The Early Haitian State and the Question of Political Legitimacy

American and British Representations of Haiti, 1804—1824

James Forde

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9783030526085
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

This book explores the different ways in which the early Haitian state was represented in print culture in America and Britain in the early nineteenth century. This study demonstrates that American and British arguments about the most effective forms of governance and political leadership impacted how Haiti's early leaders were presented to transatlantic audiences. From the end of the Haitian Revolution and the moment that Haitian independence was declared in 1804, conservatives and radical thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic used Haiti and its early leaders as central frames of references in discussions of political legitimacy. Against the backdrop of a vibrant and volatile age of revolutions, the different forms of governance adopted by Jean Jacques Dessalines, Henry Christophe and Jean Pierre Boyer were used by writers, playwrights and caricaturists to either support or call into question the legitimacy of America's and Britain's own forms of government.

© The Author(s) 2020

J. FordeThe Early Haitian State and the Question of Political LegitimacyPalgrave Studies in Political Historyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52608-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

James Forde¹

(1)

Department of History, Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

James Forde

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

In the early nineteenth century, reports of the culmination of the Haitian Revolution shook the Atlantic world to its core. Between 1791 and 1804, the colonial powers of France, Spain and England all tried and failed to subjugate the revolutionary black ex-slaves and freemen.¹ The loss of France’s most prized colony in the Caribbean—the so-called “pearl of the Antilles”—and the victory of the revolutionary slaves over the imperial might of Europe amounted to an “unthinkable” event for the powers of the West.² On 1 January 1804, the first leader of independent Haiti, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, addressed the citizens of Saint-Domingue and confirmed the new nation’s separation from colonial France. In the process, Dessalines proclaimed the abolition of slavery forever from the island and renamed the country, “Haiti”.³

In the four decades that followed Haiti’s Declaration of Independence, a number of leaders—all of whom had fought in the Revolution—would adopt a variety of forms of government in their attempts to cement a foothold for the fledgling Haitian state in the political world of the Atlantic. Following Dessalines’s death in 1806, Haiti was divided by internal conflict. As a result, Henry Christophe assumed control of the north, and Alexandre Pétion did likewise in the south. Jean-Pierre Boyer succeeded Pétion after his death in 1818 and, following the death of Christophe in 1820, Boyer once more unified the north and south of the country, where he remained as leader until 1843. Despite their vastly different approaches to political leadership and their distinct visions for the future of the nation, all of Haiti’s early leaders faced the same dilemma: how could the Western hemisphere’s first independent black state thrive—or even survive—on the Atlantic stage? In particular, the fact that Britain, France and the rest of Europe’s global powers refused to recognise officially Haiti’s sovereignty as an independent nation until the mid-1820s—and American recognition would not come until 1862—was a damaging blow to the prosperity of the Haitian state and one from which it never fully recovered. For Haiti’s early leaders, the successful revolution against Europe’s colonial powers was only the beginning of a long battle for independence and recognition. As Michel-Rolph Trouillot has observed, Haiti was the “first testing ground of neo-colonialism” and it therefore experienced the “somber implications of that policy for the third world very early”.⁴

Haiti’s first leaders faced an abundance of challenges in their attempts to secure Haiti’s economic future, to solidify its independence, and to elicit official recognition from the powers of the West.⁵ Limits were imposed upon Haiti by countries such as America and Britain in its crucial, formative years, and these undoubtedly were critical to Haitian attempts to enhance its opportunities for progress. But this is not to suggest that Haiti’s early leaders were denied significant political agency. Rather, throughout their time in office, these heads of state were constantly faced with a number of choices to make—choices that were “crucial for subsequent history”.⁶ These choices, along with the hopes and concerns of Haiti’s first politicians, were laid bare in the various proclamations and constitutions produced in these early years—documents that were disseminated and reported upon widely throughout various forms of print media in America and Britain.⁷ These early Haitian leaders adopted a variety of strategies—some proactive, some reactive—in their attempts to assert Haiti’s independence to the wider political world and to publicly call on Western leaders to recognise its sovereignty. Such calls would, unfortunately, go unheeded for the first two decades of its existence.

This book is an exploration of how observers in America and Britain reflected upon the early years of Haitian independence, and how they represented Haiti’s early leaders in a variety of politically-charged narratives. In particular, the modes of government and the multiple titles adopted by Haiti’s early leaders were used as central points of reference in American and British discourses that centred on the concept of political legitimacy. These debates were often an inward reflection of the legitimacy and superiority—or otherwise—of America’s and Britain’s own forms of government. These transatlantic depictions demand to be read alongside each other as American reflections on legitimacy often looked towards Britain, and vice versa. America in this time was attempting to re-position itself from that of an ex-colonial entity to a sovereign power in its own right, but Americans debated the extent to which they wanted to distance themselves from the former mother country. Britain, on the other hand, was looking to reassert its authority in light of the rise of Napoleon and the emerging powers of the New World, led by America. Conservatives, liberals and radicals in both nations looked to each other at varying times with regret, disdain and envy. But these observers also increasingly fixed their gaze on Haiti’s attempts to establish strong and sustainable modes of political leadership. By analysing the different ways that the early Haitian state was perceived in America and Britain—and by figures with widely different agendas—one can better understand the dreams and anxieties of American and British political commentators in this period, and where and why these overlapped or diverged.

As this book will demonstrate, the early Haitian state and its leaders had a profound impact on political narratives in print culture on both sides of the Atlantic. The impact of these representations on governmental policy or on collective political or social thought is, of course, almost impossible to measure with any degree of certainty. But the value in these representations lies in analysing why these depictions were constructed, who used these, and how they were formed. Whether or not they were successful, these portrayals were at times designed to support or call into question American and British policies and attitudes towards the early Haitian state. A number of representations were undoubtedly designed to support policies of non-recognition and were eager to see the black state fail—thereby supporting Trouillot’s suggestion that Haitian independence was just as much of an unthinkable event as the revolution that preceded it for the Western world in the nineteenth century.⁸ At times, however, American and British writers looked to impact the recognition question by overtly suggesting that the hand of political friendship should be offered to Haiti’s early leaders. But these depictions were also often designed to impact debates on the legitimacy and effectiveness of Atlantic world forms of governance—including America’s and Britain’s. In both critiques and celebrations of Haiti’s independence, the early Haitian state subsequently became a central entity in transatlantic debates on how political leadership should operate in the Atlantic world in the early nineteenth century.

The enormous impact of the Haitian Revolution on American and British debates of slavery and its abolition has been well established. This impact continued in the immediate aftermath of the Revolution as newspapers, pamphlets and literary texts continued to portray the shocking violence perpetrated by French colonial forces and Haitian revolutionaries, as well as the destructive nature of the Revolution for the colonists and the colony as a whole.⁹ The political messages underpinning these narratives were largely “bifurcated” as pro- and anti-slavery supporters on both sides of the Atlantic looked back on the events in Saint-Domingue as vital instruments for their respective campaigns.¹⁰ Anti-slavery supporters such as James Stephen and Thomas Clarkson saw the success of the black revolutionaries as proof that slaves in the colonies not only desired emancipation but also had the necessary capabilities to achieve it on their own terms.¹¹ At such a crucial time in anti-slavery debates in Britain and America, abolitionists asserted the idea that if their respective governments did not act swiftly, a second Saint Domingue would inevitably occur in the British colonies or in the southern slave states of America.¹² Pro-slavery supporters mirrored this strategy of the abolitionists by playing on a similar fear and asserting that this revolutionary spirit could spread beyond the newly formed Haitian state—something Ashli White has termed the “contagion of rebellion”.¹³ Pro-slavery memories of the Revolution also focused on the apparent meddling of French abolitionists who were claimed to have stirred up ideas of revolution among the hitherto contented black populations of Saint-Domingue as a way to indict the increasingly vocal and influential abolitionist movements. In this way, the Haitian Revolution had a pivotal role to play for both supporters and opponents of slavery in the nineteenth century.

Scholarly studies on the impact of the Revolution and Haitian independence often argue that Atlantic receptions to the Revolution were largely race-based reactions to a revolution of slaves and the presence of the Western hemisphere’s first independent black state. David Nicholls, for example, has argued that Haiti became a “symbol of anti-colonialism and racial equality” and as a result European powers were “apprehensive about the existence of a free black state” in the early nineteenth century.¹⁴ Furthermore, Trouillot’s argument regarding the unthinkability of the Revolution is based on the contention that European and American observers at the time believed that “enslaved Africans and their descendants could not envision their freedom”.¹⁵ A central part of Trouillot’s argument is that European and American observers of the Revolution and Haitian independence viewed these events through a prism of “ready-made categories”—categories that were largely formed by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ideas of race. More recently, Marlene Daut’s work has expanded upon Trouillot’s argument by exploring in much more detail these categories and by underpinning the significance of perceptions of race in Atlantic reactions to Haitian independence. Daut’s exhaustive study of literary representations of the Revolution and Haiti in Western discourses until the mid-nineteenth century demonstrates that the events surrounding Haitian independence were “incessantly narrated in a particularly ‘racialized’ way”.¹⁶

While the role of race was undoubtedly pivotal in American and British reactions to the emerging Haitian state and its leaders in the early nineteenth century, they were also shaped and formed by a number of other social and political concerns. If, as Daut argues, “‘racial’ thinking” was central to how Western observers understood Haiti, then what other modes of thought influenced nineteenth-century reactions to the Haitian state?¹⁷ In particular, if nineteenth-century perceptions of race were so central to depictions of Haiti’s revolutionary figures, which other ideas also influenced American and British thought towards Haiti’s early leaders?

The representations of Haiti explore...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. “The Bonaparte of the New World”: American and British Reactions to the Emergence of Emperor Dessalines
• 3. President Christophe and Commercial Legitimacy
• 4. King Christophe and the Question of Monarchical Legitimacy
• 5. The Death of a New World Monarch in Transatlantic Republican Thought
• 6. The Promise and the Threat of Boyer and Haitian Republicanism
• 7. Conclusion
• Back Matter