it was the richest colony in. In the New World. It was known as the Pearl of the. Saint Domingue was known as the Pearl.

[Melvin Bragg]

Of the Ansalis can we go on to this? The French Revolution, sort of, let's say 1789 to 19, 1792. Now do these are. How do these ideas do they and how do they spread from Paris to Saint Domingue?

[Kate Hodgson]

They do. And they spread through ships arriving in the ports and they spread in the colony throughout the sections which Tim's just described. Throughout the sections in the colony, they spread. So in the white population, they see the ideas of the French Revolution as really a chance to try and emulate what happened in North America a decade earlier and try to rid themselves of this exclusive system.

[Melvin Bragg]

So the Grand Blonde, the whites thought, great, we can free ourselves like the Americans did and making even more money.

[Kate Hodgson]

Yeah, absolutely. And some of the smaller white people and some of the less rich white people in the colony also saw it as a chance, you know, also saw the idea of liberty, egaliti fraternity as a chance to improve their standing with regard to the white people. So you have these two sections within the white population starting to fight each other, starting to become in conflict with each other. In the mixed race population who had their civil rights eroded during this period, they saw it as a chance to improve their civil rights, to become enfranchised.

[Melvin Bragg]

And then the 90% of the rest of the population saw it.

[Kate Hodgson]

The 90% of the rest of the population. I mean that period, 1789-91, was in terms of legislation, all about the debate of should mixed race people get rights, and if so, what form should these rights take? And that's what's happening in the national assembly in France. Meanwhile, of course, the slaves are listening, they are watching, they are hearing this talk of liberty and they are interpreting it in their own way and with their own cultural framework. So they're starting to understand, they're starting to organize and they're starting to think about liberty in their own terms, what they want liberty to be.

[Melvin Bragg]

So political rights. The 5% whites want to get away because they can control the island by themselves. They don't have to trade with France. They don't have the others who are the half, half, half Whitehall see it as a chance to get more political rights because they've been eroded. And the 90% see a different thing. They just see straightforward freedom. Stop being slaves.

[Kate Hodgson]

Yeah, that's right.

[Melvin Bragg]

And this is there from the very beginning. Okay, current Salty. The revolution began in 1791 with a revolt which then turned into revolution. But how common was such revolts in the new world around that time?

[Karen Salt]

Well, I think it's worth thinking through what do we mean by revolt? Right. The Haitian revolution is fascinating in the sense that it's a long period of time. There are lots of series of engagements that occur. There's definitely brutality and there's definitely fires, but it's not necessarily where people are marshaling and getting arms and immediately coming out into the street and then fighting for a couple of days. And it goes down. It keeps going, right? It keeps going for 12 long years. Many other sort of altercations and revolts that happen. Typically we're very, very small and very immediate. There are lots of indications and instances of very big ones. But there's a lot of things that people did to actually be disruptive, much more disruptive than necessarily violent, slowing down the work that you might do, shuffling your feet, poisoning yourself. You can engage in all forms of types of resistance that doesn't necessarily have to go to this big blown out revolt. And that's been a big debate amongst historians thinking about resistance within the Caribbean and within the larger North America, which is, on the one hand, rumors would circulate that would say, you know, slaves are revolting everywhere and there's this resistance, so the fear needs to happen and people would rally and try to control. But then there was also these other sorts of stories that would circulate that say, slaves, nature is that they're docile and they would never revolt. So we would never need to actually do anything because our slaves, this is their natural condition is to be enslaved. And what we've got to do, I think once we start talking about revolutions, is sort of change the way that we talk about them and change the way that we talk about resistance so that the Haitian Revolution sits amongst a much bigger conversation and story about what sort of resistance means.

[Melvin Bragg]

Before we come to the start of this particular revolution, can you give listeners some idea of the general. Was there a general culture of these 500,000 slaves? Could you say? I'm sure there was. Can you just say, I'm awfully sorry, but briefly what it was, right?

[Karen Salt]

I think you've got within a number of plantation economies and plantation societies, you've got a whole strata of people and you've got individuals who might, especially in areas where it's intensive labor and this is enforced labor, right? You've got people who are doing that sort of work, but you've also got the folks who may be still enslaved, but they're doing other types of jobs. They may be doing processing jobs, they may be doing courier jobs, they may be doing jobs in the family home, they might be Caring for children. So you've got a whole. This is the plantation owner's children. You've got a whole range of individuals who are participating and working within the system, still enslaved, but may have all sorts of means and ways of being both disruptive and being a part of the system. So, yes, a group of people with their own cultures, with their own syncretic sense of religion, with their own ideas about relationships, with their own sort of familial structures. And as Tim was mentioning, we've got individuals coming in as adults from wide areas. So lots of languages being spoken, lots of various different ideas. And some of the people who were brought into Saint Domingue were actually military officers and military soldiers in other places in Africa. So they would actually come in already with ideas about regiments, already with the ideas about forming. And this is pre the revolution now. This is pre the Haitian revolution. So you've got an interesting mix of people who are coming and being a part of this very large, very brutal system.

[Melvin Bragg]

Well, let's get down to it. The slave revolt started in Saint Domingue in August. We told 1791. Do we know how it started? How specifically it started?

[Karen Salt]

Yeah, we know that there are fires that start up, and those fires will occur within. Burning fires. Yeah. So the slaves would actually burn the sugar and the sugar cane and. And if you can imagine, just think of any sort of culture or areas where there's a lot of grass, right? There's a lot of grass growing, and if you could put a flame to that, it would just move, houses get burned, and all sorts of things can occur.

[Melvin Bragg]

Do you know what sparked it?

[Karen Salt]

Well, there's a beautiful ceremony called Boisquemon. And that ceremony is people go back and forth of whether or not it actually really happened, which doesn't really matter because it's culturally quite critically important. And this was a gathering in the woods amongst the slaves, and they banded and came together and in this ceremony talked through the questions and ideas that Kate was just mentioning about liberty, supposedly then dedicated themselves to potentially freeing themselves from France. And this is what will occur about a couple of days before the fires will actually get going. And they will continue to circulate. They'll be banked down. More fires will appear. There will be bank. This is in the north. And they would continue to move until one place after another would be up in flames.

[Melvin Bragg]

The word voodoo has been associated with the ceremony, which you have avoided.

[Karen Salt]

It's not an avoidance. It's because I think the problem is there's folks who have taken aspects of that ceremony and added it to cultural assumptions about zombies and about other sorts of things about people, and have read into that ceremony all sorts of other negative attributes. And I think paying attention to it as a ritual and ceremony Allows you to understand that it would fit within the syncretic religion or within the sort of cultural dynamics of the people, Whatever those were for them. Whether or not it might have involved talking to gods, what it might have been, or spirits, Whether or not it might have involved the collectivism of bringing people together, of really thinking about a common goal, that is really what that ceremony is ultimately about. If you, if, if, if people would like to want to talk about religion in a realistic way, we can talk about the. The religion that starts to emerge in haiti. But I don't want to read into it any sort of negative ideas about devils or devil worshipping or any other types of things that some have done even in contemporary times, in terms of thinking about the religiosity within haiti.

[Melvin Bragg]

Good. Good. Tim. Tim Lockley. We now have 12 years of fighting, and it can be quite complicated. So let's start at the beginning. Beginning. There's this rush, like a great flood. They're burning the plantations, the plants. The owners of planet are fleeing to the great cities, the great fortified cities. So they're taking great tracts of the land, and there's no real opposition there. Then what?

[Tim Lockley]

Well, then it gets interesting. We have a couple of years where the slaves are certainly making progress, they're making gains, they're defeating whatever kind of forces the whites are sending against them. But then it enters into a period of imperial faction fighting, and it's tied into what happens in Europe. Louis xvi is deposed, and then he's executed.

[Melvin Bragg]

I want to just. I'm awfully sorry. I want to come to europe in a moment. Okay, can we just stay on the island and say what's happening there? Are they one force, revolutionary force? Are there a.

[Ray Winstone]

Several.

[Melvin Bragg]

Are there several different chiefs, captains?

[Tim Lockley]

Oh, yes. There's always multiple bands, and they are attacking in multiple ways. And that's partly the problem that the whites have, Is that they don't know where the next attack is going to come. These bands are very mobile. Whenever whites come in force, then they retreat and they go into the mountains or they go into the woods and they can't be found and located. And so it is, as Karen says, it is guerrilla war. It's hit and leave. And the whites really don't know how to respond. But it's a very effective tactic because they do come in Destroy something, leave.

[Melvin Bragg]

Where do they get their weapons?

[Tim Lockley]

Some of the weapons are taken from captured French weapons, captured French stores. But you don't necessarily need large amounts of firearms. A lot of weaponry is merely what you can fashion. So it is, you know, sometimes it's sword spikes, those kind of things, or it's just clubs. So it doesn't have to be, you know, muskets. That's not necessarily the way these revolutions go. They've got overwhelming force in terms of numbers and they just need to give them any kind of weaponry and then torches so they can set fire to things.

[Melvin Bragg]

As Tim was alluding to Kate Hodgson, the other cologne colonizing powers got involved. Spain saw it as a chance to switch across the island. They were on the other half of the island. And Great Britain sailed in to try to. So what happens there? Can you develop that?

[Kate Hodgson]

Sure.

[Karen Salt]

Well.

[Kate Hodgson]

When the French king is killed in 1793, obviously the Revolutionary wars begin in Europe and this becomes a kind of global imperial war. And it's happening on various fronts. And one of those fronts is the Americas, as it happened throughout the 18th century. So this is well established in terms of warfare that's ongoing between Britain and France during this period. And Britain and Spain both declare war in France. They both get involved in Saint Domingue, but they do it in different ways. The British try and make contact with the white planters to try and create trading links there to try and tempt them to sort of welcome the British in and bring them in that way. And the Spanish try to form an alliance with the black revolutionary armies which have grown up led by some of the major leaders of the Revolution since 1791. So people like Jean Francois and people like Toussaint Louverture, who appears during this period as one of the major figures of the revolution.

[Melvin Bragg]

It's worth saying that at this time is liberty egalitaria fraternity in France, while in Britain, Wilberforce is still in the 1790s, pounding through more and more hopelessly, as it seemed in that decade and 79, the trying to abolish the slave trade. So this. These things are going on as well.

[Kate Hodgson]

Yeah, absolutely. And the British abolition. The British abolitionists are watching very carefully what is happening in Haiti and in some cases intervening such when Thomas Clarkson was in Paris, he aids one of the. He aids one of the Haitian mixed race revolutionaries called Vincent Auger. He actually helps him to get back to Saint Domingue to continue the fight there. So the British abolitionists are watching and getting involved.

[Karen Salt]

Karen Saund and one thing to Add to that, the gentleman that Kate just mentioned, Vincent Augier, will go back to Saint Domingue and actually try to lead a revolt amongst the mixed race people and will be killed and executed quite violently because of his actions. So this just sort of reinforces the ways that various different strata within the colony itself are actually trying to use this moment to agitate and try to figure out what this might mean, this liberti, egalite and fraternite for them.

[Melvin Bragg]

It's a good time to begin to talk about the leaders thrown up inside Haiti at this stage. The most vivid was Toussaint Louverture. Can you say something about him and what he did?

[Karen Salt]

Absolutely. He is sort of myth, legend and the sort of grand champion, if you will, in the sort of Haitian imaginary around the Haitian Revolution. He's a really interesting figure in the sense that we will actually know what we know now that he was free at the time of the Haitian Revolution. He was not enslaved. He owned slaves, had plots of land of his own, had married and had children, and is a really interesting figure in the sense that initially he's not part of the rebel crowd. He will actually join the rebels as the revolution moves on and will rise into power. As Kate was just mentioning, when the Spanish will ultimately come in and when they tempt various different that sort of 90% to participate, Toussaint will be one of those crowds that will slide over into the Spanish side and will actually fight for the Spanish for a portion of time. And he will use his sort of military acumen, change his name from his original plantation name, which is Brela, to Louverture.

[Melvin Bragg]

When you say plantation name, just a second, listeners might think you said he was free plantation. Does that imply he was free, working voluntary on the plantation?

[Karen Salt]

Well, no, because when names are sacred for people and they remain sacred for many, many folks. And if you would imagine if you grew up as a slave, you might be given a name by your plantation owner.

[Melvin Bragg]

Oh, he's been a slave and was then not free.

[Karen Salt]

Exactly. He was free, yes. He was made free and then essentially owned slaves, had a holding that had some slaves who attached to it and at least had one slave. And it seems clear that he had a fairly kind master, if we could actually call masters kind, and had an actual relationship with that particular family. But he will use his knowledge and sort of acumen in various different ways to both marshal support amongst the various different rebels. Because as Tim was mentioning, this is a group that's not necessarily playing together. All the various different slave rebels, they're not one unified group following one person. There's lots of various different bands and lots of different leaders. And Toussaint will manage to rise in that crowd and hold people together, actually push down any sort of opposition to his rule. And simultaneously, once he switches sides from Spain back over to France, will rise up to be the most decorated French official in Haiti or in Saint Domingue.

[Melvin Bragg]

So we have that there. And so leaders are emerging, there are others, but he is the most prominent at that time. Tim Lockley. The French are losing control of the situation in 1793. They begin to placate the revolution. The revolution is going on now. It's been going on for three or four years. And they abolish slavery. To assert that, can you tell us what effect did this particular French intervention have?

[Tim Lockley]

It had a massive impact.

[Melvin Bragg]

What did they do? I bumbled it. So what did they do?

[Tim Lockley]

Well, there's a French commissioner comes from Paris to basically try and take charge of the situation in Saint Domingue, which is going rapidly, rapidly downhill. Because we've got the Spanish on the one side, we've got the British on another side. French control has almost disappeared. Well, he arrives, this guy called Santanax, and he is himself quite a radical republican from France. So he believes strongly in revolutionary ideals of things like liberty and equality. He quickly comes to the realization that the only way the French are going to re establish control in Saint Domingue is by offering freedom to slaves to fight for the French. And this is what he does. And that becomes very quickly it morphs into a general declaration of emancipation by him for anyone who fights for France in Saint Domingue in 1793. That's later the following year ratified by the French National Assembly. But he does it first in Saint Domingue. Why it's so important, it's because it persuades people like Louverture to swap sides. He'd been fighting with the Spanish.

[Melvin Bragg]

Why?

[Tim Lockley]

Because he was fighting against French republicans who had been enslaving him and his people. Now the French are offering freedom and he swaps sides and he starts to fight for the French against the Spanish and against the British. And Sonatax's declaration of emancipation is absolutely crucial in determining the outcome of what will eventually become the Haitian revolution. Because once you've crossed that Rubicon, once you've offered freedom, there's no going back from it. And people will die to defend that right.

[Melvin Bragg]

And things move in a meshing and complicated way for the next year or two with the three, let us call European powers. I was going to say great powers, European powers, and the several distinct groups, although they're cohering around strong leaders like Tussan, Louverture, Dessalines and so on. In Saint Domingue in 1798, you could say that Louverture was effectively the ruler of the island.

[Karen Salt]

The.

[Melvin Bragg]

Is that right? And how did he get the economy going again?

[Kate Hodgson]

Yeah, by that point, Toussaint Louverture has fought off the Toussaint Louverture at the head of numerous armies, has fought off the British, he's fought the Spanish, and he has taken control of the colony. But he still has these French governors to contend with.

[Melvin Bragg]

Can you tell the listeners what fought off means? I mean, these are. These are well drilled armies who fought battles in Europe and in North America and so on and so forth. So what does fought off mean? Are we still in guerrilla warfare?

[Kate Hodgson]

They're using the tactics of guerrilla warfare, yes. And the battle's ongoing, but basically by 1798 they push. And actually by 1800, Toussaint pushes that military dominance which he has. And you know, historians are military strategists. I'm not a military strategist, but everyone has recognized Toussaint's absolute, unquestioning military genius. Basically, he is really seen as a military strategic genius. And he not only reconquers the entirety of the original colony for France, but also pushes the frontier to include the whole island. So the Spanish part two by 1800. And what he does in terms of restarting the economy, basically the situation is that Toussaint and the former slaves, so the black 90% majority of the population have fundamentally opposing ideas about what they want to do with this freedom. The 80% have this absolutely coherent idea of what they want to do. And it's since the beginning of the Revolution, all they want is time and space, basically time for themselves and space to cultivate their own land and their own things. Toussaint sees, sees this as impossible and sees the necessity of restarting the plantation system in order to keep providing France with the sugar and coffee that they're demanding. But also in sort of abolitionist terms and in global terms, this need to prove that free labor could be as effective as slave labor.

[Melvin Bragg]

And so that's what he does. Karen, in 1801, Liverture passed a new constitution. Can you give us an idea what that was and what it signified?

[Karen Salt]

Yeah, and I think Kate, lead in is brilliant because essentially you've got this document, if you'd imagined, the Declaration of Independence in the States. And many are familiar with that, you know, it's written before altercations actually get going and sort of leads the way. And the constitution is written after. Right? It's written after most.

[Melvin Bragg]

The one in Saint Domingue.

[Karen Salt]

Yeah, the one in Saint Domingue, after all of the interaction. And you get to see in this constitution a vision of what a self governing black French territory would look like. And it's startling in its simplicity and in its grandness to imagine, you know, how laws will be set up, who will be the ruler, how things will be organized, and most importantly, the fact that slavery can never happen ever in Haiti or in Saint Domingue. It just would not be possible.

[Melvin Bragg]

All it's not called Haiti yet.

[Karen Salt]

No, no, no. So at this point, it's still tied to France. He' he's quite comfortable to still be tied to France. But the vision that he has of all men, as it says, and it's quite emphatic about the men are born free and they're born and they will die free and French. It says that in the Constitution. So you've talked about before, Melvin, about Enlightenment ideals. And this is the only document at this particular time period that would link notions of sort of political equality, if you will, with racial equality and make that very clear that enslavement cannot and will not ever happen within this territory. And that it's an emphatic document, I think, because not only is it imagining a political future and the fact that a group of people who many throughout the Atlantic world, not only do they believe that they should be slaves, but they were folks who actually believed that people of African descent were incapable of political thought, that they were actually incapable of actually doing any kind of governing. And this document says emphatically that that's not the case. Not only can he imagine what the world would look like, but he would imagine a world that would be free. And while Kate is right about the enforced labor, without a doubt, because that will be the thing that will haunt the Caribbean is issues around labor and who will work on and what kind of plantation economies. The idea that it is a message, it's a really big message, and it's a message of equality to another ruler that he sends directly to Napoleon to sort of say, I am not only your brethren, but I'm your equality.

[Melvin Bragg]

Yes. And that's when the poems are written and the praise comes and man's unconquerable mind enters the, enters the vocabulary with Wordsworth sonnet and on we go. What, what was the. Is there a general reaction to this? So that's Been very graphically described by Karen. Is there a general reaction to this in Europe? Do they think, what are we going to do about this? Has it gone too far? Can we do anything about it?

[Tim Lockley]

There's an immediate reaction in France.

[Melvin Bragg]

Yeah.

[Tim Lockley]

And the reaction comes from Napoleon, who is not impressed by somebody sending him, what's he called him, this gilded African, sending him this constitution, which of course he hasn't been run past him before it's promulgated. So there's this constitution that comes. Napoleon suddenly thinks, well, what about this great French territory that we had, that we have lost? Can we reclaim it? This idea had been mulling around the French government for a few years. Napoleon finally acts on it. And he acts on it because there's a short window of peace with Britain when he can actually act on it, when he can send troops and he's got secure supply lines. And he sends 20,000 odd battle hardened French revolutionary troops to Haiti to take Haiti back from these black rebels to reassert French control. This is in 1801, this is 1802.

[Melvin Bragg]

He sends a piece of Emmy away.

[Tim Lockley]

Yeah, he sends the, he sends this fleet and these, these troops in order to take back Haiti. And it's part of a larger sort of western design of Napoleon where he's going to reassert French control, restart sugar exports to France and the wealth that that brings. And it's also linked into the reclaiming of Louisiana from Spain. That Louisiana is also going to be a source of food and supplies to support Haiti. That's the western design. And it goes very badly wrong very quickly for Napoleon.

[Melvin Bragg]

And it's the end of Napoleon, the great liberator, the great hero of Beethoven. And he goes back to base and he says, we want slaves, we want sugar.

[Tim Lockley]

Absolutely.

[Melvin Bragg]

And Napoleon, Beethoven won't have anything more to do.

[Tim Lockley]

And he does it very sneakily because he goes to Haiti and he doesn't announce we're reintroducing slavery. He, he says, no, no, we're just going to have peace and we just want to reassert French control. But then they, the people in Haiti find out who reintroduces slavery in Guadeloupe, another French territory. And that suddenly becomes very apparent that that's what the, the aim is.

[Melvin Bragg]

So they take on these 20,000 troops he sends across and of course they will find allies. Those troops in Saint Domingue and Louverture and de Klerk. Let's stick with l'. Ouverture, it makes it a bit easier. How do they take them on? How do they fight them? It's a big force to land on an island.

[Tim Lockley]

It is a big force, but they are extremely, you know, well, well supplied, well trained, and they know what they want to do.

[Melvin Bragg]

Karen, how do you. What can you tell us what happened.

[Karen Salt]

Here when they're going to have their interaction? I mean, I think the thing that is, what did Tusso.

[Melvin Bragg]

You've talked about Tuso being a great strategist. What did he do at this stage?

[Karen Salt]

I think what's clear at this stage is that there is going to be continuous engagement. And I think you've got some of the guerrilla warfare ideas, but you've got regiments, you've got people forming. They're actually organized in particular places. They're actually having particular sort of encounters. And you also have this fantastic thing called disease. And it's going to have a huge impact and it will actually be a strategy. Everyone will know that there is a danger of actually going out and fighting during a particular time of the year because there will be mosquitoes and you will essentially get infected. And if you think of that as an actual military strategy, which is says, don't do anything, just let them go out and they will kill themselves. It actually works.

[Melvin Bragg]

Yeah.

[Tim Lockley]

I mean, both Louverture and Desayens use this as like a wait and see. Two or three weeks after the French forces arrive, they know that French force will be considerably weaker because they'll be sick. And he's right. I mean, the French forces absolutely decimated. I think in the two years that the Napoleon tries to retake control of Haiti, he sends something like 50,000 troops to Haiti. Only 3,000 ever leave.

[Kate Hodgson]

We shouldn't also underestimate the impact on the soldiers arriving. This is the French Revolutionary Army. They have themselves been fighting for liberty and equality in Europe. They arrive in Saint Domingue and they find a population who are fighting for liberty and equality. And they're singing the same songs. They're absolutely just shaken to the core. I think when they encounter these black armies who are using the same ideas and the same revolutionary rhetoric as them.

[Melvin Bragg]

Do I have any hard evidence about what some of them do? Do they switch sides?

[Kate Hodgson]

Some of them. There's a Polish regiment that comes across with the French Revolutionary army and some of the soldiers do actually, including some of the Polish population, do actually stay in Saint Domingue and in what becomes Haiti at the end of the revolution. So some doctor.

[Karen Salt]

So, just to add to that, Melvin, just to think about people fighting around questions of liberty and equality, we do actually have some of the slave rebels who will fight during the American Revolution. And that is a key issue to sort of put into perspective that lots of these individuals are going in different sorts of places and thinking through these questions of liberty and equality in different ways.

[Melvin Bragg]

What does happen here, which is an emphatic change which seemed to me, but you'll tell me whether I'm right or wrong come to you first, Tim. Now we can go around, is that they ambush one way and another. There are two or three different versions of this, but they ambush Toussaint de Bourbon and his sons, they capture him, send him to France, put him in prison, and he dies in prison. So he's out of it quite quick. How, how did he, how did they ambush him? How did they. Given that he was so clever, how did they get a hold of him?

[Tim Lockley]

Well, there's this whole thing about whether, whether Toussaint sort of retires and now there's this French general and there's a general acceptance that he should be in charge. He's come with Napoleon's sort of authority. All the black generals, including Dessayens and Christophe and Louverture, they all sort of eventually acknowledge this guy's authority and Louverture officially sort of retires to his plantation and then he's tricked into coming to a meeting where he's then captured and shipped off to France. But there's certainly an element where it might well be. There's internal manoeuvring amongst black generals that basically make Louverture the fall guy. And they're whispering to the French, you know, Louverture is still plotting. He's only pretending to lay down his arm. He's actually going to come back and fight you. And that's the sort of thing that the French generals, you know, then want to play along with this.

[Melvin Bragg]

But if they thought that chopping off the head would reduce the body, it didn't work because Desoline is, well, his son in law actually wasn't. He was in the wings and he took charge and was fiercer in many ways.

[Tim Lockley]

Yeah. I mean there's some suggestion that Desayence was the ones who was the one who betrayed him to the French in order to aggrandize himself. But Desayenes had been the slave of Louverture's daughter. And there's always this subordinate, superior relationship which Desayens later talked about as something that he always resented and that Louverture always treated him poorly because of it. And with Louverture out of the way, Dessayines eventually assumes control of the Black armies in Haiti. Once it becomes apparent that actually the French are here with one aim only, and that is to reintroduce and reinstate slavery, which they've done in Guadeloupe. And he then is the one who then takes the lead in the last phase of the war.

[Melvin Bragg]

So let's move to January 1803. Kate Hodgson, when Dessalines declares independence.

[Kate Hodgson]

January 1804.

[Melvin Bragg]

January 18th. Well, I. Oh, 1804. Sorry. January 1804. I just can't read. That's it. Can you say what happened when he declared that?

[Kate Hodgson]

Absolutely. Dessaline is one of the sign. Several signatories, generals of the Asian revolution that signed this declaration of independence. They renamed the country Haiti, which is taken from an indigenous word meaning mountain and land, mountainous land. They. And they create this declaration, basically this extraordinary, powerful declaration that says, from now on, we swear eternal hatred to France. We will no longer be part of France. They even invent a new word to describe how heavy the hand of France has been on the colony and how this needs to be shaken off and completely reshaped. So there's this declaration of independence, which has survived as a document. In fact, very recently, a copy, the only original surviving copy, was found here in London in the British archives, and it had been sent by Dessalines, a kind of strategy of global publicity of the revolution. Sent copies to Jamaica, sent copies to the United States to publicize Haiti's independence.

[Melvin Bragg]

What effect did this. Karen Salt, what effect did this document have on the places to which it was sent? Which cases you tell us about?

[Karen Salt]

Well, just the reality of the declaration itself, itself will have humongous, immediate effect everywhere. It will affect various different stratas differently. For the abolitionists, it is both fear, because this is their nightmare. This is the thing that they're scared that they can't control. You know, you were mentioning Wilberforce before. Wilberforce is carefully trying to push something through a sort of parliamentarian kind of sort of situation. And here we've got this moment of massive violence and altercation and massive disruption. And they're very concerned that they don't want to be. Some of them, that they don't want to be saying, what we really need is a war. Right.

[Melvin Bragg]

Who's they?

[Karen Salt]

And it would depend. So some of the more radical abolitionists will be fine with this because they really want to change the system. They want to do it immediately.

[Melvin Bragg]

But we're talking about days outside the island.

[Karen Salt]

Yes, days outside the island. And these would be people like those who would have been part of the Societies for the Friends of the Blacks in France, these would be the abolitionist groups in the uk, these would be abolitionist societies that would be in the us. But there were others who thought this is the magic moment. This is the moment where this, not only the actual declaration itself, but just the existence of Haiti, will actually say to people that you cannot have slave systems. You can't have a society that imagines that people of a certain group are disenfranchised to a certain extent and actually oppressed to a certain extent as a natural way of being. It just can't occur. Because this place exists. It shows you that it can be done very, very differently.

[Melvin Bragg]

Yet slavery went on, Tim Lockley, for at least two or three generations into the 19th century, even though this had an effect, as you pointed out, Karen, in America, that went on in America, went on in Brazil and so on. So are we really talking about a shot being fired that was heard around the world, or are we talking about. Or are we really talking about something on which other revolutions built?

[Tim Lockley]

What are we doing? It's very difficult to think of it like that. It certainly has an impact amongst white societies who are terrified of what's going to happen. And they see rebellions everywhere, plots, etc. And there are certainly are some that are linked to the Haitian Revolution. The Denmark Vezzi conspiracy in Charleston in 1822 is one of them. He'd actually been to Haiti, but there's a resonance of what happens in Haiti amongst black populations, but it doesn't necessarily then lead on to, for example, emancipation in Jamaica and the British Caribbean in the 1830s or emancipation during the Civil War in the US in the 1860s. You do see an immediate impact on places like Grenada. There's a Faidan's rebellion in 1795. So there is, there is some consequences for what happens in the French English Caribbean, but does set an example of what a free black republic would be, but it doesn't necessarily logically cause those emancipationary events.

[Melvin Bragg]

And finally what happens, it seems to me, is that the European powers try to ruin the new Haiti. They blockade it, they won't trade with it. When finally they do trade with it, they force the Haitians to pay incredible, by present day, 125 billion compensation and so on. So in one way they're saying, look, this is what happens if you have this slave revolution, you get poverty stricken and nobody will have anything to do with you.

[Kate Hodgson]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, to continue with your metaphor of a shot ringing out, if the shot does ring out, the rest of the World tries its best to put a silencer on that shot. That there is a blockade of news. There is a blockade, economic blockade, and.

[Melvin Bragg]

I'm afraid I'll have to do a blockade. I'm really sorry. Thank you, Kate Hodgson. Thank you, Tim Lockley. Thank you, Karen Salt. Next week we'll be talking about nuclear fusion. Thanks for listening.

[Tim Lockley]

And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests.

[Melvin Bragg]

But I said it was my fault because I can't read. I mean, I covered for these guys. Are you listening? Are I covered for you? Yeah. Your notes were wrong. It wasn't. Your notes were wrong. And I read and I said, oh.

[Tim Lockley]

That told me it's just deliberate mistake they put in there.

[Melvin Bragg]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we will have a post mortem. The mortem the better. No, it was. It's very complicated and I think you managed to sift. What would you think it's more important, you think, how do you think.

[Tim Lockley]

There's so much to cover and there's so many actors and trying to get them all in order and they're all doing the right things at the right time. That is complicated for everybody, not only students, but for us. And people constantly change sides. This is this soap opera where literally you turn around and the next week people who are allies are now enemies and then three weeks later they're completely like.

[Melvin Bragg]

But you would expect it, wouldn't you? I mean, the, the idea of slaves being a natural part of the human condition and allied to the fact that they were producing such incredible wealth for France. I mean, such incredible. When Napoleon lost it, he sold the whole of Louisiana to the United States for fortunes because he didn't need it anymore, because he couldn't. He hadn't.

[Karen Salt]

This.

[Tim Lockley]

He hadn't got Haiti.

[Melvin Bragg]

He hadn't got Haiti. And so trying to shift that, you don't do it in an afternoon. I mean, it was an earthquake.

[Karen Salt]

And I think this goes back to your point that you asked about, you know, what's the sort of significance of Haiti, its existence, as well as the Haitian revolution, is that it's, it's not going to be necessarily this cosmic change that suddenly every single other empire will go, we can never have slaves now and we need to stop this sort of situation or enforce labor. But I think it changes the nature of the conversation. It means that you can't, you can't actually start to imagine a world in which what you have in existence is in perpetuity. Right. And you also can't imagine a world in the sense of slave economies, but you. But it also means that you can't go up to certain groups of people, especially people who will start to go to school, people of African descent who will become politicians who maybe. Who may get the vote in certain areas. You can't explain to them that, you know, they will never be a ruler in a particular country. It may have taken until now to get Obama as the president of the United States, but those sorts of moments, they change the dynamic of political thought and conversation. You can't do it anymore.

[Melvin Bragg]

You can't say that these people are not. These people, by definition of being this color, are incapable of doing all these wonderful things. That is what has changed now. It takes a long time to percolate through, but that has definitely changed because there's the example.

[Tim Lockley]

Yeah. And Louverture's, I think, the. Really the groundbreaker here because he's this black intellectual and he writes all these documents. There's something like 1600 documents that are written by him or dictated by him.

[Melvin Bragg]

I wish we said that last. That's a lot of documents.

[Tim Lockley]

And nobody's ever been through every one of them because there's too many of them.

[Melvin Bragg]

What's he saying in these documents?

[Tim Lockley]

Well, he's articulating lots of different things. Some of them are mundane, but he's also thinking about rights, about what it means to be French, what it means to be a leader. He's trying to negotiate with the English, with the Americans. But he's, you know, and clearly an educated and intelligent man, but sort of self educated. And he imbibes these ideas that are coming out of France of liberty and equality, some of which are feeding, of course, from what happened in America 20 years previously. But he's. He's this wonderful figure and he sort of stands alone as being like a bit like that.

[Melvin Bragg]

I still. Well, of course I can. I'm being silly about it, but it'd be great to know in detail how they, how they got him, how he.

[Tim Lockley]

Yeah, there are competing accounts.

[Kate Hodgson]

Those documents of Toussaint, just to add to what Tim was saying, are translated into English and they are available within an edition edited by academic Nick Nesbitt and the former Haitian president, Jean Bretman.

[Tim Lockley]

Yeah, but they, I mean, well, this isn't.

[Karen Salt]

He's writing. He's not just writing about slavery and freedom. He's writing about all of this ideas that you were talking about, this enlightenment thought, you know, how do we live within a particular sort of society? What sort of how should be ordered? How should it be governed? How should we interact with each other? He's giving this thought and I'm concerned, consumed with thinking about political ideas and political thought. It's amazing to have that that body of knowledge from him, a man born a slave who feels like it's his legitimate right to actually be able to.

[Melvin Bragg]

Participate in that conversation, produce resented. We are now being offered BBC Tea or BBC Coffee.

[Kate Hodgson]

There are many more Radio 4 arts and discussion programs to download for free. Find these on the [e-mail] radio4.

[Ray Winstone]

Hello, it's Ray Winstone. I'm here to tell you about my podcast on BBC Radio 4, History's Toughest Heroes. I got stories about the pioneers, the rebels, the outcasts who define tough. And that was the first time that anybody ever ran a car up that fast with no tires on. It almost feels like your eyeballs are going to come out of your head. Tough enough for you? Subscribe to History's Toughest Heroes. Wherever you get your podcast.