Haiti History Part II
Between 1792 and 1793, France went to war with Austria, Prussia, Great Britain and the Netherlands, and felt threatened by Spain. The French Assembly sent three representatives to Saint-Domingue: the most famous of them, Sonthonax. Without consulting France, on August 29 In 1793, Sonthonax publishes – for the first time in the history of mankind – the decree of emancipation of the slaves in the north of Saint-Domingue. August 29, 1793, I repeat, will have to be celebrated by humanity as one of its great dates. That year, 1793, in France is known as the Year of Terror. The purge and execution of many Girondists took place, but it was not until February 4, 1794, that the French Assembly – still dominated by the Jacobins – accepted the decree that Sonthonax had adopted.
In 1795, fueled by the struggles taking place in Saint-Domingue, great slave rebellions occurred in other parts of the Caribbean, including Cuba.
In 1797, on May 2, Toussaint Louverture was appointed Governor General, a man who had been a slave and became a General and organized a great army. In 1799, the year in which Napoleon dissolves the Directory, Louverture occupies the eastern side of the island and on July 8, 1801, proclaims a new Constitution that does not recognize slavery. That same year, Napoleon sent Saint-Domingue, his brother-in-law Leclerc at the head of a very powerful army to crush those who had been black slaves and were at that time, who best embodied the slogans of freedom, equality and fraternity that had been born with the French revolution.
The 27 of April of 1802, Napoleon issued the decree reestablishing slavery and the slave in the French colonies in the Caribbean. On May 6 of that year 1802, Toussaint Louverture, deceived, accepts Leclerc’s proposals – in a way he surrenders to him – and is sent on June 7 to France, where he is imprisoned at Fort de Joux.
In 1803, on April 7, in that Fort Toussaint Louverture will die, ignoring what was happening and of course what would happen as a result of their struggles. That year 1803, in compliance with the Napoleonic decree, slavery was reestablished in the French colonies, which made many Saint-Domingue political-military leaders who had hesitated thinking that Leclerc was carrying independence projects to Saint-Domingue, understand that this it was completely false, that what he was carrying were plans to reestablish slavery.
Leclerc died of a tropical disease, and hence it has been claimed that it was tropical diseases that defeated the French troops, but the reality is that it was the former slaves who defeated them in 1803. As a result of the defeat of the French troops. French troops, on January 1, 1804, the independence of what was no longer going to be called Saint-Domingue was proclaimed, but was renamed Haiti, as the country was originally called by the aborigines.
After Louverture’s death, Jean Jacques Dessalines became the General-in-Chief of the independence troops and proclaimed the independence of Haiti on January 1, 1804. Thus a unique event occurred in the history of Humanity: the triumphant slave revolution and the first black republic, which opened the way to independence for the subjugated peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Blocking, sanctions and compensation
After being defeated in Haiti, Napoleon Bonaparte found the project of a French colonial empire in America impossible, and proceeded to sell Louisiana to the United States in exchange for the United States government joining the French government in the blockade. Haiti, which it accepted: all the colonial powers of the time – which means, together with the colonies, practically the entire world – blocked the destroyed Haitian economy, with a soil devastated by the monoculture of sugar cane and devastated by the calamities of the war against France, and a third part of the population died in the combats. The newly born republic was not recognized by any country and was excluded from international trade.
According to MILITARYNOUS, the recognition of independence by France, would not come until 1826 against an indemnity of 150 million gold francs – equivalent to 15 billion euros today – which would force Haiti to live to pay that debt for a long period. In 1822, Haitian troops invaded the eastern part of the island of Hispaniola (Dominican Republic), which did not regain its independence until 1844.
Military interventions and dictatorships. From the Duvaliers to Cedras
The erosion of the soils due to agricultural overexploitation, the penny by penny payment of compensation to France, isolation and economic sanctions, placed the country in a situation of poverty and social instability that served the United States as a pretext to invade and exercise it. thus an absolute control from 1915 to 1934.
In 1957, François Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, was elected as President of Haiti, who ruled dictatorially with military and financial aid from the United States, and even in 1964 he had himself proclaimed president for life. His son Jean Claude Duvalier (Baby Doc) succeeded him in 1971. In January of 1986 a popular uprising forced him into exile and the army took control of power through the formation of a National Governing Council, chaired by General Henri Namphy. In January of 1988 he was president Leslie François Manigat, deposed in July of the same year by Namphy. Overthrown by Prosper Avril.
