Reposted from The Black Agenda Review. Jean-Jacques Dessalines’s 8 April 1804 proclamation to the Haitian people is among the most stunning critiques of race, slavery, colonialism, and white barbarity to have emerged in modern history. It is also a profoundly radical statement on Black freedom and self-determination, and the morality of revolutionary violence. On January […]
Tag Archives: slavery
John Brown and Hayti
John Brown was not a madman to shed blood when he knew the penalty for so doing was his own life. In the opening he had sense enough to know better than that, but wanted the citizens of Virginia calmly to hold arms and let him usurp the government, manumit our slaves, confiscate the property […]
Posted in Haiti
Also tagged 1859, abolition, archive, Emancipation, Haiti, history, independence, sovereignty, Toussaint, United States
2 Responses
France, the West Indies, and the History of Slavery
The French Revolution was a bourgeois revolution, and the basis of bourgeois wealth was the slave trade and the slave plantations in the colonies. Let there be no mistake about this. “Sad irony of human history,” says Jaures, “the fortunes created at Bordeaux, at Nantes by the slave-trade gave to the bourgeoisie that pride which […]
Posted in Haiti
Also tagged 1700s, 1793, abolition, archives, Haiti, history, Saint-Domingue
4 Responses
Cécile Fatiman, Boukman Dutty & Bois Caiman
The old slave woman, intimate of the gods, buries her machete in the throat of a black wild boar. The earth of Haiti drinks the blood. Under the protection of the gods of war and of fire, two hundred blacks sing and dance the oath of freedom. In the prohibited voodoo ceremony aglow with lightning […]
Posted in Haiti
Also tagged 1700s, 1791, archives, art, Haiti, history, memory, representation
11 Responses
José Antonio Aponte, Cuba and Haiti
In 1812 occurred the Aponte rebellion, which began in Havana. Aponte was a free Negro whose motives were not apparent, though race hatred seems to have been the prime cause of the outbreak. He terrorized Havana for a time but was slain with many others. E.P. Herrick, “Uprisings of Cuban Negroes,” The Southern Workman (1913) […]
Posted in Haiti
Also tagged americas, Cuba, Haiti, Havana, independence, rebellion, revolt, Spain
7 Responses
Débarquement de la flotte française à Saint-Domingue, faisant suite aux Révolutions de cette île.
Débarquement de la flotte française à Saint-Domingue, faisant suite aux Révolutions de cette île. Guerre à mort entre les Français et les Noirs. Carnage horrible, incendies, devastations, les Français chasses de Saint-Domingue. (1803). Click here for larger image and more information.
Posted in Haiti
Also tagged 1800s, 1803, archives, Cap François, Cap Haitien, Christophe, France, Haiti, revolution, Saint-Domingue
1 Response
“The troops which you say are at this moment landing, I consider as so many pieces of cards, which the slightest breath of wind will dissipate.”
“Your aid-de-camp, General, has delivered to me your letter of this day. I have the honor to inform you, that I could not deliver up the forts and posts entrusted to my command, without previous orders from the governor general, Toussaint Louverture, my immediate chief, from whom I hold the powers with which I am […]
Posted in Haiti
Also tagged 1800s, 1802, archives, Cap Français, Cap Haitien, Christophe, history, independence, LeClerc, Napoleon, representation, Saint-Domingue, Toussaint
3 Responses
« Représentation de l’idée que, dans la colonie française de Saint-Domingue, les esclaves noirs se firent de la liberté démocratique française, qu’ils pensèrent acquérir par une cruauté inouïe ; ils ruinèrent plusieurs centaines de plantations de café et de sucre et brûlèrent les moulins. Ils massacrèrent également sans distinction tous les Blancs qui tombèrent entre leurs mains tandis qu’un enfant blanc leur servait d’étendard : ils violèrent les femmes, les traînèrent dans une misérable captivité mais en 1791 leurs desseins ne se réalisèrent pas »
Anonymous, “Représentation de l’idée que, dans la colonie française de Saint-Domingue, les esclaves noirs se firent de la liberté démocratique française…” (1797). Musée d’Aquitaine, Bordeaux. Click image for further information.
Posted in Haiti
Also tagged 1700s, 1791, 1797, archives, Cap François, Cap Haitien, Haiti, insurrection, revolt, Saint-Domingue
1 Response