Toussaint L'Ouverture and the Haitian Revolution

When the Haitian revolution broke out, Toussaint L'Ouverture did not originally take part in the violence -- at least, that is, until the British became involved. Learn more about Toussaint L'Ouverture and the Haitian revolution in this podcast.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Ambert and I'm Sarah. And Haiti has been
on everyone's minds lately since that huge earthquake hit part

(00:21):
of prints. Yeah, and there's been an interesting sort of
moral tone to a lot of the discussions and commentary
about Haiti. Katie, you actually blogged about this recently, right,
I was blogging about Port Royal in Jamaica, which was
the sodom of its day, and it completely sank into
the ocean, and rather than being compassionate about it, a

(00:44):
lot of people simply assumed it was divine punishment and
they deserved what they got. Yeah. So there's a precedent
for this kind of bizarre seeming moral judgment in relation
to a natural disaster, but um, when it's tied to
Haiti specifically, it seems to focus on their revolution, and
that's what we're going to talk about today. Right, So
to give you a little Haiti history, We've got the

(01:07):
island of Hispaniola, which today is divided into Haiti and
the Dominican republic Um that it was settled by the
Spanish and the French, the Spanish first thanks to Christopher Columbus.
On the Spanish side was called Santo Domingo and the
French side sand A Mang and Sanda Mang made so
much money for the French um money mostly came from sugar,

(01:28):
but there's also coffee and cocoa and indigo. In the
seventeen eighties, Santa Mang equals a fourth of France's trade overseas.
And in the seventeen nineties there were about thirty thousand
white people, twenty four thousand free people of color who
are either black or of mixed race known as the
Gen de couler, and four hundred and fifty thousand black slaves.

(01:52):
So notice the disparity there in numbers. It's the minority
who has the power, but they're scared of the majority,
which is slaves, and they should be, as we will
find out shortly. Yeah, and this free people of color group,
the Gen de colur, are are an important aspect of
this divide that will come eventually. They often own slaves

(02:15):
and plantations themselves, but they're not full citizens, so they're
considered somewhere in between whites and slaves as far as
their social class. Goes. Possibly the most important figure in
the Haitian Revolution was a man named Francois Dominique Toussain,
who was born into this society around seventeen forty three

(02:35):
as a slave on the Breda plantation. And it's fairly
notable that he is actually born on the island. He's
not African or you know, he was not born in Africa,
and in a country where there were so many more
slave deaths than births, that's pretty notable. And he was

(02:56):
a privileged slave, as was his father. He had some
education and he knew some French and some Latin, which
was unusual. And later in life he was freed um
and he became a Catholic and married with children. And
as far as his personal attributes go, he was a vegetarian,
which I thought was a little unusual. And he was
also very short, much like Napoleon Bonaparte. This will come

(03:19):
up a little bit later, and we don't know what
he looked like, but he's never described as handsome. So
we're going to set the stage with the French Revolution
taking place, and suddenly we have liberty, gality and fraternity
as a battle cry, and it is resonating all the
way to France's colony. Right, the local assemblies are now

(03:40):
allowed in the colonies like Sanda Maan, and the gender
colur planned to take advantage of these new rights. They
demand the full rights of citizenship. But you know, guess
how France and the rich white people of Sanda Maang
felt about this, I'll give you a hint. Not great.
When we have lots of factions going on here too,
because we have whites who have taken the battle cry

(04:02):
of the revolution to heart as well, and they're thinking
it's the perfect time to um have their own revolution
and independent. Yeah, become independent of France because you know,
obviously if France is not in control, maybe they could
make more money. So the whites are divided between royalists
and republicans. So there's so much going on here, and

(04:23):
so that brings us to a rebellion. There's a small
rebellion in seventeen ninety led by the Saint O Jay
who's a freeman of color, and it's stomped out and
he's executed. But that is not the end. That is
just the beginning, especially because around one hundred thousand new
slaves arrived in Sentiment between seventeen, eighty eight and seventeen,

(04:47):
so our numbers are even higher. Yeah, so this is
the slave's major entry into into the picture. And we'd
like to add that in this area of the world
was pretty much the worst place to be a slave.
Treatment here was notoriously cruel and the climate is horrible.
Of the most of the French white people moved to

(05:10):
the island and try to get get back to France
as quickly as they can so and escape yellow favorite.
The climate is not hospitable to um, you know, new arrivals.
So up until this point it's mainly been skirmishes between
the free people of color and the white people on
the island. But this is when the slaves get into it,

(05:32):
and there will be blood, as I wrote in my outline,
and also vengeance. In August, under the leadership of a
guy named Duddy Buckman, who was a voodoo priest, the
slaves rose up and killed thousands and thousands of people
and burned the plantations as they went. There were mutilations
and other atrocities. At the time. This wasn't just about independence,

(05:56):
this was about getting back and just kind of a
side note here, would like to add that Haitian voodoo
isn't what you would think of when you think of voodoo.
It's not the little trinkets you can buy in New Orleans.
It's a combination of West African and Catholic beliefs. So
it's a lot more complex than the little voodoo job.
So keep that in mind, please when you're learning about
Haitian voodoo. So the revolution is on at this point,

(06:20):
and when the revolution breaks out, our guy to Stint
is not involved. He's not killing anyone, he's not burning anything.
He even helps his master escape and he supports the
Royalist until they decide to ask the British to help them,
and then he's pretty much done with that, right, he's
done being the good slave quote unquote, and he joins

(06:42):
the fight, and surprise, surprise, he's really good at being
a leader, and he's absolutely brilliant. Yeah, he's The rebel
leaders aren't haven't been the best up to this point,
but Toussaint is um an amazing, amazing leader of the forces. Right,
it was a very ill organized movement before that. So

(07:04):
he organizes everyone, gets his own kind of people together,
and then teaches them all guerilla warfare and they know
that island better than anyone else, so it's going to
be a hard hit for the French. He also takes
over when um when Bokeman dies Yeah, along with Jean
Jacques Dessaline. So under Toussain and de Selene's leadership, the

(07:24):
slaves gain control of a large part of the island
and around sevente to Sand takes on the last name
Louverture and he becomes known as to Santa Luverchure. For
the rest of us, it means the Opening and it's
still just the people on the island versus France. At
this point, Frances definitely losing and they give rights to

(07:46):
free men of color just because they have to. They're
losing this Thiss fight. But they also send in their
own fighters because they don't want to lose this incredibly
wealthy colony that they have. But it gets a little
bit more calm, like hated because around seventeen ninety three
Frances at war with both Spain and Great Britain, so

(08:06):
Europe is going to get involved in this home yes,
and the French want to regain control of their island,
but the Brits on the Spanish see an opportunity this
is their chance to take over and get a piece
of the pie. Spain would love to have the rest
of the island, and the slave owners on the island
also see an opportunity to ally themselves with Great Britain,

(08:27):
which supports slavery, and of course the slave owners are
trying to return things to the status quo, the way
of life that was making them so much money before.
So Tussa and the others are fighting with Spain. At
this point France is completely outnumbered, and in seventeen ninety
four they abolish slavery in the colonies, so a huge

(08:48):
win for Tussa and his group. But something else surprising happens.
In seventeen ninety four. Louiviture joins up with his old
enemy France because the National Convention has declared emancipation in
the colonies and Great Britain and Spain have not. So
he's seeing an ally now and his former enemy right,
because that is his goal to abolish slavery period. So

(09:12):
if you're going to go along with that, then he's
going to go along with you. And his switching sides
does not go well for Great Britain in Spain because
of course he's fought with them. He knows who's leading them,
he knows what kind of strategies and tactics they'll do.
And also he's really good. He's good at playing them
all off against each other too, France, Spain and Great Britain.

(09:33):
And it's interesting to think of um, of all these
world powerhouses, meeting with the rebellion leader, right, And it's
cool to me too. He was a thing around fifty
when the revolution started, and all he'd really done his
life was the slave and this was his moment to shine.
But well, Louverture is messing with the great European powers.

(09:55):
They're also messing with him, and France sets him up
as lieutenant governor, and they're trying to set up other
leaders to rebel against him. So everybody has multiple games
going on at once, right. But as far as public
opinion at the time goes, the people on the island,
the slaves of course love him, but surprisingly also the

(10:16):
Europeans and the gen de coler on the island like
him too because they like what he's doing for the economy.
He's letting the planters come back out of exile, which
we were saying for the French Revolution that was not
something that happened. You were a French aristocrat, you were
living in London. You were gone and you better stay gone.
But he let them come back and even forced the

(10:38):
freed slaves to work the plantations because he needed that
so he could trade, so he could get money, so
he could fight. Yeah, I like Katie called this militant
agriculture when she was talking about it with me earlier,
and that that really helped it make sense. Just it's
not quite slavery, but you're still being forced to work

(11:00):
on a plantation. So he made them work, but he
wouldn't let them be whipped. He limited their hours, and
he gave them I believe a share of the produce
as well. But still clearly they didn't want to go
back to their old lives and he made them do it.
So in the meantime, as far as the battle goes,
UM he's still trampling the Brits and they start to

(11:20):
negotiate with him secretly. Um. They actually withdraw in sevente
and part of this secret agreement is a trade agreement.
Um Sentamank starts up trade again with Great Britain and
the United States. They get arms in return for sugar,
and Toussaint also makes a deal that he won't invade

(11:43):
Jamaica or the American Solf and the Brits say, hey,
you know, we could make you king of an independent Haiti.
But he doesn't trust them, and he still hates the
fact that they have not abolished slavery for themselves, so
he says no. But he does declare himself when are
general for life of sentiming and basically sets up a

(12:04):
military dictatorship with a new constitution. And some of this
I think I've read somewhere and maybe in Smithsonian, that
he'd had advice from Alexander Hamilton's about doing this very thing,
which we thought was a pretty cool side note. But
he sets up courts, he tries to set up a
tax system, and more importantly to him, in part his
ideas of equality and tolerance along with his ideal of

(12:27):
hard work. He thought people were basically lazy list you
had to coerce them into working. Yeah, but he has
trouble in ministering a government. He's a great leader, but
he's a wartime leader, and it's a different kind of job.
And a lot of people have died in the revolution too.
It's been at war. Europe has always been plotting against him,

(12:49):
so there's a their wounds basically, and there's still racial
tension too, because um the white people and the mixed
race people think some of them are hoping that France
will come back in and again bring things back to
the old ways. And of course, as we've mentioned, the
ex slaves don't want to be working these plantations that
they're being forced to work, and there are some black

(13:12):
people on the island who want to get rid of
all the planters and split up the plantations among themselves.
To Sant's nephew is one of these, and he leads
a revolt, but to San had him executed. We can't
forget about the other side of the island though, Santa Domingo.
It's the same island, but they have slaves on that side,
so that's got to be driving to some kind of

(13:33):
crazy having a these slaves right on the other side.
It did, in fact, to drive some completely crazy, and
in eighteen o one he takes over that side of
the island as well, even though one Napoleon Bonaparte tells
him specifically not to Lubature free the slaves, and Lupature
is told Napoleon he's a Frenchman, he doesn't need to worry.

(13:56):
But he's clearly going way against Napoleon's conte. He writes
to him, talking about his loyalty and all good he's
done for the island. But this power relationship, where you
know you have Napoleon ostensibly in control um saintaming is
still part of France, is really skewed if you have

(14:18):
Tussaw going and invading another part of the island completely,
and especially if you're thinking about their motives which are
completely at odds with one another. Napoleon wants to get
France's colony completely back under control, and he's also right,
he's seriously a racist, and Toussant knows this, and he

(14:38):
knows that Napoleon would just bring slavery back if he
only had just an inch, you know, to get his
foot in the door, that it's going to happen too.
Sat on the other hand, wants to go to Africa
and free all the slaves of the world. So we're
talking about two people who have pretty much nothing in common. Well,
so Napoleon sends General Victor le Cleric to the island
along with several thousand soldiers. We've seen numbers about twenty

(15:02):
thousand to forty thousand, so a bit of a discrepancy there,
but it's way more than Toussaint is expecting. And the
white people of the island and the free people of
color side with the clerk Um, whereas the blacks of
the island fight against him, but eventually many end up
on the Clerk's side because there's not much of a choice.

(15:24):
After a while they've been fighting, and to Sa finally
surrendered on the condition that the clerk not brings slavery
back to the island, So to Sun retires to his
own plantation, but the French think that he's probably still
scheming to take control, which is like they were, to
be fair, he might have been, and they trick him
into coming to a meeting where they arrest him and

(15:46):
send him to France, and he's taken to Joux in
the mountains and kept in a cold, damp castle, and
the French are basically just waiting for him to die
in this castle, and he does on April seven, eighteen
and three, And we don't know what happened to his family,
whether um they stayed on the island or went to France.

(16:07):
Some accounts have some of them going on the boat
with him, and then there's no record of them after
they get to France, so I'm assuming their fate couldn't
have been wonderful. But after he dies, the fighting and
Sanda Mang went on, and on January one, o four,
Sanda Mang became the independent nation of Haiti. And if
you'd like to read a little bit more about the

(16:29):
revolution than we've talked about in this podcast, I did
a blog on it not too long ago, as we mentioned,
So go to blogs dot how staff works dot com
and look for stuff he missed in history class. It
generated loss of discussion, it did controversial discussion, and we're
going to end in a little bit of a lighter
note and to go to listener mails. Today's emails are

(16:51):
both about our podcast on St. Paul's Cathedral during the Blitz,
and our first one is from Katie, who recently moved
to New York City, and she thanked us for helping
her past a test in English, which made me really happy.
That's my favorite subject. Um. They read the short story
The Destructors by Graham Green, and she ended up being

(17:12):
able to talk about symbolism and St. Paul's in her essay,
So Katie and glad we were able to help. Yeah,
we also got another email from Lattice Love and Ontario
and um, when we talked about St. Paul's, we mentioned
how a few of the biggest bombs that struck nearby
or even struck the cathedral didn't explode and how lucky
that was for not only St. Paul's and the St.

(17:35):
Paul's Watch, but the whole neighborhood, and a lot of
slapt pointed out that those bombs failing to detonate was
not an accident. Check. Female laborers who were forced to
work in arms factories by the occupying Nazis would sometimes
sabotage the bombs by leaving out the crucial metal ring
that could help the bomb explode when it hit the ground.

(17:58):
And um, it's sort of a sad story, but because
the Nazis were so careful to check for any of
these rings being snuck out in pockets or aprons, the
laborers would often have to ingest them, which would tear
up their intestines when they were being passed through. But still,
what a courageous other side of this story and a

(18:19):
really cool fact. So thanks to a lot Us lab
for that one. And if you'd like to email us,
It's History podcast and how stuff works dot com and
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(18:40):
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