Talk:United States and the Haitian Revolution

Untitled

The spelling Haïtian needs some explanation. Haitians call their country Ayiti, the French Haïti, but no-one except Wikipedia calls anything >Haïtian< (In French: haïtien or haïtienne, in Kreyòl: ayisyen) >db 20:28, 21 June 2006 (UTC) I also agree, I believe all spellings of Haïti should be changed to Haiti, as this is the English language wiki, not French. 98.194.168.34 (talk) 02:09, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

American Trade with Saint Domingue

The French colony of Saint Domingue was declared the independent state of Haiti in 1804 by its victorious African rebels. During the decades leading up to the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804, Saint Domingue had been widely considered the richest European colony in the world, indeed, the value of its imposts and exports exceeded the value of American commerce. Saint Domingue (or present-day Haiti) produced more sugar and coffee than any other colony. The wealthy French colony had hundreds of plantations, imported thousands of manacled African slaves each year, and exported so many products that it monopolized two thirds of all French foreign commerce.

The French colony of Saint Domingue had enormous African and African creole slave populations. By the eve of 1791,Saint Domingue had a population of about 500,000 African slaves, 23,000 members of the free colored caste, and about 40,000 whites. It's is important to keep in mind when studying the Haitian Revolution and its evolution over 13 years that the vast majority of the African population of Saint Domingue had been born in Africa, had experienced the loss of freedom, the middle passage across the Atlantic, and had fresh memories of freedom and their homelands and indigenous African culture.

The so called free colored caste of Saint Domingue were like bourgeois people everywhere, intelligent, ambitious and eager to join the ranks of the rich plantation owners. The free colored had been born of free fathers and African or mulatto women, and their status in society followed that of the women, that is, they were nominally free but they had not civil or political rights, indeed, they were often victimized by the poor whites, who the French called "aristocrats of the skin."

The wealthy owners of large plantations dominated the island and its politics. The most important of them possessed hundreds of acres of land on the fertile north plain of Saint Domingue. The largest of these set the tone for society and were larger than the plantations of the other West Indies and Caribbean islands -- and some of them possessed more than one thousand slaves. So the whites of Saint Domingue had wealth and power, but the culture of the island was also greatly influenced by the African culture and its languages, habitations, mores, sex, and customs.

American policy toward the Haitian Revolution 1791-1804 was conditioned by a century of trade relations between the island of Hispaniola and the Continental Colonies of North America and the United States. New England merchants penetrated the island as early as 1715 and developed a profitable trade in salted codfish, ground wheat and cornmeal, lumber, livestock, and also manufactured goods. According to the French trade laws, promulgated by the French crown in the early 18th century, the commerce of Saint Domingue, which was then the name applied to the western third or French portion of the island, was to be monopolized by French merchants. But French merchants were often distracted by the English-French wars of the century and so the French merchants were unable to delivery enough of foodstuffs and other products to the island colony. As a result, the French Saint Domingue and American merchants joined in a tacit conspiracy to admit Americans to the 13 ports of the island. And so Americans developed a highly profitable trade to Saint Domingue, which involved hundreds of American ships and every American ports involved in the island's commerce.

Everywhere that slavery exited it was cruel; it treated human beings like farm animals, deprived slaves of the fruits of their labor, was founded on the sexual exploitation of black women, and did not recognize the sanctity of slave families. But unlike the other slave colonies of the West Indies there had had been not large slave insurrection on Saint Domingue. The neighboring British colony of Jamaica had experienced dozens of substantial insurrections involving thousands of Africans over the 18th century. But Saint Domingue had experienced no large scale rebellion; instead, the slaves of Saint Domingue had developed a tradition of resistance to slavery involving maroon colonies, that is, African founded colonies located in the mountainous interior of the island that survived by raiding the plantations for food and women and growing their own foodstuffs in the interior mountain valleys of the island.

The slave revolution that broke out in Saint Domingue in 1791 had followed two years of political turmoil and agitation in the island. The ideas of the great French Revolution of 1789 -- liberty, equality and fraternity -- penetrated the island and found advocates among the whites, free colored, and slaves. The whites and free colored sent agents to represent them in Pairs; that is they joined the French Revolution and unwisely supported the French assault on the power of the French crown. So as the power of the crown in Saint Domingue diminished and weakened, the African slaves plotted their own insurrection.

The slave revolt that broke out in Saint Domingue was well planned and systematically. Traditional communications networks among the slaves were used to spread word that the whites of France and indeed Europe and America all favored the emancipation of the slaves. The French antislavery society, Amis des Noirs (Friends of the Blacks), flooded the island with antislavery pamphlets and the whites' boisterous celebrations of liberty,equality and fraternity created the impression among the slaves that they too might find support in Europe for their quest for freedom.

Less than 30 days after the outbreak of the slave revolt of August 22, 1791, American newspapers from Charleston, South Carolina to Boston, Massachusetts began publishing almost daily reports about the bloodshed, violence, and fighting in Saint Domingue. American objected to the violence of Saint Domingue, but they also reflected a concern about the commerce of the island, about the fate of Americans who lived and worked in Saint Domingue, about possible copycat insurrections in the Southern states, and about the possibility of a British intervention in the Caribbean.

U.S. Reaction to the Haitian Revolution From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search This article is orphaned as few or no other articles link to it. Please help introduce links in articles on related topics. (November 2007) The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject. Please help improve the article with a good introductory style. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Firstnew (talk • contribs) 13:44, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Duncan McIntosh

From what I have read, there was a man named Duncan McIntosh who saved the lives of more than 2,000 French colonists in the Haitian Revolution. Yet, there is no mentioning of his heroics in this article. I will try to add him to the Haitian Revolution article and possibly to this one.--(Wikipedian1234 (talk) 21:12, 29 March 2008 (UTC))