A Global History of Anti-Slavery Politics in the Nineteenth Century

W. Mulligan, M. Bric, W. Mulligan, M. Bric

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137032607
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

The abolition of slavery across large parts of the world was one of the most significant transformations in the nineteenth century, shaping economies, societies, and political institutions. This book shows how the international context was essential in shaping the abolition of slavery.

1

“Liberté, Indépendance”: Haitian Anti-slavery and National Independence

Julia Gaffield

“From the moment that I realized that my compatriots had taken a vow to prefer death to servitude,” general in chief of the Armée indigène, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, wrote in his military journal at the end of the Haitian Revolution, “I promised to pursue with determination the French, our executioners.”¹ While the Haitian revolution had begun in 1791 with a coordinated slave uprising in the northern plain of Saint-Domingue, the battle only became a war for independence in 1802 when Napoleon’s army reinvaded the colony and sparked rumours of a reinstitution of slavery. Dessalines declared that to ensure the end of slavery, the island had to break away from the French Empire. In November 1803, the defeated French army set sail from the city of Cap Français and only left one small contingent of troops, who escaped to the city of Santo Domingo on the eastern side of the island. The coalition of former slaves and former free people of colour would now rule. “Put in my hands your sworn willingness to live free and independent,” Dessalines proclaimed on 1 January 1804 in the Haitian Declaration of Independence, “and to prefer death to all that would put you back under the yoke.”² Freedom for all citizens had been achieved by the victory in the war for independence. The country was renamed “Hayti”, and all “Haytians” would thereby, it was believed, be forever free from servitude.

Throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, struggles for slave emancipation and battles against colonial rule often came together during wars of independence. In most contexts, however, the abolition of slavery came as a by-product of the main goal of political autonomy. Within this broader history, Haiti represents a unique case in that anti-slavery was, from the first, the driving force behind the struggle for independence. The centrality of anti-slavery in the formation of the Haitian state shaped the years after independence and the policies of the first three national leaders: Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Alexandre Pétion, and Henry Christophe. These leaders ruled very different governments and initiated different policies, but all of them had to grapple with the constrained space that Haiti occupied in the early nineteenth century and each had to balance the contradictions created by ideologies of universal revolution within the limits of nationhood. The dilemma that confronted the Haitian leadership produced complex results, and the national projects of each leader as articulated on paper did not always reflect the realities of the Haitian state.

The early nineteenth-century Atlantic world was a time of great change but also one of continuity. The case of Haiti suggests that national and colonial leaders in the Atlantic world were forced to find ways to reconcile seemingly contradictory ideologies and movements. The Haitian Revolution challenged existing political and labour systems and posed new and complicated questions. Furthermore, the events after Haitian independence highlight the importance of the Caribbean context in terms of official policy and emphasize the interconnectedness of empires within the region. The geographic distance between the Caribbean and the colonies’ European metropoles meant that colonial leaders were often left to negotiate treaties and direct policy without the guidance of political leaders in Europe, and the conversations between these colonial leaders shaped the trajectory of Haitian independence in important ways.

Haitian leaders presented their cause as a universal one, with implications for all oppressed peoples in the Americas; but their experiment in state formation and freedom took place in a constrained and circumscribed geopolitical space—one surrounded by empires committed to the maintenance of slavery. Slave-owning powers were desperate to prevent the spread of the slave revolution and attempted to find ways to quarantine what Haiti represented politically—not only independence but slave emancipation too. In response, Haitian leaders tried to reassure outside powers that they had no intention of spreading their slave revolution. They believed that if they maintained a boundary between universal freedom and the colonial slave societies of the Caribbean, then Haiti could survive in relative peace. This pairing of anti-slavery and anti-colonialism, therefore, both protected and contained the movement because the struggle to secure and defend national independence meant curtailing anti-slavery activism abroad. Twice, two years and a decade after independence, Alexandre Pétion briefly broke with this policy through his support of the anti-colonial revolutionaries Francisco de Miranda and Simón Bolívar. Even in these cases, however, it was Miranda and Bolívar who came to Haiti seeking support; the Haitian government itself did not extend its intervention beyond its own borders.

In fact, Haitian leaders created a semi-permeable border tailored to their national interests. They refused to confine Haitians to their territory but they also promised the international community that they would not export their revolution. They invited non-whites in the Caribbean and the United States to join the new nation and sometimes facilitated this migration with funding for transportation. When it came to the immigration of white Europeans, and of course to foreign invasion, however, leaders closed off national borders and vowed to defend the country. This did not, however, rule out economic interactions with whites.³

Neighbouring states and empires, of course, had a very different set of interests, and broadly sought to contain the influence of Haiti. Yet the borders around the island of Haiti remained porous, and the movement of ideas and people could not be contained. That was partly true because neighbouring nations, while refusing to recognize Haitian independence, were nevertheless eager to take advantage of trade opportunities and to use Haiti to affect the balance of power in European warfare. The British government wanted to achieve both goals and attempted to secure a trade relationship that would, for all intents and purposes, contain Haitians within their borders. When this failed, the British settled on a policy of diplomatic non-recognition with limited economic engagement. But, despite the British government’s attempts to delegitimize the Haitian state, some Haitian leaders forged personal and diplomatic relationships with the British abolitionist community. Advocates of the abolition of the slave trade and slavery had become a powerful force in the British Empire by the time Haiti became an independent nation, and these changes provided the space for unique relationships between the former slaves and former free people of colour and white British citizens. In 1804 the British government settled on a policy of diplomatic non-recognition with the hope of containing the dangers that the Haitian Revolution might inspire. However, the British abolitionist community actively and vocally supported the new Caribbean nation, even while its own government still officially imagined the island as a French colony.

Haitian Universalism

Dessalines and other revolutionary leaders announced to the world the principles upon which they would build the Haitian state. Their rhetoric highlights a perceived community of humanity that they pitted against the French. “Toward these men who do us justice,” Dessalines, Henry Christophe, and Clervaux proclaimed in November 1803, “we will act as brothers.” The three revolutionary heroes also called on the “God of Freemen” for protection. They condemned slavery and declared that the “tribunal of Providence … has not created men to see them groaning under a harsh and shameful servitude”.⁴

An article in The Times echoed this sense of a common humanity that had been tainted by the institution of slavery. “Is it ordained that a degraded race of men”, the article questioned, “shall be the only race who resent the cruel wrongs done to themselves and to humanity?”⁵ Though the British report maintained a racist tone, the parallels between such arguments and the proclamations issued by the Haitian state suggest that the leaders of the new Caribbean nation were part of a larger discussion about humanity and the legitimacy or rightfulness of slavery.

The rhetoric of independent Haiti, however, was much more forceful. “Thus perish all tyrants over innocence”, Dessalines proclaimed in the solemn sermon of the Declaration of Independence, “all oppressors of mankind!”⁶ This anger and outrage was directed at the French and, as the Haitian state sought new political friendships in the Atlantic, it overlooked the British, American, Dutch, and Danish slave systems in order to form new economic partnerships. Political necessity narrowed the application of universal principles to the Haitian territory.

Indeed, these declarations of universality were situated within the borders of the nation. The characteristics proclaimed by state leaders quickly assumed the role of nationalistic rhetoric. Even as the nation divided in civil war in 1806, state leaders articulated the common goals that united all Haitians. Dessalines, Pétion, and Christophe all agreed on what it meant to be Haitian in the period following the Declaration of Independence.

Despite the civil war and the existence of two “national” governments between 1806 and 1820, Haitian leaders consistently argued that the country was composed of a unified national community based on the principles of anti-slavery and anti-colonialism. “Happily (General Christophe excepted),” Pétion wrote in December of 1806, “the cause of all Haitians is the same and despite the separation of the family, all know to appreciate that. There exists, despite the difference between Governments, an implicit and tacit alliance against all enemies of our liberty and our independence.” “For the defense of the territory,” he continued, “I do not recognize any difference of country, and my heart does not see any abstraction but Haiti.”⁷ The wars within the border, according to Pétion, were at a different level than either international encroachments or questions of slavery. Christophe expressed a similar sentiment as he reflected on the civil war in a letter to Thomas Clarkson. On 18 November 1816 he wrote:

They [the Haitians under Pétion’s command] are no more disposed to resume the yoke of slavery than are the inhabitants of the Northern, Eastern, or Western parts of the kingdom. It is a consolation to me to see that the great majority of Haitians have reached an understanding, and that a common danger has tacitly united us all, from one end of the island to the other, for we all abhor the French and their oppressive Government.⁸

In his analysis, Christophe easily made the transition from a rejection of slavery to national unity against the French—anti-slavery and anti-colonialism would still unite all Haitians. And both he and Pétion reaffirmed the abolition of slavery in the first article of their national constitutions. “Slaves cannot exist on the territory of the Republic: slavery is forever abolished”, Pétion proclaimed in 1806, and “Every resident person in the territory of Haiti is free in full right”, Christophe declared in 1807.⁹

Universal Freedom within State Borders

While proclaiming universal freedom, the Haitian leaders were convinced that their anti-slavery movement hinged on its geographic containment on the island. Anti-slavery in Saint-Domingue/Haiti fused with anti-colonial ideology, and thereby made the boundaries of the nation the limits of the general freedom. But rather than confining Haitians to their territory, Dessalines assured the international community that his citizens would not instigate rebellion elsewhere in the Caribbean. In the Declaration of Independence, Dessalines proclaimed:

Let us take care however that we are not converted from our purpose, let our neighbours remain in Peace let them live quietly under the laws which they have made and us not go as incendiaries, erecting ourselves legislators of the Antilles, constituting our glory in disturbing the tranquility of the neighbouring islands.¹⁰

Dessalines and later leaders recognized the reach of their political authority; they would not extend their laws and impose their vision of universal freedom on others. They knew that they could not be “legislators of the Antilles”.

Both Christophe and Pétion repeated Dessalines’s promises not to instigate rebellion abroad. Christophe’s first constitution even contained a section entitled “Guarantee to Neighboring Colonies”. This included the article: “37: The nation of Haiti shall not in any way make conquests outside the Island, limiting itself to conserving its territory.”¹¹ The emphasis on territory and the borders of the island highlights the symbolic and political importance of the geographic space that Haitians had claimed as their own.

The Haitian economy, however, which remained structured around the plantation but shifted focus from sugar to coffee and cotton, required that international merchants purchased the agricultural crops that Haitians produced for export. Economic necessity forced the Haitian state to a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: The Global Reach of Abolitionism in the Nineteenth Century
• 1. “Liberté, Indépendance”: Haitian Anti-slavery and National Independence
• 2. “A Most Promising Field for Future Usefulness”: The Church Missionary Society and the Liberated Africans of Sierra Leone
• 3. Debating Slavery and Empire: The United States, Britain and the World’s Anti-slavery Convention of 1840
• 4. The Political as Personal: Transatlantic Abolitionism c. 1833–67
• 5. Autocratic Abolitionists: Tsarist Russian Anti-slavery Campaigns
• 6. Abolition and Anti-slavery in the Ottoman Empire: A Case to Answer?
• 7. Anti-slavery in Spain and Its Colonies, 1808–86
• 8. The Anti-slave Trade Campaign in Europe, 1888–90
• 9. The Invasion of the United States by an Englishman: E. D. Morel and the Anglo-American Intervention in the Congo
• 10. The Slave Trade, Slavery, and Abolitionism: The Unfinished Debate in France
• 11. Transformations in the Law Concerning Slavery: Legacies of the Nineteenth Century Anti-slavery Movement
• Bibliography
• Index