Just reading about the Haitian revolution. Quite fascinating. Haiti was called Saint Domingue in the 18th century, and there were 500,000 slaves, 40,000 white planters and merchant class, and free blacks mostly mulattos, and then runaway slaves in the mountains doing subsistence farming. All the four groups hated France. the slaves there never submitted, so Haitian slavery was particularly brutal, but still there were numerous smaller uprisings and attempts to poison the masters and such. Toussaint LOverture, a former slave, started the first big revolt in 1791, and there was fighting among the different groups as well as the main battle against France. After about 11 years, LOverture won, and then took over the rest of the island(now the Dominican Republic). He had to beat the English also, as they they tried to take over the island. He declared himself ruler for life. Napolean now ruled France, and sent his brother in-law to REINSTITUTE slavery and capture LOverture, who died in a French prison in 1803. His second-in-command, Jean-Jacque Dessalines, beat the French in 1804 once and for all. As punishment France in 1825 sent gunboats to blackmail the Haitians into paying 150 million gold francs(later reduced to 90 million) to compensate the planters for loss of slaves. It took until 1947 to pay off. When Aristide sued France for reparations over the obscenity of a victor of a major war being forced to pay for 122 years most of their wealth to the LOSER of the war (only time ever) , France was outraged, and with U.S. help, the 1st democratically elected Haitian president was ousted in a coup. This is the same France that declared universal human rights during the French Revolution. The pathetic state of Haiti, like Africa, is rooted in this ugly colonial history. To me, this is similar to drug companies not doing ebola research because a bunch of poor Africans being medically saved would not be profitable. Viewing the other as less than, way less than. Im probably an idealistic idiot. Maybe I should switch to Nietzsches point of view.
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 16:36:38 +0000
Trending Topics
© 2015