This is a historical telling of ancestry, union and force. Out of demand for plantation and mining labor, and with most of the native population of the Americas being decimated after European arrival, the transatlantic slave trade began around the 15th century. Approximately 12.5 million Africans found themselves unwillingly shipped around the world.
Haitian Flag
In the Caribbean, a few short years before the slave trade began in earnest, the pirate Christopher Columbus stumbles upon Hispaniola in 1492. A couple centuries after this unfortunate event the Treaty of Ryswick cedes the western third of the island to France, an area we now know as Haiti.
Haitian National Bird: Hispaniolan Trogon
By the 1700s large scale, labor intensive sugar production begins on the island necessitating a larger work force than the native population and colonizers could provide. Of the three hundred thousand Taino’s present before Columbus’s arrival in 1492 only sixty thousand were left during the islands first census in 1508.
Of the Taino’s Columbus wrote, they are “good to be ordered about, to work and sow, and do all that may be necessary.” Europeans later said of Africans, “The labor of one negro was more valuable than that of four Indians”.
With these ideals and the continued need for manual labor to maintain the booming sugar industry, Saint Domingue, as Haiti was called then, starts to import two thousand African slaves annually to meet this need. Ultimately, approximately eight hundred thousand are brought to the island. By the end of the 18th century Haiti becomes France’s most lucrative colony, providing 80% of the worlds sugar as well as coffee, rum, indigo, molasses and timber. Made possible by lush lands and the sweat of slaves it would be called the Pearl of the Antilles and became the envy of all Caribbean societies.
During this time, the conditions of slavery and nefarious exclusion of Saint Domingue from France’s “Declaration of the Rights of Man” propelled Haiti into rebellion in 1793. The revolution was led by Toussaint L’Ouverture (pictured on horseback) whose original given name was Pierre Dominique. A descendant of minor African royalty, his first name was changed to Toussaint (All Saints) due to his birthday falling on All Saints day. In later attaining his freedom, Toussaint changed his last name to Louverture meaning “the opening”.
The Haitian revolution culminated in 1804 with Jean Jacques Dessalines (depicted below) proclaiming Haiti’s independence on January 1st. Furthermore, it’s at that time that he restores the original Taino name of the island, Haiti, meaning higher place. In doing so, former slaves, led by the aforementioned two black heroes, form the world’s first independent black republic and the second nation in the western hemisphere.
However, all's well does not end well for African sons and daughters. Haiti’s independence at such a time, would only serve to anger the slave and plantation owning American south, along with other European powers. These entities sought to make an example of these rebellious former slaves. Thus, the reward for liberation would be embargo’s, forced reparation in the sum of millions, and externally funded corruption that has left the country in a state of economic and social devastation for generations.
Haitian independence from the throngs of France is celebrated every year on January 1st. Often symbolized by a national dish known as soup joumou (pumpkin soup). Despite the resultant state of this land of freedom fighters, society should do well to remember the lasting words of Frederick Douglas during the 1893 Worlds Fair in Chicago. Quote “we should not forget that the freedom you and I enjoy today is largely due to the brave stand taken by the black sons of Haiti ninety years ago. Striking for freedom, they struck for the freedom of every black man in the world.” Haitian independence is a day of remembrance for that union made in force (l’union fait la force).
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