Black Lives and Liberation

Dantes Bellegarde in Haitian Social Thought

Patrick Bellegarde-Smith

• Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780826522276
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Lateinamerikanische & karibische Geschichte

Out of a slave rebellion, Haiti was forged as an independent nation. This fact, in and of itself, should have been enough to perpetuate an image of Haitians as strong and agentive people. But leaders of countries on both sides of the Atlantic felt threatened by Haiti's beginnings and were intent on sapping it of resources. More than a century of various restrictions on trade, the imposition of crippling fines, and, eventually, a US occupation followed. Yet even as they suffered economically under these penalties, Haitians persisted, some of them becoming influential actors in the world of global politics.Throughout much of the twentieth century and even to this day, there has been a dearth of scholarship on the intellectual and political contributions of Haitians. In the Shadow of Powers, first published in 1985, was a corrective to this oversight and remains a foundational text. Bellegarde-Smith traces the history of Haiti through the life and career of his grandfather Dantès Bellegarde, one of Haiti's influential diplomats and preeminent thinkers. As Brandon R. Byrd describes in his foreword to this new edition, "Bellegarde was driven by a subversive, racially inclusive vision of civilized progress. He believed in and continued to push for Haiti to establish an existence for itself, black people, and the colonized world independent of the considerable shadow cast by the world's military, economic, and industrial powers." Scholars and students who want to learn about the intellectual and political foundations of Haiti, its influence on other intellectuals worldwide, and its struggles against imperialism continue to find this to be an invaluable classic.

CHAPTER 1

THE CONTEXT OF THE CULTURAL CRISIS

HAITIAN SOCIAL POLICY AND FOREIGN RELATIONS

Our past has not yet become a real past; it is still a present which does not choose to become history.

—Leopoldo Zea

An encounter, heavy in symbolism, occurred in the foothills of the Massif-du-Nord on February 9, 1802. Isaac and Placide Louverture, accompanied by their tutor, Abbé Coisnon, were the emissaries of Napoleon Bonaparte. Their mission was to convince Toussaint Louverture to abandon the struggle for freedom. The French army had to be freed from entanglements in Saint Domingue before the Napoleonic dream for North American conquest could be undertaken.¹ Toussaint agreed to meet the ambassadors at his headquarters at Ennery.

Isaac was Toussaint’s legitimate son; Placide was the son of his wife Suzanne Simon and a white slave master. Both had been pursuing their studies in France when ordered back with the Leclerc expedition. This diplomatic appeal could have been an afterthought in view of the virtual certainty of continued warfare. Toussaint did not retreat from his position. Instead, he demanded reluctantly that his sons choose between his cause and France. Isaac responded that France had made him a man by giving him dignity of thought; he could not fight against it. Placide, his stepson, answered, “I cannot abandon the one who made me a man by giving me my freedom. Father, my place is at your side.”² Moved by their sincerity, Toussaint pressed both his sons against him, appreciating their choices while agonizing over them.

Toussaint understood the dilemma. He himself had found sustenance in the ideals of revolutionary France, and had personally benefited from the French political upheavals, rising to the rank of commander-in-chief of the French army in Saint Domingue and governor-general of the colony.³ The events in Saint Domingue were sparked by the French Revolution, but local economic and political circumstances had made these developments possible in the colony.⁴

The Economic Dimension

Economically, Saint Domingue became the most lucrative colony of the French crown.⁵ Politically, as a result of a revolt against the inhuman efficiency of the plantation economic system and the influence of the French Revolution, Haiti became the first independent state in Latin America, the first modern state of African origin, the first ministate of modern times, (followed by Belgium in 1830), and the only state in history that arose from a successful slave rebellion. The war that gave birth to the state was significantly different from other slave upheavals in the Western hemisphere. It distinguished itself as a war that sought the universal realization of black emancipation, while other movements usually advocated freedom only for their proponents, but maintenance of the status quo. This impulse toward universalism created a “modern” state rather than a West-African protostate.

Some historians have seen in Haiti the first real and successful confrontation arising from a conflict between European and American local bourgeois interests. Indeed, the Haitian movement was the result of internal pressures in the colony as well as the product of European forces and rivalry.⁶ This view is further supported by the influential position that France held at this moment of world history, which placed Haiti in the midst of the revolutionary ferment. Of France’s position, the historian Charles A. Hale wrote, in reference to Mexican political evolution:

Any attempt to uncover the structure of political liberalism in the Atlantic world must center on France. Obviously, John Locke, Edmund Burke, and Jeremy Bentham were not Frenchmen. English thought and English institutions were crucial to liberals everywhere. Yet France provided the classic situation in which liberalism as a body of theory was directed toward political and ultimately social change. By definition, liberal theory was elaborated with reference to an ancien regime; the model was France.⁷

Furthermore, the Caribbean basin had served as a prototype for economic experimentation. The earliest example of modern colonialism and of westernization took place within its confines, starting with Spanish expansion in the sixteenth century. Capital formation in the region, without which European industrialization would have been delayed,⁸ was at the base of West Indian societal development. Capitalism, through the plantation system, was a social and economic system that exploited local resources in a systematic fashion, and fashioned minds (assimilation) and body (miscegenation) irreversibly.

These factors, in all their complexities, are the key to social reality in the region, as well as to the variables defining the foreign relations and social policies of Caribbean states ever since.

The conditions found in slavery had eliminated tribal distinctions among slaves; the adoption of the plantation economy, however, with its social and psychological implications was of greater significance. Unlike the South American hacienda, the plantation was geared to external markets. Therefore, the institution must be viewed in the context of a wider system whose financial and industrial centers were located elsewhere.⁹ Locally, its implications were far-reaching, as it permeated the fabric of colonial life. Far from acting as a preserver of cultures, the plantation originated its own by restructuring the human element into a society built for economic gain; survival and control were but two sides of a coin.

“Plantation” was culture insofar as it helped eradicate whole cultural systems and acted to build a new structure rather than to assimilate the newcomer slaves into the mainstream of the dominant European cultures. The new cultural entity was based on the economic purpose the capitalists sought to impart to their colonies. The economic system was thus determining the manner of interaction between European and African cultures and the means that the latter would use to penetrate New World cultures. From the reality of colonial conditions, one deduces that the ruling group exercised inordinate leverage on the development of society, more so than any other segment of the population. All this occurred where there had previously been a “demographic void”: African influences would be felt through the plantation.

Since plantation was a capitalistic organization, its owner was not a farmer, but a businessman, usually absent from the scene¹⁰ whose intense labor requirements created the necessity for slavery. If many conditions found in slavery were conducive to rapid westernization, the economic goals of the enterprise retarded that process by fostering rigid class and color stratifications. Once the economic aims were set, however, the mass of slaves were relatively free to develop around established rules any cultural traits they chose. There were contradictory forces at work: some were willing and able to claim the Western gods as theirs, while others retained a potential for symbiotic innovation by merging the Western and the African traditions.

The construct that emerged from the interaction of economic structure, race, and locale, was given the name “Creole culture.” Several scholars have noted, however, that the dismantling of the plantation economy in Haiti after independence was not accompanied by a similar breakdown in cultural behavioral patterns. Creole culture handily survived the Revolution and reappeared bolstered after the consolidation of the Haitian bourgeoisie in the period 1820–1865. Thus, it was upon the foundation of that Creole culture that later Haitian cultural developments, such as the elite policy of assimilation and emulation of Western norms, were to take place.¹¹

The Social Dimension

Colonial conditions had fostered three major social groupings in society, with appropriate subgroups. The white colonists were at the apex. The slaves constituted a teeming and rebellious mass, largely abandoned to itself. In between existed a level intermediate in color and aspirations. Class and individual interests dictated that the affranchis would lend weight to one side or another in the hope of strengthening their insecure social position.

The French Revolution was slowly disclosing its full implications for the French colonial empire. The revolution in which Saint Domingue was immersed was a response to the overall aspirations of that period. The slaves’ hatred for their bondage had in the past erupted in countless rebellions. These uprisings had been independent of the upheavals taking place in Europe. The affranchis, on the other hand, had been anxious to partake of the new heralded liberties; the French Revolution provided an impetus from which a concerted effort took form.

Dissatisfaction was widespread. The more conservative colonists, as distinct from the petits blancs who formed an urban proletariat,¹² were fearful of the events taking place in metropolitan France, and attempted coups that would take Saint Domingue away from the influences of French revolutionary politics. The affranchis, on the other hand wished to remove the petty vexations of daily life and gain the status of citoyens actifs, or full-fledged citizens. A major slave revolt that erupted in 1791 was followed by a temporary restoration of order brought about partially through a general emancipation of slaves in 1793. This was ordered by Léger-Félicité Sonthonax and then confirmed by the French parliament.

In Haiti, an alliance was formed, following a formula adopted in France by the Revolution, against the colonists, les grands seigneurs, who were a sort of local aristocracy. The affranchis had achieved an imposing economic position despite racial prejudice: one-fourth to one-third of all plantations were owned by them, as well as one-fourth of the half-million slaves. They had had access to education and to certain artisan professions as well as membership in the armed colonial militias, the maréchaussée.¹³ Only the upper level of the colonial administration had remained closed to this group, but abo to the white Creoles in a parallel to Spanish America. The revolutionary mood in France and social discrimination at home was sufficient to explode colonial strictures. The affranchis entered into an alliance with the mass of slaves—the colonial sans-culottes—not at first, but after they repeatedly failed to attain an agreement with the colonial establishment.¹⁴

The historian Harold E. Davis has stated that every phase of the Haitian Revolution was closely linked with its French counterpart.¹⁵ From this standpoint, there are sociological as well as ideological similarities between the Haitian Revolution and other Latin American movements. Although the Haitian situation seemed more complicated ethnically, the affranchis had achieved a similar economic position to that realized by the Spanish-American criollos. My assessment is based upon the class ascription of the leadership of movements that pitted criollos against peninsulares “ideologically,” rather than upon the “shock troops” of slaves and peones that carried these countries to independence. Traditional Western historiography has been pleased to demonstrate the differences that existed between Haiti and the rest of Latin America, basing its argument on the racial criterion, rather than on similar economic and ideological interests between the ruling groups in formation.

But nowhere in the Western hemisphere, including the United States, was independence rousing more popular support than in the Haitian wars. French racial policy and the respective numerical strength of the warring groups ensured from the beginning that emancipation would be a primary goal. A full-fledged war emerged in response to the ill-timed measures taken by the French government and the plantocracy, particularly the repeal of the French Assembly’s Emancipation decree in 1802. The strength of the slave leadership ensured the inclusion of that group’s grievances in the agenda. The slaves’ strength was felt in the exodus of most whites and of some affranchis to France, Louisiana, Maryland, Cuba, and to the Lesser Antilles, as they grew fearful about their ultimate position in society once independence was achieved.¹⁶

If the Haitian Revolution occurred before most other Latin American independence movements, it was because of the unique position of Saint Domingue as the most prosperous European colony at the time, because of the ratio of slaves to masters, which facilitated insurrections and instab...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Introduction to the Second Edition
• 1. The Context of the Cultural Crisis: Haitian Social Policy and Foreign Relations
• 2. The Basis for Haitian Social Policy: Social Thought in the Nineteenth Century
• 3. Milieu and Moment: The Career and Life of Dantès Bellegarde
• 4. Synthesis of an Approach: History and Culture
• 5. Synthesis of an Approach: Education and Commerce
• 6. Perspectives on Social Conflict and Culture
• Epilogue: The Trauma of Insignificance
• Appendix. Haiti and Her Problems: A Lecture
• Notes
• Bibliography
• References
• Index