The Haitian Revolution | Caribbean History | Extra History Complete
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0:00 [music] [music] >> Shanti Mang, 1791.
0:09 Only a year before, the man had been a warrior in the Congo. Captured by his enemies, he was sold into slavery, crammed into a festering ship's hold.
0:18 More than one out of every seven captives taken died before they ever saw Western shores. But he's one of the lucky ones. He at last makes it to the
0:26 plantation where he will likely die. He learns this from one of the few enslaved men who speaks his language. They will be raising sugarcane, a dangerous and
0:35 exhausting task with a harvest season lasting from December to July. Half the new arrivals will die of disease before the year is out. And if they try to
0:42 escape, they face punishments ranging from whipping to amputation. The men who harvest the cane have cuts all over their bodies. The women who process it
0:51 are missing arms from the crushing machines or have massive burns from the boiling vats of sugar. The death rates are so high, his guide says, plantation
0:59 owners don't bother providing food or clothing. They just buy more enslaved people when the current group is worked to death.
1:06 But not for much longer, he says. [music] It is good this new arrival is a warrior because they have use for warriors. There's going to be a
1:15 revolution. This Extra History Complete is brought to you by our patrons on Patreon who originally [music] voted for this
1:21 series, our YouTube members, backers of our yearly history calendar, and really anyone who's ever shopped at our Extra History store. It is all of your support
1:29 that makes important series like this one possible. Thank you so much. >> [music] >> The Haitian Revolution is a unique
1:41 event, both an offshoot of the French Revolution and an anti-colonial struggle. Haiti would become the second American nation to successfully win
1:48 independence, and it remains to this day history's only example of enslaved people successfully rising up against their oppressors. An act that stunned
1:57 the world and reshuffled the political order. From inspiring movements in other colonies to forcing Napoleon to sell Louisiana to the United States, its
2:05 effect would be profound. But there is no good ending for the people that fought and died to create the world's first government led by liberated
2:12 slaves. For the example of Haiti's revolution, including the violence of its rising, caused other nations to do everything they could to weaken the
2:20 young government. Policies that 200 years later still impact Haiti and contribute current difficulties. But the roots of that instability were there
2:28 from the beginning because the economy of the French colony of Saint-Domingue, later known as Haiti, was largely devoted to a single plant. In
2:36 Saint-Domingue, sugar was king. French settlers arrived on the island of Hispaniola via Caribbean piracy. And though the island had been Columbus's
2:45 first landing place in the Americas, after a century as a Spanish colony, it was neglected and sparsely populated. By 1625, French pirates had begun setting
2:54 up agricultural settlements on the western side, importing large numbers of African slaves. By 1697, the division was official, splitting Hispaniola into
3:03 the French Saint-Domingue in the west and the Spanish Santo Domingo in the east. And within 50 years, Saint-Domingue was a crucial part of the
3:10 Atlantic trade. Because Saint-Domingue, as it turned out, was the ideal place to grow three products that Europe and its North American colonies couldn't get
3:18 enough of. The first was indigo, a plant that produced a rich blue dye. Next was coffee, the beverage of choice during the Enlightenment. But mostly, it was
3:27 sugar, a substance Europeans couldn't get enough of, whether raw or converted to rum. And the tiny colony of Saint-Domingue produced about half of
3:35 the coffee and sugar consumed in Europe. It was by far the wealthiest colony in the Caribbean, if not the world, and the jewel of France's imperial crown. In
3:44 fact, one in every 25 Frenchmen had a job supported by the Saint-Domingue trade. But there was trouble underneath the surface of this economic powerhouse,
3:52 because Saint-Domingue was a slave society, a place that didn't just have slavery, but was structured entirely around the bloody institution. And the
4:00 different classes of people living in the colony all had different and overlapping grievances that would all explode once the burning fuse of
4:08 revolution moved from America to France to the island itself. So, when the revolution exploded in Saint-Domingue, it was not a single revolt, but multiple
4:17 different risings focused on different issues, as much a civil war as a popular uprising. Now, this gets really complicated and nuanced fast, but to
4:26 understand what's going to happen, we have to give you a rundown of how society on Saint-Domingue stood in the 1780s, right as revolution was starting
4:34 to brew in Paris. So, we're going to look at three parts of Saint-Domingue's population, the whites, the free people of color, and the enslaved. The white
4:43 plantation owners, known as the big whites, lived in huge estates. The city of Le Cap in the colony's north looked a little like Paris, with street grids and
4:51 a massive theater. Their sons and daughters dressed in the most current fashions and read newspapers brought daily from Paris. In fact, many of these
4:58 big whites didn't even live in Saint-Domingue, preferring rather to hold court in huge estates in France while others managed their land and
5:05 finances. Though rich, the big whites chafed under French economic policies, which forbade them from diversifying the local economy or selling their product
5:14 to any place but France, even though British Barbados and America wanted their goods. And as the American colonies rose up, these big whites found
5:22 themselves identifying with revolutionary plantation owners like Washington and Jefferson and began to wonder if they, too, could win more
5:29 economic freedom with a similar declaration of independence. Below these big whites were the so-called little whites, Frenchmen who arrived trying to
5:37 make enough money so that they could go home rich. They were the bookkeepers, the plantation overseers, or shopkeepers. They, in other words,
5:44 fulfilled any job that did not require physical labor. These little whites resented the big whites for their money and power, looked down on the enslaved
5:51 as inferior, and considered the colonies' free people of color, often richer and better educated, as economic rivals. The free people of color require
6:00 a bit of explanation, as they were a fairly unique class to the Caribbean. In the early days of the colony, men outnumbered women heavily, and there
6:07 were few female colonists. This led to a large number of French men having coerced or violently forced relations with female slaves. In some cases, these
6:16 French men freed and married the women, or freed the resulting children. Over time, this created a class of people known as the free people of color, who
6:24 became a distinct economic force. You see, under the laws of France, the free people of color were not equal. They couldn't vote for instance, but they
6:32 could hold land and inherit property. And unlike the little whites, who were always taking their earnings back to France, the free people of color stayed
6:40 put and built multi-generational fortunes. As a result, many prospered, often coming to own plantations with their own enslaved workforce. Indeed,
6:48 new arrivals to the colony from France often crossed the color line to marry into this group due to their wealth and local connections. Like the big whites,
6:57 they dressed in French fashion, or at least they did until a series of racist apartheid laws, championed by the little whites and sweeping in after an aborted
7:05 1758 slave revolt, came into force. These new laws barred them from public office, disallowed wearing European-style clothes, and restricted
7:13 where they could live. Official documents had to indicate that they were colored, since many of these people of color might only have one black
7:20 grandparent and could easily pass for white. And bizarre charts tracked blood quantum to figure out exactly how black someone was. With a fairer system still
7:30 within living memory, the free people of color would see the French Revolution as an opportunity to gain legal equality as citizens. Though don't mistake that for
7:38 abolitionism. They often saw themselves as separate from the recently arrived enslaved and opposed the idea of emancipation. And then there were the
7:46 enslaved, a group that outnumbered all the other groups 10 to 1, and a population that died so fast due to disease, mistreatment, and the tortures
7:55 of forced labor that a third of all enslaved people kidnapped from Africa went to Saint-Domingue. Recently arrived from different areas,
8:03 they spoke a common French Creole and developed Voodoo, a system of religious beliefs that melted African religious elements with Catholicism. And while any
8:11 open resistance was put down with violent punishments, including being thrown into boiling sugar, eaten alive by insects, or blown up with gunpowder,
8:20 the enslaved developed other methods of economic sabotage. In some cases, they might go on strike, disappearing until a particularly cruel overseer was fired.
8:29 And groups of escaped slaves, known as maroons, lived in the mountains, raiding plantations for supplies and carrying out guerrilla warfare. But there were
8:37 also more everyday forms of resistance. Slow work, faking illness, or pretending not to understand tasks, tactics that proved so effective that the colony's
8:47 white population were thoroughly convinced that the enslaved were stupid and lazy, an attitude that caused them to fatally underestimate the threat when
8:54 the revolution came, and the battered enslaved turned their machetes to a different use. Because while there were divisions in class, even among the
9:02 enslaved, they did have a unifying cause. They wanted freedom and to put the plantations to the torch.
9:13 >> [music] >> Paris, August 26th, 1789. The revolutionary National Assembly in
9:21 France takes the vote. At issue is a new document drafted by Marquis de Lafayette in consultation with his friend Thomas Jefferson. But in truth, many statesmen
9:30 have given input to this Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. It borrows from the Magna Carta, the American Declaration of Independence,
9:38 and both the English and American Bill of Rights. It begins, "Article 1: Men [clears throat] are born and remain free and in equal rights. Social distinctions
9:47 can be founded only on the common good." Though they do not know it, these words will light a fuse that will burn all the way across the Atlantic and blow the
9:56 slave society of Saint-Domingue to smithereens. Like the American Revolution, slavery was always lurking under the table in
10:03 revolutionary France. It did not go unnoticed that the revolution's rallying cry of liberty, equality, and fraternity was directly at odds with slave-owning
10:11 society. But there were also no illusions about the French dependency on the sugar economy of Saint-Domingue. And though abolition was discussed from the
10:19 mid-1700s, even the most radical favored a gradual emancipation with slave owners being paid compensation. Many warned that if nothing changed, a major
10:28 Caribbean slave revolt was inevitable. Then when the revolution came, representatives from the big whites, the Saint-Domingue plantation owners, and
10:35 the free people of color both decided that the time had come to take their goals to Paris. The big whites pushed for the colonies to have seats in the
10:43 newly created National Assembly so they could argue for more autonomy in the colonies' affairs and for the freedom to trade with the British Caribbean and the
10:50 United States. And the free people of color, for their part, were well ahead of them. For years, representatives from Saint-Domingue had been petitioning the
10:58 government to grant the free people of color full rights. And they too saw the revolution as an opportunity to further that goal. Originally, they had tried to
11:06 get the big whites on their side arguing that as fellow slave holders, the two groups had interests in common. So give the free people of color rights,
11:14 especially voting rights, and then the two groups together could form a political block to defend slavery. The big whites, though, weren't having it.
11:21 They opposed any reform to the colony's racial caste system. So instead, the free people of color made an alliance with an abolitionist society called the
11:29 Friends of the Blacks. And they argued that granting full rights to free people of color would be a major step on the road to gradual abolition. And here's
11:37 where I'd like to pause for just a second because this is the last time in this series where things will be relatively simple. Yeah, all of that
11:44 stuff before was the simple part. Right after this point, both Saint-Domingue and France are going to, to use a technical historical term, go nuts.
11:53 Everyone is going to ally with everyone else and then change sides 15 minutes later. Legislatures are going to vote for reforms, dispatch messengers,
12:01 dissolve, reform, and then reverse those reforms before the initial messengers even arrive. Revolutionary politics, in other words, is about to resemble a bag
12:10 full of cats on espresso. In fact, to even fit all of it into this series, we're going to have to gloss over the specifics of French revolutionary
12:18 politics. Who's in, who's out, who's making policy, unless it has direct impact on Saint-Domingue. And we're also going to have to focus on important
12:25 trends rather than the specifics of who's allied with whom. And here's our first big trend. White colonials utterly refusing to implement moderate reforms.
12:35 Both the big and small whites were so committed not just to the structure, but the principle of their racist status quo that even a proposal like rights for
12:43 free people of color, which affected roughly 5% of colonial society and essentially had no impact on them, was unacceptable. The second big trend to
12:51 remember is the ideological flexibility of the free people of color, their ability to court different power blocks, and their sense that they had little in
12:58 common with the enslaved. Both these dynamics are going to come up again and again. The Declaration of the Rights of Man was almost perfectly calculated to
13:06 tear Saint-Domingue apart. Depending on how you read it, it could be used to either argue full rights for the people of color as well as the abolition of
13:13 slavery, or you could claim, as the white colonials did, that it didn't mention slavery at all. But the big whites knew how explosive this was. They
13:21 sent word back to the colony to prevent word from spreading. It didn't work. Revolutionary politics was all anyone talked about at the dinner table.
13:29 Meanwhile, the enslaved people holding the trays and pouring the wine started to understand that cracks were forming in the system of oppression that bound
13:37 them. In 1790, Vincent Ogé, one of the free people of color's strongest advocates, returned to Saint-Domingue determined to cast a ballot in the new
13:46 colonial elections. He believed that a piece of legislation passed earlier that year giving all property owners a vote made his case clear. He was a full
13:54 citizen. When the governor refused, Ogé sourced arms and staged an uprising. Now, the free people of color had long been the backbone of the colonial
14:03 militia and arduous and expensive duty many whites avoided. Some had even fought in the American Revolution. So, drawing on this experience, Ogé's force
14:11 initially routed the local militias, but their success was short-lived. He only had 300 men and a counterattack by regular troops sent him fleeing across
14:19 the border into Spanish Santo Domingo. He was extradited, tried, and broken on the wheel. But, Ogé's example inspired other revolts, not just among free
14:30 people of color, but also isolated slave uprisings. The big whites refused to compromise, even though the rebels were not even demanding full emancipation.
14:39 They wanted their leaders freed and extra day off per week and the abolition of whipping. Meanwhile, in France, Ogé's death provided the Friends of the Blacks
14:47 with new ammunition in the National Assembly. Here was a true revolutionary martyred in pursuit of the vote. As the political the big whites still refused
14:57 to make concessions, even forcing the assembly to refer to the enslaved using the euphemism "unfree persons." These hardline tactics backfired. Support for
15:07 the free people of color, even emancipation, was increasingly held up as a test of a member's revolutionary ideals. And on May 15th, the National
15:16 Assembly declared that free men of color born to free parents could both vote and be seated in assemblies. The big whites responded by going home and starting
15:25 their own revolt. In June, big and small whites organized militias and by July, they were seizing power centers, coming into violent conflict with government
15:33 authorities and organizing all white assemblies that issued decrees that all but declared themselves independent. They essentially decided that if they
15:41 were to preserve white supremacy, they must govern themselves. That summer, the colonial whites fought government forces and then they fought militias formed by
15:50 the free people of color who were furious about the all white assemblies. Then, the colonial whites, along with government troops, engaged scattered
15:57 slave uprisings. And in all of that internecine conflict, they were unable to see what was coming because the long fuse of revolution was about to hit the
16:06 powder keg. Now, one issue with studying the Haitian Revolution is that the enslaved, the faction that would eventually win, were largely illiterate
16:14 and left few records. So, piecing together the specifics of the uprising, particularly its clandestine origins, takes a bit of detective work. What we
16:22 do know is there had to have been months, if not years, of preparation. Likely those enslaved in houses, largely born in the colony and French-speaking,
16:30 overheard conversations about the revolution and carried the news to others. Enslaved drivers and overseers, those with leadership roles, started
16:38 organizing squads. In fact, the predominance of carriage drivers in revolutionary leadership suggests that they performed a major communication and
16:46 intelligence role, passing messages between plantations. Then, the night came. August 14th, 1791. Dutty Boukman, Vodou priest, carriage
16:56 driver, and rebel leader, holds a meeting at night on an open plain. Fires burn bright. A tropical storm rages in the distance, a good omen. Religious
17:05 ceremonies like this are permitted on most plantations and considered a healthy release valve, keeping insurrection at bay. Ironically,
17:12 however, this summer, the enslaved have done the exact opposite, using the unsupervised gatherings to plan an uprising. And Voodoo is the perfect
17:20 medium of exchange, containing elements of various West African religions. It's one of the few cultural overlaps that the enslaved have, no matter where they
17:28 were captured. But, this meeting is an emergency. A cell has triggered the uprising early, and upon capture, confessed everything. The plantation
17:36 owners, thankfully, had not believed that the enslaved could organize on the level their captives described. According to tradition, Bookman and
17:44 several priestesses extracted oaths and drank animal blood to seal a pact with the Loa, or divine spirit of love. They swear to free themselves and free the
17:53 land. Then, they take up their cane knives and steady [music] their souls. August 22nd, 1791. North Province, Saint-Domingue. A dog
18:08 barks, waking the plantation manager. He tells the mutt to quiet down and drifts back to sleep. Minutes later, there's another noise. He rises and goes to the
18:17 window, where he then sees that his house is surrounded by the plantation slaves carrying machetes and torches. "Who goes there?" he calls. A voice like
18:26 thunder answers, "It is death." Across the north, the cane fields burn so fierce that the smoke could be seen in Le Cap. The revolt had come with such
18:36 precise timing and explosive force that it stunned the plantation owners and the French authorities. Indeed, it was so well planned that most of the various
18:44 factions in Saint-Domingue thought that the enslaved couldn't possibly be the ringleaders, and they openly accused each other. White militias attacked and
18:51 killed several free people of color who they accused of masterminding the rebellion as revenge for the death of Ogé. Plantation owners besieged the
18:59 royal governor with requests for protection, and ultimately accused him of intentionally letting the rebellion continue. The free people of color often
19:06 said that it was actually the big whites who'd whipped up the rising as is way to take control of the colony. The irony, of course, was that all of these groups
19:14 were pro-slavery. And if they had set their differences aside, they may have successfully repressed the uprising. But instead, the plantations burned. Rebel
19:22 militias moved from plantation to plantation, liberating the enslaved and burning every physical representation of their oppression. Cane fields, coffee
19:30 plants, mills, and refineries. This also meant violence against the people who had oppressed them. And there were a number of overseers and plantation
19:38 owners killed in retribution for centuries of oppression. Gangs of women found the plantation overseers who had coerced or assaulted them, beating their
19:46 tormentors unconscious. But this rebellion was not indiscriminate. Most often, the rebels attacking a plantation had worked there. And it was common for
19:54 men or women to step in and save an overseer thought to be a fair man, or to smuggle out women and children. In fact, the scene that started this episode
20:02 comes from a first-hand account of the rebellion. And the reason that overseer lived to tell his story was that one of the rebels, a man who had been enslaved
20:09 on that very plantation, stepped forward to demand the overseer's safety. Who was that man? Dutty Bookman, who had triggered the rising with his ceremony.
20:18 Propagandistic descriptions of the rising sent back to France claimed that thousands of white men, women, and children were killed in the initial
20:26 rebellion. While this image has stuck, it's inaccurate. A commission at the time counted 400 whites dead in the first 4 months, including those killed
20:34 trying to put down the uprising. The toll on the rebels ran much higher. Most of them were armed with only machetes and agricultural tools. Only one in five
20:42 had a firearm. But they did have other advantages. Many had been sold into slavery as prisoners of war, veterans of tribal conflicts who were adept at
20:50 guerrilla warfare. Their raids, heralded with the blast of a conch shell, became infamous among their enemies. Even professional soldiers marveled at the
20:58 rebels' bravery in the face of the superior firepower. Due to a belief that the spirits of those killed returned to Africa, they attacked with a relentless
21:06 courage, literally throwing themselves on cannons, jamming their arms into barrels and wheel spokes so the guns could not be reloaded or withdrawn. They
21:13 suffered terrible casualties in pitched battles. 4,000 died in the August rising alone, roughly 10 for every enemy killed, but they didn't lose morale.
21:22 They did, however, start losing commanders. Bookman was killed in early November. Infighting claimed others. And as the first set of leaders fell and
21:30 factions splintered, the violence grew worse. All sides committed massacres. To approach Le Cap, one of the richest cities in the colony, meant passing a
21:39 wall of heads on stakes, including that of Bookman. But amidst the swelling chaos, new leaders rose. In the western province, near the city of
21:48 Port-au-Prince, a separate uprising was happening among the free people of color. There, they managed to sign a treaty with many rural plantation
21:55 owners, recognizing their shared interests as property and slave owners. They dismissed their all-white governments and installed
22:02 representatives of both groups instead. After all, the National Assembly had made them free citizens with the May 15th decree. They were only good
22:09 revolutionary patriots following the law. Those big and small whites in Le Cap and Port-au-Prince, they were the counterrevolutionary royalist traitors
22:18 talking about independence. Except that a messenger came with the news that there had been a change in power and the National Assembly had changed its mind.
22:26 The May 15th decree, making a small number of free people of color full citizens, had been repealed. The plantation owners rebellion had made the
22:33 Assembly gun-shy, worried that they'd upset an economy that was helping up French finances. This alliance with the whites was not to last. In November,
22:41 after a long siege, the army of the free people of color finally entered the provincial capital of Port-au-Prince. Once inside, though, the treaty broke
22:49 down as a personal brawl between one of the little whites and a free man of color descended into street fighting that burned 27 square blocks of the
22:57 city. The alliance was dead. This same thing will happen basically every time the whites and the free people of color try to form an alliance. Everything will
23:05 be agreed between the plantation owning big whites and the free people of color. And then the small whites will come along and muck it up. And this is when
23:13 one of the key figures of the revolution emerged. A free black man named Toussaint Louverture. Louverture's background, including any early
23:20 involvement in the uprisings, is a bit mysterious. He was born in slavery, but gained freedom long before 1791, staying to help manage the plantation where his
23:29 family was still enslaved. He was also unusual in that he had no white ancestry like most free people of color and owned no property. Perhaps this fact, the
23:38 sense that he was of two worlds, was why he was chosen to broker peace between the big whites and the black rebels in the northern province. Because you see,
23:45 by late November, it was a stalemate. The rebel army held much of the countryside, but the whites and government forces controlled the cities.
23:53 In addition, a commission had just arrived from France with news that the country had a new constitution. One that granted amnesty for actions committed
24:00 during the initial revolution. Louverture helped the rebel generals create terms, then carried them to the big whites, and get this. Here are the
24:08 terms that the generals of the rebellion offered. The enslaved would return to the plantations, and the generals would get freed. Yeah, you heard that right.
24:17 The leaders go free and everyone else goes back into slavery. See, here's another major theme to keep your finger on. Over and over again, we'll see the
24:26 leaders of the Haitian Revolution make decisions that benefit themselves at the expense of the movement. Now, it's unclear if the generals could even have
24:33 gotten their troops to accept these terms, but we'll never know because the big whites, once again, completely refused to compromise, rejecting even
24:42 these terms. The only winner was Louverture, who gained major respect among the generals. In fact, he was soon one of them, a fellow general in the
24:49 rebellion. And like many of the other generals, both of the rebels and the free people of color, he settled into living in a large house, giving orders
24:57 in the little jigsaw piece of the north he controlled. And that's when Louverture began showing himself to be an exceptionally able statesman. On the
25:05 battlefield, he brought an organization and discipline to his forces that was previously missing in the rebel armies. And his political talents, too, were
25:12 exceptional. He was excellent at striking compromise, bringing opposing sides together, and finding a situation all could live with. While the fighting
25:20 was at a low ebb and in control of the countryside, the rebels went about creating a black society with black leaders, courts, and administrations,
25:28 which is incredible when you think that they had just been enslaved months before. But this was also a society headed by military officers with
25:36 peasants farming whatever land they could to buy weapons from Spanish Santo Domingo. The generals often forced people to grow sugar on the old
25:43 plantations, and at times even sold subordinates into slavery, a practice Louverture refused to take part in because the revolution to this point was
25:51 about better working conditions and more power rather than abolitionism. But that would soon change because a ship was coming. On it were several commissioners
26:00 from France carrying a newly signed law granting full civil and political rights to the free people of color in the colonies. Oh, that's right. The
26:08 government had reversed itself again, going from some free people of color having rights to none to then everyone all in about 4 months. But the
26:15 commission also carried orders to crush the white extremist dreams of independence, integrate the local assemblies, and end the slave
26:23 insurrection. They came with 6,000 soldiers, but they would need more because within 6 months of the commission's arrival, other ships would
26:31 be arriving in Saint-Domingue, ships from Britain and Spain. France was at war, and the war in Saint-Domingue was going international.
26:40 >> [music] >> Saint-Domingue, September 1792. Two men arrive from France. They're here
26:52 to address the question of rights for the free people of color. It is the second commission. The first group having carried a completely different
26:58 message, but this group makes their intentions clear when they land. They're here to ensure the free people of color receive full rights as French law now
27:06 requires. They will radically integrate the assemblies and they've brought 6,000 troops to make sure that everyone, rebellious slaves and big whites alike,
27:15 stay in line. To tamp down the murmurings amongst the big whites, they say their orders do not include the abolition of slavery. They're here to
27:23 save slavery, they say, not end it. But end it is exactly what this second commission will end up doing. And their 6,000 troops, they'll not nearly be
27:32 enough. Despite assurances, the white population of Saint-Domingue feared the commissioners were secretly working
27:39 toward emancipation and there was a reason for that. Both commissioners were known abolitionists and the big and small whites made the decision to refuse
27:46 to work with the commission, comply with their laws or even help them fight the rebellion. The free people of color, though, were only too happy to show
27:53 their loyalty to the commission. Soon, the free people of color and French troops were fighting side by side, making great progress against both white
28:01 separatists and black rebels. Which was good because roughly 5 minutes after the commission got to the colony, yellow fever turned their 6,000 reinforcements
28:09 into 3,000. But this alliance only deepened suspicions that the commissioners meant to end slavery. Suspicion that boiled over when the
28:16 commission issued a decree that they were reinstituting the long-ignored Code Noir, a set of regulations governing the treatment of the enslaved, from
28:24 providing proper food, clothing and housing to opening channels the enslaved could use to report abuse. This was the last straw for the big
28:31 whites. They had already been buddying up to the new governor, a pro-slavery plantation owner like them, and soon he was insulting the commission and
28:39 threatening to counteract their decrees. So, the commissioners, deciding that this constituted rebellion, marched into Le Cap and imprisoned the governor.
28:47 Except he escaped and all hell broke loose. The governor rallied his troops and attacked Le Cap where the commissioners and soldiers were now
28:55 based, besieging and taking the city. But during the fight, fires ignited the colonial port, burning down most of the city's grand peristyle buildings,
29:04 operas, and boulevards. The commissioners themselves ended up outside of the city and needing reinforcements. Worse still, both Spain
29:11 and Britain had declared war on France. So, the Spanish got busy sponsoring and fighting alongside rebels like Toussaint Louverture, while word was a British
29:20 force was already on the way. The commission needed troops fast. So, they did something unorthodox, maybe out of desperation, or maybe because they saw
29:29 an opening for a move they wanted to make anyway. They put the word out that any formally enslaved person who fought for them would gain their freedom and
29:36 full French citizenship. Rebels thronged in from the countryside to join their forces and they pushed the big whites and their allied governor out of Le Cap.
29:45 Over half of the colony's white population boarded boats and fled overnight. But now agreeing to free a few people with conditions let the genie
29:53 out of the bottle. Once Saint-Domingue's formally enslaved population heard that emancipation was in fact on the table, rumors of abolition raced across the
30:02 North Province. And on August 29th, 1793, the commissioners took the leap. Pressed by the rebels, Spain, and now Britain, the colony slipping away, they
30:12 did the one thing that they believed could turn the tide. A general emancipation. All former slaves born in the colony, along with their families,
30:20 would be freed. Yet while this news was greeted with enthusiasm in the rebel-held North Province, not all the rebels came to the commission's aid.
30:28 Toussaint Louverture and many other generals were skeptical of whether this promise of freedom would hold. After all, the commission was exceeding their
30:35 authority. Indeed, they'd even gotten a recall order due to their actions. And the last colonial governor who'd overstepped had been recalled to France
30:43 and guillotined. Also, this Republican French government had already become infamous for changing its mind. Because remember last episode when the free
30:51 people of color had rights and then they didn't and then they did again? Yeah, well the rebels remembered that too. Not to mention previous trades of freedom
30:59 for military service had also gone badly. And Louverture, along with these other generals, had a more consistent ally, a rival power who owned the
31:07 western half of the island, Spain. In fact, those Spanish troops had only crossed the border recently. Spain had covertly supported the slave rebellion
31:15 since its earliest days. But now with open war declared, Louverture's forces were receiving arms, ammunition, and even uniforms from the Spanish. And that
31:23 alliance with Spain did seem more suited to Louverture. After all, Spain had not promised them liberation. It offered to recognize that the enslaved had
31:31 liberated themselves. Spanish political policies, too, lined up with the rebels. Because most of the rebels were royalists who, due to incorrect rumors,
31:40 believed King Louis was pro-emancipation. They disliked revolutionary ideals and symbols, mostly because their enemies,
31:47 the small whites and the free people of color, had enthusiastically adopted them. Not to mention Republican France was making moves on religion,
31:54 suppressing the Catholic Church and replacing it with their own secular variant. And most of the rebels found that deeply offensive. Yeah, that's a
32:01 wild story, actually, and we'll get to it, you know, one day. But there were also cracks forming in this Spanish alliance as well. First of all, the war
32:09 in Europe had turned and Republican France suddenly looked like it might win. Second, the big whites who'd evacuated to Barbados had convinced the
32:17 British to invade under the specific promise of restoring slavery and racial apartheid. Wherever the Royal Navy landed ships and took ports, they put
32:25 everyone right back in bondage. So, technically, this alliance with the Spanish put the rebels on the same side as the British aligned plantation
32:33 owners. And Louverture knew this was not sustainable. See, he had advantages that other rebel generals did not. Louverture was literate, had briefly owned a farm
32:42 with slaves, and he had been in plantation management. This meant that not only could he keep up correspondence with allies, but he had also long
32:50 practiced navigating white society. Now, sure, the Spanish had other rebel allies, but Louverture kept up a lively correspondence. And actually, not just
32:58 with his allies, but with his French enemies as well. This would become a hallmark of Louverture's strategy. A savvy politician, he would always seek
33:06 favor from all sides. And his vision of the colony always consisted of integrating the island's black, white, and free people of colored population
33:14 into a single society. But he was not naive. He knew that the freedom the Spanish were promising was at odds with the revived slave system the British
33:22 were offering the big whites. And he saw Spain's commitment to racial equality wavering. As both the news and the rhetoric of abolition crept across
33:29 Saint-Domingue, both his political ideas about general emancipation and his political calculus began to shift. Because the revolution was beginning to
33:38 craft its end goal, a thing that had been nebulous and confused up to this point, the complete abolition of slavery. Also, the French were eager for
33:46 Louverture to defect. Despite having no military experience before the rebellion, he had blossomed into one of the most able commanders of the
33:53 conflict. When he captured European officers, he treated them well and had them instruct his men. He ensured they operated like a modern military, but
34:01 also kept one foot in the guerrilla tactics that had served the rebellion so well. And he had the most important strategic position in the colony,
34:08 garrisoning a line of forts that separated the rebel-held north province from the French-held south and west. He had effectively split the French force,
34:16 the commissioners in the north and the free colored troops in the south. Then, something incredible happened. In February of 1794, representatives of the
34:25 colony spoke before the National Convention on the issue of slavery. It was a tricolor commission consisting of one of the big whites, a free black army
34:34 officer, and a free person of color. They argued that emancipation was the only way to keep control of the vital economic engine of Saint-Domingue. Not
34:42 to mention, it was also the purest expression of Republican principles. They got more than they bargained for. Not only did the National Convention end
34:50 slavery in Saint-Domingue, they ended slavery in all French colonies. Moreover, they declared that all men living in France and its possessions,
35:00 regardless of the color of their skin, were full citizens and protected by the Constitution. Upon hearing that the French had actually fulfilled their
35:08 promise of emancipation, Louverture ditched his Spanish allies and switched sides. He now had the largest and most professional force in the colony, allies
35:17 that aligned with his political goals, a strategic position to fight both the Spanish and British, and the backing of a major power. By 1795, Spain was
35:26 knocked out of the war, ceding their side of the island to France. British troops were dying in droves of yellow fever, with 30,000 more on the way to
35:33 help end the war. Yet, it would do no good. The time of the European powers in Haiti was waning, and the rebel generals would instead turn on each other. For
35:43 the war of muskets and uniforms was over, [music] and the war of knives had begun.
35:51 >> [music] >> Port-au-Prince, 1796. The British soldiers come ashore and
35:59 die. Come ashore and die. One of the largest expeditions to this point in British history, 20,000 men and thousands of German mercenaries
36:07 disembark. Within 4 months, most are cut down by yellow fever. Back in Britain, troops riot upon the announcement of a deployment to Saint-Domingue. British
36:16 forces end up hiring 7,000 black mercenaries to fight for them. Some reports will claim that 60% of the British expedition, 15,000 men, will
36:25 die. And those that make it to the interior of the island find something frightening. The troops of Brigadier General Toussaint Louverture and his
36:33 ally Andre Rigaud fighting like professional soldiers. They do after all have years of combat experience. But soon, instead of fighting the British,
36:41 they will fight each other. With general emancipation declared and the departure of the Spanish, things started to level out for Toussaint. Not
36:49 calm down necessarily. I mean, he was still fighting, but with the British pinned to the coast and rivals fighting low-intensity conflicts, he could turn
36:56 to actually governing. He was in control of the North Province, while his ally and rival, Andre Rigaud, a free person of color who'd long taken part in the
37:04 group's insurrection, controlled the South. Thus, the colony was essentially divided into two rival administrative centers that would ultimately come to
37:11 blows in what would be known as the War of Knives. But in 1793, the word was consolidation. Finally, Toussaint had a chance to enact his vision for an
37:22 integrated post-slavery society, one that brought the white, free people of color, and black populations into a peaceful, functioning whole, which would
37:30 prove difficult. Part of that difficulty was that Saint-Domingue's economy was dysfunctional by design. France had wanted the colonists to be dependent on
37:39 France and had therefore restricted industry to the point that the island was solely focused on producing sugar, coffee, and indigo. It was restricted
37:47 for making any moves that might make it self-sufficient. In fact, it had to import food to sustain its population. So, the only system that worked was to
37:55 continue producing sugar, coffee, and indigo. But a few problems there. First, the destruction of the plantation infrastructure early in the revolution
38:03 meant that major rebuilding would need to take place. Second, many of those plantations still had living owners, many of them refugees, and could not
38:11 simply be given away under French law. They had to be managed in trust. And finally, no one wanted to go back to doing the same awful work they'd been
38:19 forced to do when they were enslaved. But Toussaint and Rigaud solved that last situation using the same means everyone in this conflict always used,
38:28 military force. They used troops to force people back onto the plantations. Now, this was not slavery. It was forced work. The difference being that the
38:37 workers were paid, physical punishment was forbidden, and no one's spouse or children were getting sold away. They also had rights and protections as
38:44 citizens, including the right to legally marry. This is a stain onto Toussaint's legacy, as were the violent repressions he unleashed on those who rose against
38:52 this forced labor program. But, in Toussaint's estimation, this and other autocratic actions he would take were necessary to guard the freedoms that
39:00 they had won. He knew that Saint-Domingue, fairly or not, would be seen as a test case for abolitionism, and what happened there would send a
39:07 message across the world about whether freed slaves could not only be integrated into a wider society, but could build and sustain their own
39:14 government. If Saint-Domingue collapsed, not only might slavery return. In fact, there were big whites in Paris advocating for just that, but opponents
39:23 would draw the conclusion that abolition had been a mistake. And such a determination would have global consequences. And Toussaint increasingly
39:31 believed he was the only one that could secure the revolution and the freedoms they'd won. As he fought the British, his power growing, he began to edge out
39:38 political rivals, even allies. When one long-time rival rebelled and captured the colony's governor, accusing him of trying to reinstate slavery, Toussaint
39:46 rescued the man and got named lieutenant governor for the service. During the election for the colony's representatives in France, Toussaint
39:53 steered his rival to victory, so that then they would be forced to live in France, far from his developing power center. He would get himself declared
40:01 governor general shortly afterward. And in 1798, he started conducting his own diplomacy. He concluded a secret peace with the British, where they would
40:09 withdraw their troops and naval blockade from Saint-Domingue, in exchange for the return of French royalists and a promise that Toussaint would not export the
40:17 uprising to Barbados. That concluded, he sent a representative to the United States striking a deal with John Adams so the undeclared naval war between the
40:26 US and France would not affect trade with Saint-Domingue. Because you see, another running theme to think about, and you're keeping track of all of
40:33 these, right? Was that Saint-Domingue was always a piece in a larger game. The United States was right next door, as was British Barbados, and France
40:41 supported whatever leader, in their estimation, best served their interests. And that interplay of various powers sponsoring or intervening in the
40:49 island's affairs will become a major part of Haitian history all the way to present day. In other words, Toussaint was increasingly behaving like the
40:56 leader of an independent nation, though he did so with the veneer of French support. He was, after all, a brigadier general of the Republic and would remain
41:05 so as long as the French upheld their abolition of slavery. In fact, Toussaint had essentially ejected the previous governor. Meanwhile, relationships
41:13 between Toussaint and Rigaud began to sour, partially due to that expelled governor playing political games about which one was higher ranking, and
41:20 partially due to the fact that they both wanted total control. Soon, Rigaud appealed to France casting himself as the loyal revolutionary and Toussaint as
41:29 a dictatorial usurper who wanted independence. Toussaint, by contrast, began claiming that Rigaud planned to reimpose slavery, a slander Rigaud
41:37 turned back on him. Of course, neither wanted that, but there were factions on both sides willing to believe it. Toussaint had invited back many
41:44 plantation owners in order to rebuild the economy, so it seemed plausible from that angle, and Rigaud had rebuilt the southern province with a caste system
41:52 with the free people of color on top, so again, people could imagine it. Both leaders had alienated supporters with their forced work policies, and those
42:00 alienated groups started believing that the other leader would never treat them like that. And both accused the other of perpetrating a race war, even though
42:09 they were representatives of all of the island's groups on both sides. Strip away the rhetoric though, and this was a struggle between two leaders for
42:16 supremacy. On June 6th, 1799, Rigaud sent 4,000 troops to seize several border towns and negotiate the defection of one of Toussaint's veteran regiments.
42:26 The act triggered a small uprising in Toussaint's northern territory, and he dodged two assassination attempts. In one, Toussaint had his hat shot off and
42:34 an aide killed. In another, his carriage was peppered with a volley of bullets, though by pure chance, he was not inside. Thus began a civil war that
42:42 would come to be known as the War of Knives, and it earned that title through blood. Both sides offered no quarter, and prisoners, when taken at all, rarely
42:51 lasted long. At the outset of the conflict, Rigaud's forces, better trained and equipped, made quick gains against Toussaint, but the northern
42:59 general had an enormous numerical advantage and the increasingly open support of the United States. Not only were the Americans shipping Toussaint
43:06 arms, at times, the United States Navy intervened directly, providing fire support during sieges and blockading ports. The American consul even issued
43:16 passports to Toussaint's ships, allowing them to pass the blockade when Rigaud's ships could not. And during this vicious fighting, one of Toussaint's commanders
43:24 rose to prominence, Brigadier General Jean-Jacques Dessalines, a former slave who had fought through the revolution and who was known for massacring
43:31 prisoners and rebels with such vindictiveness that Toussaint censored him for it. Though in fact, it is possible Toussaint actually ordered
43:39 these reprisal killings using Dessalines as a willing scapegoat to avoid ruining his carefully crafted image of generosity and kindness.
43:46 The war ground to a stalemate. Rigaud besieged and pinned, but Toussaint unwilling to expend the casualties necessary to dislodge him. And then,
43:55 another commission arrived from France. Yeah, another one announcing another change in government. General Napoleon Bonaparte had overthrown the political
44:04 system and declared himself consul. His message to reaffirm that in the eyes of France, Toussaint was the leader of Saint-Domingue. The war ended basically
44:14 overnight, with Toussaint allowing Rigaud to slip away into exile in France, which left Toussaint free to invade Santo Domingo. While technically
44:22 still French, was still administered by the Spanish. He claimed it was to prevent his free citizens from getting kidnapped and sold into slavery there,
44:29 but it may have actually been a bid to bolster his forces through liberation and control all of the island's ports. Because Napoleon's representatives also
44:37 brought word of a new constitution, one that rescinded the idea that colonies should have the same laws as France. Instead, they would have special laws,
44:46 you know, tailored to their unique conditions. In other words, Napoleon planned to bring back slavery. In response, Toussaint wrote his own
44:55 constitution, his own special laws, stating that Saint-Domingue was a sovereign black state, one that rejected slavery outright, and one where he was
45:05 governor for life. He all but declared independence, and then prepared for invasion.
45:13 >> [music] >> January 1802, Le Cap. 20,000 French soldiers arrive off the coast of
45:22 Saint-Domingue. For months, Toussaint Louverture has sent letters to Napoleon telling him that the only way for Saint-Domingue to stay a part of France
45:30 is home rule, a system where slavery can never return. Toussaint has not broken the colony from France, he argues. He has saved it. Napoleon feels
45:38 differently. He has sent this force under the command of his brother-in-law, Charles Leclerc, with orders to subjugate the island and arrest
45:45 Toussaint, because he fundamentally believes Toussaint's government should not exist. "My decision to destroy the authority of the blacks in
45:53 Saint-Domingue," Napoleon said, "is not so much based on consideration of commerce and money, as on the need to block forever the march of blacks in the
46:01 world." And in that endeavor, he will fail. Toussaint Louverture's constitution of 1801 was a landmark in world history.
46:09 Not only did it state that slavery would never be allowed in Saint-Domingue, it made Haiti the first nation in the world whose constitution forbade
46:16 discrimination on the basis of race and skin color. It's an incredible document, and many nations will spend a century and a half catching up to those same
46:24 ideals. But it also effectively gave the colony home rule. And not only did this, let's just say, upset France, it also made Toussaint's allies reconsider
46:33 supporting him. The British were briefly at peace with France and no longer wanted to rock the boat. And the new president of the United States, Thomas
46:40 Jefferson, was a staunchly pro-French slave owner. He was not going to support a government formed via slave revolt. In fact, both nations were so concerned
46:48 that the revolution might spread to their own slave systems that they began turning away refugees that might even carry news of it. There was an idea
46:56 developing that this troublesome island that had proven slave insurrection could not only win, but then fight off incursions by multiple European armies,
47:04 would set a bad precedent if it succeeded. Besides, the country's sugar infrastructure had been so damaged by the years of fighting that the main
47:12 economic argument that independence was good for foreign trade no longer held water. 15% of Saint-Domingue's workforce had left the plantations to join rebel
47:21 or foreign armies. Factory workers in cities had been repeatedly damaged. And then, Leclerc arrived. Originally, his orders were to negotiate a peaceful
47:30 solution. But that went out the window when one of his commanders attacked a fort due to a miscommunication. Now, it was war. Toussaint's defensive plan was
47:39 to withdraw into the mountainous interior for a guerrilla war, torching the cities so the French had no base of operations. Experience taught him that
47:46 these new arrivals would suffer badly from disease, and that would be his advantage. But 2 months before Leclerc arrived, Toussaint was forced to put
47:53 down a rebellion led by his adopted nephew who had never been fully on board with the forced labor program. Soon, Leclerc secured the Santo Domingo side.
48:02 Had Toussaint been able to marshal a united island, he would have won outright. But, the recent civil strife and garbled communications meant that
48:09 many did not rally to his banner. Even so, initial battles stunned both sides with their ferocity. Toussaint decided against raising the cities, but one of
48:18 his commanders did put Le Cap to the torch before withdrawing. Both sides were in bad shape. Yellow fever swept through the French ranks, and the
48:25 guerrilla campaign caused heavy casualties. So, 5 months into the war, when Leclerc offered peace in exchange for Toussaint retiring to his plantation
48:33 with full honors, Toussaint decided that it was his best option. He could not continue. It was there the French troops arrested him. Instead of treating him
48:41 like an officer of rank, they bundled him along like a prisoner, musket at his back, putting him on a ship and deporting him to France. "In
48:49 overthrowing me, you have cut down in Saint-Domingue only the trunk of the tree of liberty," Toussaint warned during the arrest. "It will spring up
48:57 again from the roots, for they are numerous and they are deep." He would die less than a year later, malnourished and ill in a mountain castle. But, his
49:06 words proved prophetic. Leclerc had taken nominal control, having brought with him André Rigaud and other exiles that had fled Toussaint, and had mostly
49:15 convinced the population that France did not intend to bring back slavery. But, then, yeah, France brought back slavery in nearby Guadeloupe, and residents of
49:23 Saint-Domingue knew it was only a matter of time before it happened to them. This was the universal call to arms. Toussaint could not raise. No one wanted
49:31 slavery back. Local officers that had supported Leclerc defected, and one group massacred several hundred Polish troops who were part of the French
49:39 expedition. So, Leclerc decided on a new tactic, utter brutality. He wrote to Napoleon saying that he would exterminate the rebels in the mountain
49:48 areas, sparing only children under age 12. He would execute all black military officers. French soldiers shot and bayoneted prisoners by the hundreds. He
49:57 executed a thousand people by tying weights around their necks and throwing them off ships. And Jean-Jacques Dessalines, now in nominal control of
50:05 local forces, responded in kind. The violence of the conflict only escalated further when Leclerc himself died of yellow fever, leaving in charge an even
50:13 more brutal subordinate who imported man-eating dogs to deal with the rebels. But this only galvanized the black armies to finally form a united force.
50:23 A year later, a year where Dessalines handed the French defeat after defeat, both sides gathered for what would be a decisive battle. The French held a hill
50:31 fort, and General François Capois, a man who had risen up the ranks to become a general and was known as Capois the Death, sounded the charge. French
50:40 cannons tore into their ranks. Capois and his soldiers clambered over the casualties, regrouping when broken, reforming and pushing on. On the fourth
50:47 assault, Capois tumbled to earth, his horse mutilated by a cannonball. He rose, and a bullet snatched away his hat. Then he drew his sword and ran in
50:56 front of his men yelling, "Forward! Forward!" The display was so incredible, the French stopped firing and applauded his bravery. A French officer rode
51:04 forward to carry the general's compliments. After this weird little aside, then the fighting resumed. Rebel generals serving in the front line were
51:11 wounded. Shots tore away pieces of their uniforms. Still, they attacked. Then the revolution [clears throat] ended as it began, with a storm. Lightning rent the
51:21 air and water poured down. The French withdrew, their position untenable. They sent a peace envoy the next day to negotiate their withdrawal from the
51:29 island. Of the 80,000 French troops sent to Saint-Domingue, only 30,000 would return. In fact, their withdrawal was part of a general French pullback from
51:38 the Americas. The vast expenditures of blood and treasure in Saint-Domingue convinced Napoleon to cut his losses and focus on his European wars. To help that
51:46 pursuit, he sold Louisiana to the United States. Dessalines was supposed to send the French wounded back to France after
51:53 Leclerc's withdrawal. He drowned them instead. Because Dessalines had learned something from all of those years of indecision around slavery. With its wild
52:02 reversals over civil rights and abolition, with French citizens like the big whites constantly trying to undermine and reverse every freedom won,
52:09 the French had sent a message over the past decade that the people of Saint-Domingue would never be safe under the rule of white Frenchmen. So, after
52:17 declaring the island to be the independent nation of Haiti, Dessalines ordered all remaining white French should be massacred, even the women and
52:25 children. The people were reluctant and often only complied when Dessalines showed up with an army to enforce the edict. Some French escaped pretending to
52:33 be Americans or British who were not subject to the decree. But the message Dessalines intended to send backfired. It further isolated Haiti with the
52:41 United States refusing to recognize its government or trade with it for 60 years. Dessalines' military rule and crowning
52:48 himself emperor continued to set the new nation on a troubled path. Generals would seize power regularly ensuring the new nation could never fully recover
52:56 from the damage of the revolution. Slave-holding societies like the United States looked at Haiti as a nightmare scenario using it to argue incorrectly
53:04 that wholesale slaughter was the inevitable result of abolition and that a black nation could not govern itself. Later, the French returned forcing the
53:12 Haitian government into massive indemnity payments it couldn't afford burdening the already broken economy keeping it in poverty. And due to this
53:20 political instability, the United States would stage multiple military interventions in the 19th and 20th centuries under the banner of protecting
53:27 American lives and property eventually occupying the nation for 19 years. Others saw a different message, one of inspiration, not fear. When American
53:36 firebrand John Brown tried to raise a slave revolt in the South before the Civil War, he'd hoped to trigger an uprising like Haiti's, and the new
53:44 nation would both harbor the revolutionary Simon Bolivar when he was a fugitive and loan him Haitian troops on the condition that he freed the
53:51 slaves in Spanish America. To the oppressed and colonized around the world, Haiti would become a symbol, one that showed what was possible when
53:59 people, despite having nothing but determination and a desire for freedom, declared they would be slaves no more. You know, this series was really one we
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