The slave revolution that two hundred years ago created the state of Haiti alarmed and excited public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic. Its repercussions ranged from the world commodity markets to the imagination of poets, from the council chambers of the great powers to slave quarters in Virginia and Brazil and most points in between. Sharing attention with such tumultuous events as the French Revolution and the Napoleonic War, Haiti's fifteen-year struggle for racial equality, slave emancipation, and colonial independence challenged notions about racial hierarchy that were gaining legitimacy in an Atlantic world dominated by Europeans and the slave trade. The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World explores the multifarious influence—from economic to ideological to psychological—that a revolt on a small Caribbean island had on the continents surrounding it. Fifteen international scholars, including eminent historians David Brion Davis, Seymour Drescher, and Robin Blackburn, explicate such diverse ramifications as the spawning of slave resistance and the stimulation of slavery's expansion, the opening of economic frontiers, and the formation of black and white diasporas. They show how the Haitian Revolution embittered contemporary debates about race and abolition and inspired poetry, plays, and novels. Seeking to disentangle its effects from those of the French Revolution, they demonstrate that its impact was ambiguous, complex, and contradictory.
David P. Geggus is a professor of history at the University of Florida in Gainesville and a former Guggenheim and National Humanities Center fellow. He has published extensively on the history of slavery and the Caribbean, with a particular focus on the Haitian Revolution. He is the author of Slavery, War and Revolution: The British Occupation of Saint Domingue, 1793–1798 and an editor of A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean. Geggus lives in Gainesville.
You May Also Find These Documents Helpful
-
A haunting narrative, James H. Sweet’s micro-history of the life and times of Domingos Álvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World is a stellar work central to understanding African agency in the eighteenth-century from a bottom up perspective. Traditional historiographies mostly reflect the experiences of the white social and mobile elite consequently, a top down perspective. However, Sweet focuses on the view from below the elite, and chronicles the life of a native African male slave, Domingos Álavrez, between the tumultuous years of 1730 and 1750 consequently, revealing the impact and influences African culture imprinted on the Atlantic world and the America’s.…
- 556 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
The Haitian Revolution is one of the most important events in our world history, but at the same time, one of the least discussed. The slave uprising on the small island of St. Domingue in the caribbean had surprisingly global effects, from the toppling one of the greatest military minds in history to setting the stage for the United States to become the power it is today. The documentary, Égalité for all: Toussaint L Ouverture and the Haitian Revolution, set out to describe in its entirety the pre-existing conditions, events of the uprising and after-effects of the revolution, and does an excellent job giving an objective and purly historical outlook on the event. With an event like the Haitian Revolution, it is easy to take the western…
- 1013 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays -
The Haitian Revolution was one of the world’s most extraordinary revolutions. It was a powerful slave rebellion that occurred from 1791 to 1804 and is the Western Hemisphere’s most successful slave rebellions known. It all began with the oppression of blacks, when they were treated unjustly by white supremacy and were forced into slavery. They had to treat upper classes with respect and had to work in unbearable conditions, and if they didn’t want to work, land owners had the right to shoot them. Many colored people wanted to rebel against them, including Haitian Revolution leader Toussaint Louverture. Also referred to as the “Black George Washington”, he was an ambitious leader who trained thousands of people and fought against three empires-the…
- 377 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
The concepts of equality and liberty drove revolutionaries to expel their colonial overlords to abolish slavery and create an equal and just society. The idea of equality appealed to lower class Americans such as mestizos, mulattoes and natives, but especially inspired black slaves. Lower class Americans believed a revolution would move them up in society to the level of creoles while slaves saw revolutions as a way to gain freedom. Haiti’s declaration of independence in 1904, showed slaves’ motivations by stating that they would rather die than be forced back into in slavery and that they must create a government that protects the Haitians’ freedom. As former slaves, the Haitians were extremely worried the French would try to invade them again, as Napoleon had tried to do to fund his wars in Europe. Thus,…
- 449 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
Toussaint Louverture was the first to apprehend the law and rebel against it. He used the idea that slaves and people of color should be free in his new regime to take down France and its law. The Code Noir was a spark for the Haitian Revolution that took place in the 1791 to 1804 when Haiti finally gained its independence from the French. As a colony, Haiti produced “profitable coffee , sugar , cotton, dyewoods and hardwoods.” 2 However, there was an intense bloody civil war that started with slaves to gain freedom. With Toussaint as General, he would take over Haiti and push the France back to gain the freedom Saint-Domingue needed. After the revolt, the ‘free-soil policy’ gave slaves the right to be free on Haitian ground. This policy became a turning point in Haitian history - it gave rights to already existing slaves to become a citizen of haiti. “Between…
- 1337 Words
- 6 Pages
Good Essays -
Hickey, D.R. (1982). America's response to the slave revolt in Haiti, 1791-1806. Journal of the Early Republic, 2(4), 361-379.…
- 525 Words
- 3 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
With all these acts and new ideas of rebellion came the period of the Haitian slave revolution, which was a period of brutal conflict in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, leading to the elimination of slavery and the establishment of Haiti as the first republic ruled by people of African ancestry. Although hundreds of rebellions occurred in the New World during the centuries of slavery, only the revolt on Saint-Domingue, which began in 1791, was successful in achieving permanent independence under a new nation, for its regarded as a defining moment in the history of Africans in the New World.…
- 797 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
Furthermore the Haitian Revolution enhanced “abolition in the North”(Lecture. Oct2), directly leading to the increase of the free black population in the North. In the nation of Haiti itself, blacks were free from the…
- 312 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
The turn of the 19th century was a period of revolutions that brought about drastic impacts and changes to many Western nations. The driving force for the majority of the revolutions during this time was the pursuit of freedom, a universal right that all people are guaranteed equality and liberty. When it is threatened, an uprising of the masses becomes evitable to ensure protection of such freedom. The French Revolution and the Haitian Revolution were two key examples that resulted from the concept of freedom. The French Revolution and the Haitian Revolution overlapped, and the challenges in France against the old order created a wave of rebellion in Saint Domingue. This paper will compare and contrast the similarities and differences of the revolution through the different lenses: the precursor and causes, ideas and philosophies, roles of violence, social, political, and economic changes, impacts of wars, and great power politics.…
- 2865 Words
- 8 Pages
Better Essays -
Even after the independence, the fear of being invaded by foreign forces remained in Haitians. After Toussaint L’ouverture’s captivation and death, Dessalines became the sole leader of the army of slaves. Although “French troops remain in the eastern part of Hispaniola and France is actively lobbying England, Spain and the United States to isolate Haiti commercially and diplomatically (History of Haiti)”, Dessalines was determined that slavery would never return on the island. He, along with other generals, swore to “renounce France forever, to die rather than live under its domination, and to combat with their last breath for Independence” (Brown 229). Yes, the revolution was complex and several revolts during these thirteen years led to the largest and most successful emancipation of slavery in the Western hemisphere.…
- 2237 Words
- 9 Pages
Powerful Essays -
Proof of the enlightenment’s ideas spreading to the Haitian slaves is shown in documents like History of the Revolution of…
- 454 Words
- 2 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
The Haitian Revolution was the struggle between slaves fighting for their rights and their owners fighting to keep slavery. The inequality of the social structure and the declaration of the rights of man and citizen were causes of the Haitian Revolution due to the fact that they all led to the slaves successfully revolting against the slave owners. Overall, the Haitian Revolution aimed to fight for freedom for the slaves, because of its history of the inequality of the social structure and new ideas that spread among the slaves. The Haitian Revolution’s focus on freedom of slavery showed that it was caused by the cruelness the slaves had suffered because the white slave owners saw them as animals that work on their plantations.…
- 409 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
The book which was first published in 2007 with the ISBN 976-8189-27-4 diverts its focus on the nature of the slave society and its development in the four ceded Islands to Britain by France. This book is the first attempt to analyse the nature of the slave society in these four communities during sixty critical years of slavery in the Caribbean. It further examines the economic, political, social, religious and legal organisation of society against a background of initial economic decline and shows how it was affected by total dependence upon the institution of Negro Slavery. Focusing on the period 1763 to 1823, Marshall compiles together the history of these Windward Islands to build our understanding of their place in imperial competition for wealth and power between the French and the British by exploiting the poor. He analyses the social structure of their populations and the relationships among the various…
- 1876 Words
- 8 Pages
Powerful Essays -
The journal article, ‘The Revolt On The Slave Ship Creole: Popular resistance to slavery in post-emancipation Nassau’ was written by Edward Eden. Dr. Edward Eden is a professor of English at Hanover College, Indiana, U.S.A. This article was taken from the ‘Journal of the Bahamas Historical Society, October 2000,’ pages 13 through 20.’ As penned by the author the main purpose of this article is to familiarize its Bahamian readers with the revolt on the slave ship Creole in an effort to solicit sources of information that may have been missed or lost to get a better understanding “about cooperation among American and Bahamian blacks in resistance to slavery.”…
- 1448 Words
- 4 Pages
Better Essays -
Knight, Franklin W. and Colin S. Palmer (eds) (1989) The Modern Caribbean. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.…
- 5591 Words
- 23 Pages
Powerful Essays