You're Dead to Me - The Haitian Revolution

Episode Date: August 14, 2020

Greg Jenner is joined by Professor Marlene Daut and comedian Athena Kugblenu to examine the events and aftermath of the 18th century revolution in Haiti, the first nation to abolish slavery. We look at the life of revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture, confront the atrocities committed against the people of Haiti and the literal price they were forced to pay for their freedom.A Muddy Knees Media production for BBC Radio 4.

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, a history podcast for everyone. For people who don't like history, people who do like history, and people who forgot to learn any at school. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. Thank you. We are jumping back over 200 years and jetting off to the Caribbean, not for a luxury holiday, but to learn all about the Haitian Revolution and how Haiti was the first modern nation to abolish slavery. And to help me do that, I'm joined by two very special guests. In History Corner, she's Professor of African Diaspora Studies at the University of Virginia and Associate Director of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies.

Does that fit all in one calling card? That's a long, wonderful CV. She's a specialist in colonial literature, specifically about the Caribbean. It's Professor Marlena Doubt. Hi, Marlena, how are you? Hello, thank you for having me today. I'm doing very well.

Lovely to have you here. And in Comedy Corner, making a glorious comeback to the show, she's an award-winning comedian and writer. You'll have heard her loads of times on Radio 4 and on the Guilty Feminist podcast. She's got her own podcast, Keeping Athena Company. You'll definitely remember her from the Mansa Musa episode, which was a lot of fun. It's Athena Kiblenu. Athena, how are you? I'm fine, thank you. How are you? I'm very well. You studied history and with Mansa Musa, you did pretty well. You had some good knowledge. I smashed it Greg

don't underplay it literally the poor academic had to walk away thinking what should I do with my life you know that's my recollection of events we had a brilliant time on that one how are you with the story of Haiti have you got name recognition here do you know any of the story or are you thinking oh no this is new to me I know you know any of the story or are you thinking, oh, no, this is new to me? I know a little bit of the story. British people would love to say that they were the first nation to abolish slavery. And it's not true. No, I mean, obviously, Haiti, Denmark abolished the slave trade. Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807, but not the abolition of slavery itself until 1833, which comes into force in 1834, but actually doesn't really come into force in Jamaica until 1838. So we're 30 years behind. So, yeah, you know, we do abolish it eventually, but not the first.

Which is why I like to know a little bit about the Haitian Revolution, so I can say, you know, you did in Tucson, a little bit of a turn. Yeah, close enough. I did. You know, someone said to me, it's OK to mispronounce things because it shows that you read a lot,

you know? So that's my excuse. You could, you know, because I just read the name and if he was as famous as he should have been, I would know confidently

how to say, and I do know, it's just I get a bit shy when it comes to like things that I pronounce. Don't worry, we're going to say his name loads of times,

don't we? So by the end of this, everyone will know how to say Toussaint Louverture. That's what I came for. The history stuff is secondary to me, really. That's all right. That's fine. Everyone's got their own thing. So, what do you know?

We start, as ever, with a So What Do You Know? And this is where I have a go at guessing what you at home might know about today's subject. My guess is you don't know much. It's not something we do very much in the UK in the history curriculum. And in terms of recent pop culture, the Haitian Revolution hasn't had much of a kind of glamorous showing. Well, there was a French film called Toussaint Louverture in 2012. It got mixed reviews. There was a film that was meant to be made. Danny Glover wanted to make it. And Hollywood said, but there are no white people in this. So no. Two words, words lads Black Panther come on and if you're a gamer you might know Toussaint Louverture one of the leaders of the revolution from Assassin's Creed he pops up in there I mean you might know that Wyclef Jean he

sings in Creole but he also in 2010 ran to be president for Haiti and he wasn't allowed to be I think there was a sort of legal thing I'm'm not quite sure what happened. But Wyclef Jean, not president, celebrity rapper as president, can ye imagine it? No, ye can't. But Haiti doesn't really get into our headlines. So we're going to try and fix that now. Professor Marlena, this is a really, really complicated story. So can we start with the absolute basics? Modern Haiti, it's a nation of about 11 million people. They are on the west side of the island that I suppose you might call Hispaniola. That's what it was sort of called back in the day. And on the east side is the Dominican Republic.

But how does it end up as Hispaniola? How does it end up, you know, being Spanish, I suppose, and then French? All great questions. So Christopher Columbus, another person you might know and that you might not like very much. He lands on the island in 1492 on the eastern part of the island. He's going to rename it Little Spain, which eventually turns into Hispaniola. The western part of Santo Domingo, as the island would come to be called later, is ceded to France by Spain in 1697 at the Treaty of Ryswick. After that, it becomes the French colony of Saint-Domingue. So this is an island that has changed names

multiple times. And I will note that the indigenous population, of course, had their own names for the island. One of those names was Aiti, an indigenous word meaning mountain. Kiskeia is another name thought to have been given to the part that's now the Dominican Republic. Okay, so it's got quite a complicated linguistic heritage. There are indigenous people, but I'm assuming they do not get upgraded to a five-star luxury resort, do they? It's a sad story very quickly. Absolutely. So almost immediately, the indigenous population of the island raises up in rebellion against Spanish conquistadors. First with Cao Nambo, who's the chief of the Zaragua region,

and his wife, Anacaona. Both of them will be captured and executed. Then their nephew, actually, Cacique Henri, will wage in the 16th century a war that lasts almost 15 years to try to eliminate the Spanish. He's ultimately not successful either. And then you had the scourge of smallpox with the increasing numbers of Spaniards coming over. And while all of that is happening, the Spanish are also busy forcibly transporting captive

Africans to the island to force them to work as slaves. And this process will essentially be complete by the end of the 17th century. And by that, I mean that the indigenous population will be 90% eliminated by that time. Wow. I mean, that's a genocide, basically. Yes, that is the word. It's been called by historians the greatest genocide in human history. The conquest of the Americas, including Mexico and South America and North America. There is no parallel in modern history. We've already had one genocide and the wiping out of the indigenous people. And then, of course, people from Africa are enslaved, captured,

brought across by ship, transplanted to this island, and then given a horrific life of brutal, backbreaking labor, growing crops, presumably. This is a plantation economy, isn't it? The travel writers enshrined this language that the island was the pearl of the Antilles. Their main crop was sugar, but they also grew coffee and indigo and exported those staples in large numbers back to Europe in the triangular slave trade. The fact that they were transporting so much back to Europe that had to be refined also created this dependency. And so it really created a hostile environment for the many different types of people who lived in the colony, including the French colonists and the Spanish colonists themselves by kind of making them dependent back on their European governments. There's a kind of rising, I guess, middle class back in Europe, but they want these goods. They

want the sugars, they want the indigos. Did Haiti compare to other Francophone Caribbean islands like Guadeloupe and Martinique? Or was it exceptional in its cruelty? Because you don't really hear about those other islands as much. The cruelty on the island is more well known than the cruelty in Martinique and Guadeloupe. But it also existed there on a smaller scale in some ways because those islands are just smaller. And we talk about the Haitian Revolution as a singular thing, but actually there had been previous uprisings, rebellions,

resistance in the 1730s, 40s, 50s. So did these ones fail for any specific reason? I wouldn't codify it in language of success or failure because the goals were constantly shifting. For example, once the Haitian Revolution breaks out, the goal is not necessarily to become independent enslaved people would devastate crops, poison the crops, raid plantations, and they would run away. And in fact, there were whole sections of newspapers dedicated to fugitive slave, quote unquote, advertisements. These advertisements kind of unwittingly betray the cruelties of colonialism and slavery because the enslaved people would be described as missing a

limb or whip marks all over their body or an ear cut off or partially cut off. And it was almost as if the planters were testifying to their own cruelty. And so then in the 1750s, you have one of the most famous episodes of enslaved resistance before the Haitian Revolution with a man named Macandal, who is thought to have been African-born. He was poisoning planters and he was using this network of enslaved people to do so. He eventually ends up being captured and he's burned at the stake in 1758 in front of a church in Cap-Fconcet, which was the capital of the colony. But just as they're kind of trying to set him on fire, local legend has it that he transformed

himself into a mosquito and flew away and so Haitian people have used this idea of Macandal as you know you can kill our bodies but you can't really kill the kind of revolutionary spirit it's out there in the air and then it will be interesting because mosquitoes will be the vector of disease that ends up in a sense killing the French later white interesting because mosquitoes will be the vector of disease that ends up, in a sense, killing the French later. White people hate mosquitoes. That's the perfect animal to turn yourself into. There's nothing more frustrating to a white explorer in an equatorial country than a mosquito. It's artful. I love it. It's very tempting to turn yourself into a cobra or a tiger. But a mosquito is really how you overthrow your oppressors

i love it in fact i'm going to try it myself you're going to burn some sage and see if i can come back as a mosquito when i pass it represents how you have to use mythology and symbolism when you don't have structural power and that's how you inspire a generation of people you hear that story general arc didn't turn into a mosquito she's burnt i don't know what animal she would have turned into she could have been anything she was called don't know what animal she would have turned into. She could have been anything. She was called La Louette, so she would have been turned into the lark.

A lark? Nothing's threatening about a lark. You're not going to scare off your oppressors with like a bit of bird song. That's not going to happen. Toussaint Louverture. We mentioned at the top of the show. Is it a name that rings a bell?

I know that he is a heroic figure. I know that he was a leader figure. I know that he was a leader and he's somebody that we should celebrate the same way we celebrate people like Malcolm X. Mylena, can we hear a bit more about the stuff we don't sort of talk about so much, which is his youth. He's born enslaved on the island.

His father is probably from Senegal and had been captured. And he has a sort of interesting story because he doesn't spend his whole life enslaved, does he? No, he doesn't. He very early on in his life becomes very important to his quote unquote master and to the people who run the plantation.

And so he finds himself in these positions of relative privilege, if you will. And by the 1770s, we know that he's actually been emancipated, which is very interesting because he has a wife named Suzanne, and she will remain an enslaved person along with their children. And so here he is, a free man who will go on to purchase a couple of farms of his own and lease some of them and end up leasing the enslaved labor as well. He sort of de facto becomes their owner in a way. And so it adds this very strange paradox to his history, where the same system that had once enslaved him, he participates in.

I guess he can't fight it. Yes. But the interesting thing is, is that once the Haitian revolution begins, interesting thing is, is that once the Haitian revolution begins, immediately he is on the side of abolishing slavery forever. Also, there are documents from the time period that show that, I mean, as late as 1788, that while we understand Toussaint Louverture to have been emancipated, because other documents say that, he's listed on the property of that plantation as an enslaved person. This is one of the reasons why earlier historians said, well, we think he was the overseer of that plantation, not the owner. So it's kind of a complicated and murky situation.

This makes me feel better for shopping at Amazon. You know, that complexity, you know, if he could own people, then I can order, you know, bits and pieces that I need out of convenience, even though I know they don't pay taxes and they've got all kinds of issues going on in their warehouses. So I feel like, oh, if he can blur the lines a little bit, hello. But when you bring down the system, Athena, you obviously will be going for Amazon.

Absolutely, you have my word. Tucson Leaviture is interesting in several ways. He can read and write. He's Catholic. His wife is still enslaved. So it doesn't necessarily correspond to what we expect of someone born into slavery and that he has perhaps education and the faith that the French overseers have. Is he in some way raised a bit more French or is it just, you know, that's what life is like in Haiti? He was Catholic, I would say, in quotation marks, because you had to be, right?

The Code Noir said that you had to make the enslaved Catholic because, of course, indoctrinating enslaved people with religion was thought to be one way that you could kind of keep them in enslavement. You could sort of snuff out any sense of wanting to rebel. And so then isn't it interesting that when rebellion breaks out, Vodou, or Voodoo as they called it, right, is going to be blamed. Because if they are to speak Creole, which we know that Toussaint Louverture did, or if they are to revert to, again in quotation marks, speaking an African language, that this is a way of engaging in some sort of subterfuge that it will lead to rebellion. And so we know that also Toussaint L'Ouverture speaks Arada. His family was from a region in Africa where they

spoke Arada, both of his parents, in fact. We think also he at least had some notions of Spanish, especially later. So here was a person who could converse in multiple languages. So it wasn't just that he could read and write. It was that he was dangerous from a perspective of the kind of worldviews that he was able to glean from being able to be in different camps, to being able to talk to French priests, to being able to talk to the Ongan or the Vodou priests, and to really kind of bring people together. The legends about him were that he could be in multiple places at once. And people said he never sleeps, that he just stays up all night. So there were all these things about him being able to just do this sort of fantastic things

that go along when you read his history is very fascinating precisely because of how people understood him in the era. He sounds like Stormzy. Everyone likes Stormzy. You know, the kids like him, but the adults like him because he's got his book imprint, you know, and like guys like him because he's like a guy, but girls like him because he's a guy.

But it's like there's a lesson to be learned there about being able to speak, to be able to fit in everywhere and not belong anywhere. So that way no one can accuse you of perhaps having ulterior motives. So in 1776,

America decides it wants a Hamilton musical. So they have a revolution. They boot out of the British. So in 1776, America decides it wants a Hamilton musical. So they have a revolution. They boot out the British. And in 1789, France decides it wants a Les Miserables musical. So they boot out the king. Well, I mean, different revolution, but it's my podcast, my rules. In 1791, Haiti has its own revolution.

Marlena, forgive me, but when people talk about the French Revolution, they talk about the radical intellectualism, the philosophy. And you could have imagined people in roll neck jumpers, smoking galois and sitting in cafes and saying, oh, down with the king. Does Haiti receive that 18th century philosophy from France? Are French ideas percolating in or is this just simply people desperately trying to get their freedom? I would say both of those things are true to a certain extent. Certainly, French revolutionary rhetoric trickles into the colony. The free people of color travel back and forth. Planters travel back and forth. The ocean is like a highway.

Ships are constantly coming in and out, bringing pamphlets, bringing the Declaration of Rights of Man, news of the storming of the Bastille. But at the same time, enslaved people were rebelling in their way. And in fact, the colony was incredibly violent from the beginning, even though people did at the time, especially the French planters and people back home in Paris, blame the onset of the Haitian Revolution on the French Revolution. People in the colony, even those like Julien Raymond, a free man of color, said, if you think that enslaved people need the Société des Amis des Noirs, the Society of the Friends of the Black, to rebel, then you've never been on a

plantation, right? All they would have to do is look around at their condition. And what's really interesting is that the Abbé Reynaud, who signed a famous work called The History of the Two Indies, that was a compilation of different kinds revolutionaries, the Haitian revolution was too much. And by that, I mean the idea that black people might kill white people was too much for them to handle. So at this point, we probably need to introduce a man called Boukman Dati. I'm guessing you haven't heard of him, Athena. I'd not heard of him. He sounds like a reggaeton star or reggae artist like Dati Rind, you know, like I've never heard of him. He might be. He is thought to be born in Senegal, I think, but his story is quite complicated. He was enslaved, brought to Jamaica,

then he ends up in Saint-Domingue, and then, I mean, is he a priest, Marlena? What do we call him? He's an orator, he's a leader of people, he gives great speeches. Is he religious? Yeah, so he is thought to be an ungan, or kind of, I guess, in our

parlance, a voodoo priest. And he definitely inspires people with his ceremonies. Buchmann leads this meeting along with another enslaved woman named Cécile Fatimant. And he gives this speech. And the speech doesn't have really anything at all to do with enlightenment philosophy. And I'm actually going to read you his words because I want you to get a sense of what he told them and what inspired them to rebel. He said, The God of the white man calls him to commit crimes. Our God asks only good works of us.

But this God who is so good also orders revenge. He will direct our hands. He will aid us. Throw away the image of the God of the whites who thirsts for our tears and listen to the voice of liberty. And lo and behold, they do listen to that voice of liberty, which to him is the voice of God. I'm convinced. Literally, I almost got out of my chair just there. I don't know what I was going to do, but I almost ran out into the street to do something. But I'll calm down now. That was really moving. Yeah, I mean, it's quite a speech.

As you say, it works because in August 1791, we get the burning of plantations, the sabotaging of the economic system, isn't it? This is people rising up and saying, well, we're going to break the fields, the system that keeps us enslaved. Is blood spilled as well? Yes. So within a few days of this speech, of this ceremony, the enslaved population kind of set fire to the northern plains. And eyewitnesses say that the smell of sugar for the rest of their

lives kind of made them sick. And the whole place is lit up like a conflagration. But of course, plantations are also homes. And this is the paradox of plantation economies and plantation life. And there are women and children and families living there, enslaved families, white families. And the violence is kind of wholesale. And so even though it looks like black people engaging in violence against white people, of course, the white colonists also protect themselves. So you are engaged in warfare and hand-to-hand combat. A lot of the white families flee into the mountains. And in fact, you know, you had a kind of paradox happening as well, because you had formerly enslaved people like Louverture, who

believed 100 percent in the revolution, but who helps his master to safety and in fact to leave the island. You also had enslaved women who would help the families they lived with to get to safety and the children. And then enslaved women acted as healers, both for white people, white soldiers, and for the Haitian revolutionaries themselves. Boukman Dutty, who had been this priest, this leader, this speechmaker, he is killed in the violence because the French, they punish this rebellion.

And so this now brings Toussaint Louverture to the fore. And he's joined by a couple of others. We've got Jean Francais and Georges Biasseau. And Athena, so far, you've liked what you've heard of Toussaint Louverture. What kind of guy do you think he is when it comes to the negotiating table? You're imagining him as a kind of, you know, moderate, or you're thinking he's a kind of banging the table kind of guy. If he can negotiate having a wife and enslavement and him being free, I'd say he was a very effective negotiator. I wouldn't put up with that if he was my man. I'd be like, get back in here. It will take me with you. So before he becomes partnered with his wife, Suzanne, he actually has a different wife. We don't know what happens to her. And he has children with her.

After the Haitian revolution, the French soldiers report to Saint-Lévi-Tour's mistresses and all the gifts that they give to him. So he's a man of his era. Hang on, can I just say, not his era. Look at Boris Johnson. Okay. This is men throughout time. Okay. Let's be real here. Let's park that. Okay. He's a person who's complex, right? Because he is a very sober negotiator who is not given over to hyperbole. So some of his lieutenants and some of his comrades would say things like, kill all the whites, right? Of course, that's what gets reported back home in France.

And Toussaint Lutertre is like, no moderation. We're going to negotiate. He believes in treaties. And he believes that because he has ascended to this leadership position and is an amazing warrior, that he is able to effectively negotiate on his own. And one of the interesting things when you read his memoirs is that he constantly talks about his surprise when he would meet a French general, for example, or a British general, and they would treat him, quote unquote, like an old Negro. They would not recognize him as the person that he recognized himself to be. He says at one point in his memoir, even when I was a slave, I behaved honorably and never behaved dishonorably, even when subjected

to a dishonorable condition. He tried to compromise and negotiate with constituted authority and was rebuffed and pushed back almost at every turn. And the complexity continues with Toussaint Louverture, because in some ways he was happy to continue the plantation economy. And his two sort of co-leaders, they were selling people into slavery, selling them to the Spanish. They were still engaging in the slave trade. So they were sort of compromised and sort of not quite fully radicalized. But at the same time, they were trying to work in the system. And these aren't

people with all the power. So they're having to still negotiate with whoever has the whip hand, so to speak, which is the French and the Spanish. Jean-François and Biasu bump heads then with Toussaint Louverture because they want to negotiate peace and freedom for themselves. Once the Spanish and the British have invaded, this makes things very difficult because the enslaved population now has to fight three world powers. That's obviously going to be very difficult in the numbers, the sheer numbers that they are up against. And so Jean-François and BSU, they go to the side of Spain, as does Louverture initially, and they are sort of willing to say, hey, you know, if you let us escape and you give us amnesty,

we'll go away. And if you let us have our freedom. And Toussaint Louverture is no. And this is how ardent you see the sort of racism of the time period, because even though Toussaint D'Avruch said, I will make sure that people continue to work on the plantations, but you can't whip them and you can't force them and you have to give them days off. You have to compensate them in some way and give them small plots of land. So even though he was saying, I'm going to make sure the plantation economy thrives, you just can't do it this way. The planters were so determined to enslave other people. They said no and effectively sealed their own fate. The colony could have been Spanish if only the Spanish would have given into Toussaint Louverture's demands. And in fact, the French

commissioners that will be sent, three men, they will realize when they go up against Toussaint Louverture that they are no match, that he's not going to compromise, that he really is willing to die for the cause of freedom. And it forces them to abolish slavery in 1793 before the French National Assembly can do so back home in France. In 1793, Britain and Spain are at war with France. And so they are turning up on Haiti in order to try and cause chaos there and extend the war and steal this property. So Toussaint is able to essentially play off these global enemies against each other. But he's also struggling with the regional politics, the planters who own the land on the island.

So it's a very complicated geopolitical story that's about the small and the big and the epic. One of the sort of fascinating things is that Louverture ends up as a French general with French troops, with white troops under him. And he is marching around fighting against the Spanish who he's just been allies with. So how does that happen? And also, is he thinking himself as a Frenchman? Do other people think of him as a Frenchman? Do his fellow leaders think, hang on a minute, you've betrayed the cause. He's literally wearing a French uniform suddenly. He definitely believes himself to be French.

He writes these memoirs believing that they're going to be given to Napoleon and will testify to his goodness and his righteousness and that he didn't do anything wrong. And so even until the end, he continues to say that he is French. He makes a constitution in 1801 in which he says slavery is permanently ended in this colony, but we are going to die free and French. This becomes something that will be poked fun of on stage. They will sort of say, oh, the Haitian revolutionary generals with kind of two-sounding virtue at the center. Oh, one day they're wearing, you know, Spanish epaulettes,

and then the next day they're wearing French, and then play with the language of interspersing Spanish and French and Coyote words in there to sort of get at how to them, this was a caricature. Yeah, I'm getting visions of Kanye West wearing the Make America Great Again cap, but at the same time, he's Kanye West. Like, you know, there's probably loads of positive things. There aren't probably, there are positive things that this man has done. I'm getting visions of Kanye West wearing the Make America Great Again cap. But at the same time, he's Kanye West. Like, you know, there's probably loads of positive things. I don't know, there aren't probably. There are positive things that this man has done and continues to do in his career. But then he does that.

Since everybody felt French or Spanish, did anyone ever make an argument for feeling African at the time? There were definitely enslaved people who identified as, for example, Congo from the Congo region. And one of the reasons they did that was not necessarily because they were always from that region, but because the travel writers had written that the enslaved people that they had kidnapped from the Congo area were the most barbaric and savage. And so there were enslaved people who were like, oh, like you think us fighting for our freedom and the fact that you can't whip us to break us and that we'll fight you is like savage? Like, well, let us be savages then. So they kind of like reappropriate a terminology

that was really meant to actually create fear around them. And that fear would lead to extra violence against them. Toussaint Louverture, he does end up essentially wielding quite a lot of power and his other two leaders end up leaving. And so he's kind of the big daddy in the north of the island, or at least in the northwest, because Haiti, of course, is only the west side of Hispaniola.

His policies in terms of party manifesto, if you were going to vote for Toussaint Louverture, Athena, I'm going to read out his policies here. And I want you to sort of just have a little feedback very quickly on what you think they might be. What do you think his policy was on racial integration? I think he's for it, actually. If he's for lots of kids and lots of wives,

yeah, he's probably into... He's probably not going to deny himself. He's not going to make a rule that makes little things like that impossible. So no, he's into that, I think. You're absolutely right. And then on the economy, we've heard already he was trying to keep the plantations going, but without slavery. So the eradication of slavery, but still

baking sugar, still indigo, still coffee. Freedom of the press, Athena. Where do you think he stands on censorship? Oh, I think he doesn't want free press. And I'll explain. I think he wants to control it, actually. I think he understands the power of the press.

He wants to control it. Is that right? Yeah, he's absolutely true. This is great. What do you think about the right to civil protest? He wouldn't like protest because he knows what the power of protest is. You know, he knows, oh, I can't let people protest because when I protested, I really messed things up. So no one can do what I did.

That's what I think. What about divorce? I don't think he was up for that. He was just like, no, you're mine now. Yeah, the divorce was banned as well, wasn't it? And then in terms of freedom of religion, Marlene, you already pointed out that really Catholicism was a way of controlling people.

So again, he carried on saying that Catholicism was the only religion you could practice in public. So he's a little bit conservative. He's not kind of this great left-wing radical. He's sort of, he's come to power and gone, all right, look, I'm the sensible grown-up here, but these policies are a little bit controlling. Sounds like new Labour.

He believes in an organised society regulated from the top down with different layers of power and where people obey the powers that be. And the thing is that he makes himself the power, makes himself Governor General of the colony for life in that constitution that I mentioned. Yeah. With the right to choose his successor, which he effectively takes Napoleon, who had come to power in France, out of the equation by saying, we're going to stay a French colony, but I'm going to be in charge here. Toussaint Louverture has problems with people in the mountains who don't want to be under his occupation, under his rule. And then in the south of Haiti, there's a separate rival in André Rigaud, who used to be mates with him, used to be friends, used to be an ally. But Rigaud

has a slightly different background. His mother was enslaved, but his father is French, is a planter, is wealthy, is white. And he and Toussaint Louverture have a war and it's called the War of the Knives, which either sounds incredibly violent or it sounds like this, like a sort of cutlery dispute about the kind of etiquette you use. But what is the War of the Knives? How does this play out? What happens is that Rigaud is in control in the southern part of the colony. And he and Toussaint L'Ouverture essentially wrestle for control over who is going to be in charge. So it is a conflict that is not that original, right? Because here you have two men who both want to be in charge. They fight, but Toussaint L'Ouverture rallies two very

important people to his side, Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henri Christophe, who will rule in succession over independent Haiti. And they essentially help him to drive Rigaud out, to reduce his forces and force him to sail away to France. Fair play. But Toussaint then falls foul of Europe's new hot-headed megalomaniac, Emperor Napoleon. Not yet emperor, in fact.

First consul Napoleon, and that goes badly. Napoleon is not playing ball here. Napoleon reintroduces slavery. France had abolished slavery, but he brings it back. Yes, so he actually does that after he's gotten rid of Toussaint Louverture.

But what he does before that is another, genocide is another word that we can use in this scenario, because he sends his brother-in-law, Leclerc, who is married to Napoleon's sister. So the two of them sail to France with the Leclerc expedition. And they use all manner of tactics to reduce the entire formerly enslaved population of the island. And in fact, when you read their missives back and forth to one another, the different generals, they talk about eliminating

all of the people of color and they engage in mass drownings. This is a technique they borrowed from the French Revolution, from the terror. They put free men of color mostly on a boat that opened up on the bottom and they sailed them out to sea and they opened it up. And in fact, American eyewitnesses from the United States, who don't really have a reason to want to be on the side of the revolutionaries, write back home to magazines and say, there were so many bodies floating in the bay. It was like their eyes were all upturned to heaven and the stench was atrocious. And then when Leclerc dies of yellow fever, Rochambeau, his second in command, who had actually previously been the governor of the colony, comes to power, imports bulldogs from Cuba and sends them to eat the Haitian revolutionaries. warfare. And at the same time, they have signed a treaty with Britain that gave them back Martinique, where slavery had actually never been abolished. And they reinstate slavery in Guadeloupe in August of 1802. And also you have news of Toussaint Louverture's capture and arrest trickling back in.

Because in May of 1802, Louverture had surrendered to the French. He'd gone home, was tricked, jailed, sailed to France and died a horrible death in France. Yeah, he dies in prison, separated from his family. It's a very sad end to a story, to a career that had promised so much and was going so well. I mean, we're recording this, by coincidence, on the 14th of July, which is Bastille Day, the great celebration in France. And yet this is a story where the French are brutal. And, you know, it's not just the French, of course, Britain, Belgium, all sorts of nations have done horrific things in this period of history. But this is such a brutal re-invasion, re-implementation

of slavery. It's very sort of Star Wars, you know, we've got the hero is dead, the empire has risen, you know, we've got a new resistance rising. We then see the rise, I guess, of someone who has to be more hardline. And that's Dessalines, isn't it? He's seen what happens to Toussaint Louverture and thinks, right, okay, so it's war. It's, you know, there's no compromises here. So Jean-Jacques Dessalines had been friends, had been an ally, and he's the one who frees Haiti, really, rises up, launches an army, boots the French out and again gets rid of slavery permanently and we get to then say Haiti is the first sovereign nation to abolish slavery I know that they were like the first people to overthrow their colonizers so to speak only because I'm sick

of Wilberforce and I keep hearing about this guy and it's just like I had to find out why I needed something so I could just keep people quiet when they started to go about Wilberforce and that took me to the Haitian revolution. Not that I don't respect Wilberforce, by the way, but within the context of global history, he is part of the story and not the whole story. In some ways, France screws up. Things were working out all right under Toussaint Louverture

and then they've ended up losing the island. So the violence backfires, really. Why? Because first of all, if you want to commit genocide in your colony, who's going to do the work? It's a bit like our immigration policies now, right? Who's going to pick the fruit, guys? Think about this. So they're taking all these people and they're killing them brutally, but these are the people that are supposed to do the work.

And secondly, if the colony was still working, and if it was still producing products and goods, and it was part of this triangular economy, and we know that slavery was fundamentally financial, why bother? Was it posturing? Was it ideological? That's what I don't understand. When you look at this history, and you lay it out for precisely the reasons that you've outlined, you can only come to the conclusion that Napoleon is a megalomaniacal racist because his own wife tells him, do not send Leclerc. You need to keep Toussaint Louverture there. You have to keep the peace and freedom of the blacks. And he is the one to do that for you. And yet Napoleon, his pride is so wounded that Louverture has essentially signed and ratified this own constitution, naming himself governor general for life, that he loses his head over it and destroys the colony

all in the name of constituting his own authority. So yes, it doesn't make logical sense. And to me, the reason for that is because there is an entire racist screed and racist ideology that undergirds things. When you read the letters, Leclerc and then Rochambeau and then afterward, Napoleon and many of his successors think it's fine if we kill that whole population. We'll just go to Africa and get more people. So Jean-Jacques Dessalines has succeeded. He gets rid of the French. He boots them out and Haiti is free. And he celebrates by giving himself a new title.

Athena, do you want to guess what it is? I think it goes to his head too, isn't it? Grand Emperor, King of the Everything, Creator of All. You know, something along those lines. You know what guys are like, you know. He's Emperor Jacques I. He'd been Governor General

first of all, but Emperor Jacques I. And he does it before Napoleon. Before Napoleon is made emperor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines is emperor. So Napoleon is a copycat, which is nice. And Dessalines, as we've said, is a little bit more hardline in terms of military policies. But he's not going to murder everyone on the island who disagrees with him. He's perhaps a little bit more confrontational or aggressive than Toussaint Louverture in terms of policy. or aggressive than Toussaint Louverture in terms of policy, but he runs the island trying to make things work, ending slavery, trying to keep the system going economically,

and then he is murdered. So what happens? How does he go from being Emperor Jacques to being another dead guy in this story? Well, I mean, what we know for sure happens is that his own soldiers basically ambush him and turn against him. And the related question is, well, why would they do that?

And this is where you get sort of all differing kinds of theories. And well, one is, is that Desalines was a warrior and he was a fighter, but things were in disarray. Soldiers are not being paid. There's harsh punishment for disobeying his authority. People don't really like that. They've just come out of a brutal war. They've been enslaved before. They really don't want to have corporal punishments, for example, floggings. Now, some of those floggings were not on de Salin's orders, but that just goes to show

you that some of the people in his administration were kind of doing things that they wanted to do. And in fact, giving out the parcels of land that had formerly belonged to the white planters should have been done in a uniform manner. People say, oh, there's favoritism. The people in charge of that are giving it to their friends and taking it for themselves. And then there's rivalries. There's the rival generals who also maybe would like to have some power. Because remember, you had at some point, you had like 2000 leaders in the words of CLR James during the Haitian Revolution. So we talk about the big ones,

we know their names, but you had a lot of other people who wanted power. He's murdered in 1806. And we then get the kind of experimental stage of Haitian independence, where it's a bit like when your favourite band releases their third album, they've gone in a weird new direction. You're like, oh, okay, they're doing dubstep now. We've got the king in the north, is very game of thrones and that's and he's very much bling palace bling uniforms big fancy i'm the king and then in the south of the of the country we have kind of american democracy as the idea being imported in and that's petillon so north and South have split again.

There's tension there between them. Pétillant and Henri Christophe had been allies. They had been friends. Is this again just, you know, male bravado, or is this about politics and how best to run a country? It actually really is about, in the beginning, politics and how best to run a country. But there is a bit of bravado there as well, right?

So after Desalinas is assassinated, Henri Christophe immediately becomes kind of elected to be provisory president. But they're like, we're going to do things different this time. We're going to create like a parliament, but it's a parliament that has 64 people in it, right? And we're going to make a constitution. Well, it doesn't seem like Henri Christophe

was in favor of that way of setting things up because he doesn't sign a constitution. Well, it doesn't seem like only Christophe was in favor of that way of setting things up because he doesn't sign this constitution. The parliament gives them kind of a lot of power. They have the power to appoint the president essentially. And so they ratify this constitution. Only Christophe is elected by them to be president, but he's kind of like, these are not my laws. And he actually tries to overthrow the government to a certain extent. And he doesn't succeed and flees to the north. At first, he makes himself, you'll like this title, President and Generalissimo of the Earth and Seas. Not at all deluded right there. If you're going to call yourself a Generalissimo, you might as well take in the sky, I guess, or the universe.

So he was a humble man. He was humble in himself. Pétion becomes president of the South. Now, yes, democracy in a sense with an asterisk, because later in 1816, when Pétion needs to be reelected, he's just going to say, let's just forget that whole process and I'll just become president for life. The Vladimir Putin model. Yeah, I'm running this forever. But of course you elect me, but forever. And in the long and the short of it, Haiti becomes a single nation in 1820, because we get the death of Pétion in the south, we get the suicide of Henri Christophe in the north. And so we end up with Jean-Pierre Boyer coming to power and going, right, I'm uniting Haiti. I'll bring together the north and the south. And then

he marches into the east of the island, the Spanish bit, and says, I'm having this as well, 1822. And he unites the entire island. That feels like the end of the story. Is that the end of the story? I mean, it's probably not, is it? It's definitely not the end of the story. story. Is that the end of the story? I mean, it's probably not, is it? It's definitely not the end of the story. Oh, no. So one thing that's really important is that Haiti was an independent state, but had not gained recognition from any of the other countries in the world, because France was still saying that's our colony. And so the French King Charles X in 1825 comes up with, I guess, what he figured to be an ingenious plan, but to make the Haitians pay for their freedom, which was 150 million francs.

And Boyer, with all these fleets behind him with 500 cannons, agrees for the Haitian state to pay this amount and levies draconian taxes against the Haitian people to basically pay off this debt to France. Wow. So France is brutalized, enslaved, captured, murdered. And then it's like, pay up. It's really... But what says more is that over history, at any point in time, somebody in France had the power to cancel that debt. And they didn't. And over and over, because they don't finish paying the debt,

the loans that they're forced to take out. So not only do they say you owe us this money, it's not like just pay us as you go along. They force them to take out these very high interest loans

which reduced to 90 million in 1838. They pay it off in the 1880s but they don't finish paying the taxes, the fees, all kinds of tariffs until 1947. Oh, wow.

I've got one word. Reparations. Well, we'll see. One day, maybe. That reminds me that the British government only paid off the debt to slave-owning people who, in 1807, received compensation for the abolition of slavery. They paid that off in 2015. So these stories are part of our story now the nuance window frankly we could talk for hours and hours and hours but that's not how podcasts work so that

brings us really to the part of the show that i love the most which is called the nuance window it's where athena and I take a little breather and we listen to our expert, who gets two minutes to tell us something we need to know. Marlena, without much further ado, The Nuance Window, please. Well, as you've just heard about the indemnity, I want to talk about some of the things

that happened before that. Unfortunately, Haiti's fight for freedom did not end when the Haitian revolutionaries declared their independence in 1804. So first of all, Thomas Jefferson, president of the United States, issued a trade embargo against Haiti that lasted until 1810. Great Britain, while trading with Haiti and while the leaders of Haiti enjoyed the approbation of Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce, still refused to formally recognize Haitian independence, which was important because it had all kinds of implications for trade, especially with other nations. Then France

exacted this enormous sum. And only after that, in 1838, did England, when it had finally abolished its own slavery, acknowledge Haitian independence? The United States waited until 1862, well after the start of the U.S. Civil War. So when people ask, was the Haitian Revolution successful, given the difficulties that Haiti continued to experience throughout the 20th century and up until the present day? Did the Haitian Revolution succeed? Was it successful? Did it fail?

The Haitian Revolution did not fail. The world failed the Haitian Revolution with? Was it successful? Did it fail? The Haitian Revolution did not fail. The world failed the Haitian Revolution with consistent threats to bring back slavery and imposing really attacks on its freedom. Thank you so much. You don't need the whole podcast. Just edit that 90 seconds. That's the podcast, right?

That's it. Right. It's like we talk about black history as this thing that occurs in a vacuum, but it doesn't. It occurs in the context of how other countries behave. And's like we talk about black history as this thing that occurs in a vacuum, but it doesn't. It occurs in the context of how other countries behave. And if you was to learn the history, you'd learn the history of all the countries that put Haiti in the position that it is in. It didn't just magically become a place of suffering and violence.

And it's tragic. And it's at a time when we're trying to reflect on our past and think about how we're trying to fix things in the present day. we're trying to reflect on our past and think about how we're trying to fix things in the present day you know if that couldn't fix things if a revolution couldn't fix things it's more food for thought but I'm going to say that the revolution was successful because sometimes it's like mental slavery because I think if you have that kind of spirit you can become entrepreneurial or you can be resilient or you can and you can survive certain things. And it's like it goes back to the mosquito symbolism, like that spirit has kept people surviving to this day. So what do you know now?

So it's time to see how much Athena has learned. It's time for the So What Do You Know Now? It's a 60 second quickfire quiz for our comedian. Athena, last time out, you got 10 out of 10 on Mantsa Musa, which is a flawless score. Do you feel the pressure here? Yeah, because I peaked too soon. I peaked far too soon. I should have got five out of 10. So you'd have lower expectations of me now. Yeah. So that's really and I was showing off. You know, no one likes to show off. I'm sure you're going to get 10 again. I feel it. I like the belief. I like the belief.

Okay, here we go. Question one. Haiti's indigenous population, usually called the Taino people, but they've got several names, they were wiped out by European disease. Which disease was it? Smallpox. Smallpox is right.

Before the revolution, what role did Toussaint Louverture have on the plantation? He was an overseer, although that is up for debate from what I could distinguish from what you were saying, but the belief is that he was an overseer. Yeah, absolutely. In May 1794, Louverture switched his military allegiance from Spain to which country? France.

It is France. Which powerful French leader did Louverture really piss off in 1801? Napoleon. Napoleon is correct. Because you made a wrong face. Did I? That's just my face. Sorry, I've just got a weird face. In 1799, Toussaint Louverture fought against his friend André Rigaud. What was the name of the war? Think cutlery.

Think cutlery. Think cutlery. Battle of the spoons. The war of the knives. Oh, my God. After Louverture died in prison in 1803, who was proclaimed leader of the resistance in Haiti? Dessalines. Okay, it was Dessalines.

Dessalines. Dessalines. I said Dessalines, the footballer, but I meant Dessalines. Marcel Dessalines would have been an excellent leader. Until unification, Haiti had a king in the north and a president in the south. Can you name one of them? No. Henri Christophe.

There he goes. Henri Christophe, king in the north. In what year were the two Haitian states united to create a single country? It was 1820. It was 1820. Which Haitian-American rapper wasn't allowed to run for president in 2010? Wyclef Jean. Wyclef Jean.

Wyclef, yeah. Before he became king, Henri Christophe gave himself what fancy title? This was the king of the earth and sea, but he used the attack, generalissimo, generalissimo of the earth, earth, wind and fire,

which he should have done. He didn't do that. He said earth and seas, which was lovely of him, wasn't it? Bang on. Nine out of 10. Really impressive.

Well done, Athena. Fantastic. I'm happy with nine out of 10. I'm really pleased. You did really well there, Athena. And I think that proves you've had an excellent teacher in Professor Marlena. I've had a wonderful teacher, in fact.

Listeners, if you enjoyed today's podcast, please do share it with your friends. Leave a review online. Make sure to subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds so you never miss an episode. But for now, a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner, the marvellous Professor Marlena Doubt from the University of Virginia. Thank you, Marlena. Thank you so much for having me. This was such a pleasure. The pleasure was all ours. And in Comedy Corner, the absolutely awesome Athena Kablenu. Thank you, Athena. It's a privilege to be amongst all these brains and knowledge. Thank you for having me.

And to you listeners, join me next time for another rollicking rummage through the annals of history with two top guests. And if you can't wait until then, why not listen again to Athena when she's talking to Dr Gus about Mansa Musa? That was a really fun episode. And in the meantime, I'm off to go and crowdfund for Danny Glover's Toussaint Louverture movie. Let's make it. Until next time, bye! You're Dead to Me was a Muddy Knees media production for BBC Radio 4. The researchers were Emmy Rose Price-Goodfellow and Olivia Wyatt. You're Dead to Me was a Muddy Knees media production for BBC Radio 4.

The researchers were Emmy Rose Price-Goodfellow and Olivia Wyatt. The script was by Emma Neguse and me. The project manager was Isla Matthews and the producer was Cornelius Mendes. From the one village behind the mountain. Imagine you're living a very different life on the other side of the world. You feel I cannot do anything. You live silently in the shadows. Just stay home, bring children, make food. And then someone takes your child,

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