Martin Henry JANUARY 1, 1804, was rich with promise. Jean-Jacques Dessalines declared the first free Black republic surrounded by a sea of Black slavery. The republic had been wrested from colonial powers by force of arms pitted against the most powerful armies. The republic was named 'Haiti', the original Amerindian name for the land, 'land of mountains'.
A decade of confusing struggle, with ever-shifting alliances, involving the French, Spanish and English colonial powers and local mulattos and blacks had devastated St. Domingue, the richest sugar colony in the world. Toussaint, a freed slave, had emerged as the leading revolutionary general, called L'Overture, the Gap, for his brilliant capacity to punch holes through the lines of the enemy. The leaders of the French Revolution, the Jacobins, recognised the freedom of the slaves and the revolutionary leaders in the colony were called the Black Jacobins.
L'Overture declared himself Governor-General for life. The first of Haiti's many dictators albeit a rather benign one compared to so many of his successors. His rule was short-lived. The expeditionary force which Napoleon sent out under his brother-in-law General Le Clerc to re-impose colonial rule deceitfully negotiated peace and liberty with Toussaint and then tricked him into imprisonment. Accepting a gentleman's invitation to the French army headquarters, he was bound and shipped off to France to die five months later in the cold and distant French Alps.
DEPARTING WORDS
His departing words, 200 years later, now seem less than prophetic: "In overthrowing me you have cut down in St. Domingue only the trunk of the tree of liberty. It will spring up again by the roots, for they are numerous and deep."
Dessalines, African-born, not Creole, emerged as successor. The formidable 'Tiger' pulled the black and mulatto forces together at a meeting where he ripped out the white strip of the red, white and blue French flag bearing the letters R.F. for Republique Francaise and replaced them with the French words for 'Liberty or Death'.
Napoleon's forces were driven out as much by yellow fever as by determined military action. One of the biggest casualties of the devastating revolutionary war was the collapse of the irrigation system which had made 100,000 acres in the south and west of the country cultivable for sugar. Under sustained heavy rainfall in 1800 the neglected dams, gave way. The land degenerated into an uncultivated wilderness. Today only about a third of Haiti's 10,360 square miles is suitable for agriculture. The dams were never repaired.
Dessalines proclaimed himself emperor of the new Haiti and, executing his motto 'cut off the heads, burn down the houses', proceeded to massacre the remaining whites who had not fled, many of them to Jamaica.
Henri Christophe was the next 'emperor' after the assassination of Dessalines, ruling in the North, with the mulatto Petion ruling in the South. Christophe built a fantastic palace and a security citadel with forced labour while the country continued in decline. Christophe is said to have marched units of his army over a cliff to demonstrate the absolute obedience the soldiers owed him as supreme leader.
In 1820, when the country was finally united under Petion, the estates were broken up by popular demand to provide small holdings. Export agriculture subsequently faced sharp and serious decline.
CIVIL UNREST
The country has gone through American occupation, Papa Doc and Baby Doc and a string of other dictators, and is right now again racked by civil unrest sparked by the rule of Jean Bertrand Aristide, a democratically elected president.
A painful fact of history is that few revolutions have delivered the liberty, fraternity and equality promised. Too many of them have delivered instead new oppression and new dictators. But why is Haiti the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere 200 years after its declaration of independence?
The Haitian revolution is of enormous significance to Black pride. But it is more than a little disingenuous to announce, '200 years of freedom: UWI celebrates the bicentennial of the Haitian Revolution'.
Toussaint as Governor-General for life had written to the racist, imperialist Napoleon as 'The First among Blacks'. Thabo Mbeki, president of the youngest Black republic, who certainly qualifies as a leader among Black leaders today, was in Haiti for the bicentennial amidst criticisms at home that he had gone to Haiti to prop up the country's controversial leader facing charges of human rights violation. On his visit to Jamaica last June Mbeki eloquently pleaded that Black people do more than celebrate the 200th anniversary in 2002.
Mbeki came to his evangelistic theme of African Renaissance through self-liberation from the starting point of the Haitian Revolution. He asked the hard questions of what went wrong with the Haitian Revolution, when the sister American and French Revolutions of that era brought such different results for freedom and development. What went wrong with the African decolonisation, freedom and development project?
Mbeki reminded his audience of the imperial ambitions and excesses of the Haitian leaders. He spoke of African presidents and Prime Ministers who, 'despite the assumptions of democracy, have been little more than feudal lords, like Henri Christophe and Jean-Jacques Dessalines of Haiti, who rule by decree over kingdoms and principalities'.
Mbeki asked the UWI, in conjunction with Haitian universities, to lead a serious study of the out-turn of the Haitian Revolution to provide lessons for the Black Motherland and the Black Diaspora. Truly, we have to do more than roll the drums and pull out the paraphernalia of voodoo and then blame the starkly visible failures of the Revolution to external and particularly 'white' factors.
Mbeki was bold enough and honest enough to point out that Haiti has experienced not development but the opposite of development, post-revolution. On the UNDP's human development index every country which falls below Haiti is African. No, we cannot just blame colonialism. Honest, even if painful, bicentennial reflections should provide better and more useful answers. We should honour Thabo Mbeki's request. A better future than the past depends on it.
Martin Henry is a communication specialist.
