Resistance to Slavery & The Haitian Revolution

Conceptual Framework: Domination & Resistance

• Foundational quote from previous lecture: "What the enslaved hated most about slavery was not merely hard work, but their lack of control over their lives and freedom."
• Slavery = a culture of domination; every sphere of life (labor, family, marriage, discipline, sexuality) controlled by owners & overseers.
• Domination operates along a spectrum:
  • Hegemony → attempts to win partial consent from the dominated.
  • Coercion → brute force.
  • Enslaved experience is a continuous negotiation between accommodation (for survival) and resistance (for dignity).
• Visual chart (lecture slide) framed domination as a matrix: hegemony ⇄ coercion; accommodation ⇄ resistance.

Film Connection – “The Last Supper” (Cuba, $1976$)

• Two guiding questions to ponder while writing about the film:
  1. Why was the suppression of the revolt (demanding only one day off) so disproportionately brutal? → reveals endemic violence of slavery.
  2. How is white solidarity cemented & protected in the film’s finale? → illustrates trans-class racial unity among whites.

Fundamental Premises on Resistance

• Resistance was built into slavery; owners & enslaved engaged in an unending tactical struggle.
• Purposes of resistance:
  • Assertion of humanity in a system defining Africans as chattel.
  • Response to violence; the system’s brutality normalized violent counter-action.
  • Strategic push toward emancipation – without resistance there is no abolition.
• Three truths reiterated:
  1. Enslaved Africans were not passive.
  2. They sought escape by myriad means over $2–3$ centuries.
  3. Despite elaborate surveillance, conspiracies & rebellions were frequent.

Typology of Resistance

• Two overarching categories (Robinson / lecture):
  1. Contextual Resistance – day-to-day acts within slavery; improves life but does not overturn system.
  2. Transformative Resistance – rare revolts that destroy slavery & colonial rule; the sole successful example = the Haitian Revolution.

Contextual Resistance – Detailed Modes

1. Resisting Capture

• Pre-Atlantic actions: flight from raiding parties, communal defense, mass suicide.
• Middle Passage: suicides & revolts at sea (jumping overboard, mutiny).
• Upon landing: immediate runaways, often assisted by Indigenous peoples.

2. Maroonage (Runaway Communities)

• Definition: flight to mountains / swamps; creation of fortified, self-governing settlements; guerrilla war with planters.
• Geography matters – more feasible in rugged terrains (e.g., Jamaica, Suriname, Brazil).
• Notable maroon states & treaties:
  • Jamaica Maroons – multiple wars; treaty $1739$ grants freedom.
  • San Lorenzo de Los Negros (Mexico, $17^{th}$ c.).
  • Palmares (Brazil, $1605–1695$) – lasts $≈100$ years.

3. Everyday Plantation Resistance

• Tactics: work slow-downs, tool breakage, arson, crop destruction.
• Bodily actions: self-mutilation, suicide, infanticide (notably of girls) to spare children bondage.
• Covert violence: poisoning or assassinating brutal owners.

4. Building Community & Culture

• Amílcar Cabral: "Within the culture we find the seeds of opposition."
• Cedric Robinson: plantation docility often a mask hiding inner defiance.
• Key sites of cultural resistance:
  • Family – despite forced separations, marriage non-recognition & sexual exploitation, kin networks endure; post-emancipation family-search ads testify to its power.
  • Religion – retention & syncretism of African faiths under Catholic icons; independent Black churches; clandestine worship circles; community through ritual.
  • Language, music, dance, folklore – preserve memory & solidarity.

5. Armed Rebellion (Pre-Haitian)

• Early case: $1526$ S. Carolina revolt – enslaved kill masters & seek refuge with Native nations.
• Stono Rebellion $1739$ (SC) – large march toward Spanish Florida.
• Owners’ reprisals universally savage: burning, limb-breaking, sale to Caribbean, lynching.
• U.S. conspiracies & uprisings:
  • Gabriel Prosser $1800$; Denmark Vesey $1822$.
  • Nat Turner (Southampton VA, $1831$): kills $57$ whites; militia kills $≈200$ Blacks; leads to laws banning Black education & assembly.

The Haitian Revolution (St. Domingue) – $1791–1804$

A. Pre-Revolution Landscape

• St. Domingue = western half of Hispaniola; richest colony on earth (late $18^{th}$ c.).
• Economic output (~$1780$):
  • $40\%$ of French foreign trade.
  • $\tfrac{2}{5}$ of world sugar; $\tfrac{1}{2}$ of world coffee.
• Demography:
  • Whites $≈20{,}000–25{,}000$ (\textit{grands blancs} vs \textit{petits blancs}).
  • Free people of color (\textit{gens de couleur}) $≈30{,}000$ – wealthy, many slave-owners, demand citizenship.
  • Enslaved Africans $≈500{,}000$ (ratio $≈10:1$ over whites); lifespan $\approx7$ years → constant imports; maroons $10{,}000–15{,}000$.

B. Catalysts & Ideological Cross-Currents

• French Revolution (liberté-égalité-fraternité) fractures colonial society.
• White planters crave independence yet keep slavery.
• \textit{Gens de couleur} seek equal citizenship; rebuffed by whites → turn toward alliance with Blacks.
• Enslaved masses conduct rising waves of revolt $1789–1791$; surprise general uprising Aug. $1791$.

C. Key Personalities

• Toussaint Louverture – former slave; literate; brilliant strategist; initial demand: abolition, not independence.
• Napoleon Bonaparte – later seeks to crush revolt & restore slavery.
• Jean-Jacques Dessalines – successor who proclaims independence $01/01/1804$.

D. Shifting Military Alliances (Chronology Synopsis)

1. $1791–1793$: Toussaint fights French; briefly allies with Spanish; British attempt invasion → defeated.
2. $1793$: Desperate, French abolish slavery in colony to gain support.
3. Toussaint now sides with French Republic, expels British & Spanish; by $1801$ controls whole island (incl. Spanish east).
4. Negotiations falter; Napoleon dispatches largest expeditionary force in French history: $\approx40{,}000$ troops (Gen. Leclerc).
   • Orders: “Show no mercy … inspire great terror.”
5. Catastrophe for France: within months $24{,}000$ dead (battle & yellow fever), $8{,}000$ wounded.
6. France abandons Western-Hemisphere dreams; sells Louisiana Territory to U.S. for $\$9\;million$.
7. Toussaint tricked, captured, dies in French prison $1803$; Haitian army under Dessalines prevails.
8. Independence declared $01/01/1804$; colony renamed Haïti (“Land of Mountains”).

E. Global & Regional Consequences

• Haiti = first Black republic; second independent state in Western Hemisphere (after U.S.).
• Electrifies enslaved populations; terrifies slaveholders (“This must not become another St. Domingue!” – line echoed in The Last Supper).
• Triggers migration waves: whites & free Blacks to Louisiana; others to Cuba, Puerto Rico, U.S. Atlantic ports.
• Spurs relocation of sugar & coffee industries to Cuba & P.R.; intensifies security & brutality elsewhere.
• Deals fatal blow to Napoleon’s American empire scheme.

F. Punitive Isolation & Indemnity

• No nation (U.S., Britain, France) recognizes Haiti; trade embargoes.
• France threatens reconquest; $1825$: forces Haiti to pay $150\;million$ francs compensation for lost "property" (≈ $21\;billion$ today).
  • Debt serviced until $1960s$ → cripples economy.
• European powers tighten grip on remaining colonies; France re-enslaves Martinique & Guadeloupe until $1848$.

G. Intellectual & Political Significance

• Demonstrates that enslaved can defeat premier European army → shatters ideological foundations of white supremacy.
• Haitian Constitution extends citizenship as “Blackness” to all allies (Polish soldiers, etc.) – radical, inclusive anti-racism.
• Long marginalized in historiography; only recently discussed alongside U.S. & French Revolutions.

Post-Emancipation Timetable in the Caribbean & Latin America

• Comparative abolition dates (slavery → independence):
  • St. Domingue $1793$ (indep. $1804$).
  • British Caribbean $1838$.
  • French Caribbean $1848$.
  • Danish $1848$; Dutch $1863$.
  • Puerto Rico $1873$; Cuba $1886$; Brazil (last) $1888$.

Aftermath: Racial & Socio-Economic Reordering

• Across Americas, end of slavery = compensation to owners, not to freed people.
• States import European or Asian labor to “whiten” demographics:
  • Brazil $5\;million$ Europeans ($1870–1960$); Argentina $7\;million$ ($1869–1914$).
  • Jamaica recruits Indian & Chinese indentured workers.
• Result: entrenched economic disenfranchisement & political marginalization of Afro-descended masses.

Overarching Legacy of Slavery & Resistance

• Slavery = socio-economic complex foundational to European wealth & modern nation-states.
• Bequeaths: racial hierarchy, color discrimination, economic inequality, yet also vibrant diasporic cultures.
• Resistance – from maroon wars to Haitian Revolution – affirms Black agency & shapes trajectories of global emancipation.
• For Black Studies: these historical experiences constitute a distinct field of inquiry into culture, politics, economics & identity formation across the African diaspora.