Toussaint L’Óuverture

by Read Listen Learn

When Europeans first went to the Caribbean in the 1500s, it was a paradise of tropical islands, large and small, with just a few Carib and Arawak Indians living on them. Most of the islands had very rich, volcanic soil, high rainfall and a year-round warm climate ideal for plantations. Within a hundred years of finding them, the Europeans had turned many of these beautiful islands into slave labour camps. The slaves had an average life expectancy of three years but they were cheap and plentiful and could quickly be replaced with more slaves from Africa.

Sugar was the number one crop. Demand was now high in Europe where those other tropical commodities, tea, coffee and chocolate, needed some sugar to make them sweet. The business in sugar from the Caribbean to Western Europe completed the Atlantic trade triangle. In Europe, the emerging industrial revolution produced more and more cheap manufactures like woollen blankets, shotguns or mirrors which, though cheap for the Europeans to make, might be traded for a number of slaves in Africa. These African slaves were then taken to the Caribbean and the Carolinas, where they were needed and brought a good price. Sugar planting is very heavy work.

By the 18th century, the Caribbean sugar crop was the biggest money maker in the world. The French developed a huge sugar colony on one half of the large island of Hispaniola. It was called Saint Domingue; later, it would be called Haiti. It was, by far, the biggest sugar producer in the world and made as much money for the planters there as all the other islands put together. Other European countries envied the French their 'sugar bowl' in the Caribbean; especially the British.

But times were changing. Back in Europe there was more and more opposition to slavery. Through books and newspapers, educated Europeans had got some idea of just what the sugar in their tea or coffee was costing in human suffering. Slaves were whipped often, tortured and branded. The women and girls were frequently raped, the diet was poor and execution of male slaves was very common. When revolts broke out here and there, they were put down with dreadful brutality: hundreds of slaves might be hanged from trees at the side of the road to serve as a deadly warning to other slaves thinking of fighting or running away.

In St. Domingue, all the extremes of Caribbean slavery were found together. The proportion of whites in the population was very, some would say dangerously, low. The plantations tended to be very big with thousands or even tens of thousands of slaves. Discipline was hard, fast and impersonal. The French gave civil rights to people on the island according to the amount of white blood they had. All mixed race (mulatto) people were graded: three quarters white, half white, a quarter white, right down to a sixty-fourth part white. A person who had this tiny drop of white blood would be more privileged than a fully black person.

Nonetheless, both black and mixed race (mulatto) people could be free men and planters; they could own slaves if they could buy them. Whites could never be slaves but, uniquely on St. Domingue, the capital, Port-au-Prince, actually had a white underclass that could be relied on to form an ugly mob of looters and hooligans at the first sign of trouble. It was a socially and racially complex society where a very few planters and merchants, mostly white, got very rich by working Africans to death under the hot sun. No wonder, then, that more and more Europeans wanted it to stop. Most of those against slavery were people of conscience, often deeply religious. They felt that the Africans were also God's children and should be treated fairly.

But, the real opposition to slavery came increasingly from economists and business experts who felt that, apart from any moral questions, it was not the cheapest, most efficient way of using a workforce. Their argument was that, whilst sugar plantations worked the slaves to death half the year, agricultural and economic patterns meant that there was very little work for the slaves the rest of the year but the planter, their owner, still had to guard, feed and clothe them. By contrast, a capitalist factory owner in Manchester or Lyons used free labour: men and women were paid for the work they did but, if the factory owner didn't need them, he didn't use them and so didn't pay them. They were not his property and, if they starved to death for lack of work and wages, well, that was their problem and, anyway, there were always lots of new workers looking for jobs. With seasonal work, though it may seem a paradox, paid workers are cheaper than slaves.

In another development, European agricultural scientists had learned how to extract large amounts of good quality sugar from a root crop, sugar beet, that grew well in cold, northern climates. It now seemed you needed neither slaves nor tropical heat to produce sugar. This meant the end for large-scale sugar production in the Caribbean. A change was coming, a revolution.

Surprisingly, when the revolution did come, it was not to St. Domingue, nor to any slave island, but to France itself. The king was executed and all sorts of new and extreme politics came out into the open. Many of the French revolutionaries spoke of 'rights' and 'freedom' for everyone, not just the king and his aristocrats. Many of the French planters from St. Domingue spent up to half the year in Paris where, in the cafés, they discussed all the latest political ideas. When they returned to the Caribbean, these same planters would discuss the egalitarian and revolutionary politics of France in front of the house slaves who served the food at dinner parties.

Arrogance blinded the planters to what they were doing. They did not stop to think how much more these ideas would mean to a black slave. They never imagined that these African servants understood concepts like liberty and equality. Indeed, they didn't think they could understand French well enough to follow the conversation. They were wrong. Though all slaves spoke 'patois', the Creole dialect of the island, quite a few could speak and understand French, and a very few had the education to understand the politics as well. One such slave was François Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture.

Toussaint was born a slave in 1743 but, in his thirties, he bought himself out and became a free man. He was the son of Gaou Guinou, an African prince from Benin, captured in war and brought as a slave to the Caribbean. Toussaint seems to have received a very wide education from his godfather, Pierre Baptiste. After he had bought himself out, he continued to work on the same plantation as a paid manager; and he seems to have made quite a bit of money in business. When the revolution broke out around 1791, he was about fifty years old.

The first fighting did not involve the black slaves. It was in-fighting among the French along lines drawn by the revolution in France. The instability caused led to slave revolts which ripped across the island, with the slaves often taking a bloody revenge on the planters and their families for their cruel behaviour in the past. Toussaint was not involved at this early stage but he took care to send his wife and family to safety in Santo Domingo, the Spanish half of the island.

Soon, Toussaint joined the revolutionary forces. He became a medical officer (he had a knowledge of both African and European medicine), and also commanded a company of soldiers. It seems that, even at this early stage, Toussaint involved himself in the generals' discussions of tactics and strategy. He also negotiated supplies from the Spanish, who backed the revolution.

Toussaint won a reputation for running things in good order and training his soldiers well and often. He attracted the best junior officers and, though he did not always win, the French soon saw him as a very good general. All the while, his politics became more revolutionary and egalitarian. He declared his personal aim to bring equality to all in St. Domingue.

The fight was very complicated. White planters, free blacks, free mulattos, slaves, poor whites, etc. all represented their own interests. They might form an alliance with another group one day, only to break it the next. Outside of St. Domingue, there were also conflicting pressures. The French wanted their money-making colony back though some French people thought slavery should be ended. The British and Americans, meanwhile, saw the chance either to take the colony away from France or, failing that, destroy its economy.

In February, 1794, for example, the French revolutionary government banned slavery and Toussaint became an ally of the French. Later, Napoleon, who hated Toussaint, suggested that the French should pacify the island by killing all the blacks and getting new, obedient slaves from Africa. Sometimes, the French were Toussaint's best friend, sometimes his worst enemy according to how the revolution in France was going at the time. Toussaint also threw out a British army sent from Jamaica.

Through all these turns in military and political fortune, Toussaint showed himself to be a good general and a clever politician whose one goal was freedom and independence for Haiti, as he now called St. Domingue. And, gradually it became clear to the French, British and Americans that Haiti could not be turned back into a slave colony. The slaves had been freed by the revolution there. Haiti, with its wild interior, could not be successfully recaptured by a European army. Those white soldiers who survived battle with Toussaint's well-trained fighters died of dengue fever and malaria and died in great numbers.

St. Domingue became the Republic of Haiti, the first black republic in the Americas. This incredible change from slave colony to proud republic was mostly thanks to Toussaint L'Ouverture. This may be why the French tricked him into boarding one of their warships. He was kidnapped and taken to France. In 1803, he died in the Fort-de-Joux prison there.

However, his revolution survived him. His deputy, Dessalines, oversaw the establishment of the new Haitian Republic. But, the honeymoon for Haiti was short. Many planters left the island, taking their money and slaves with them. They set up again in places like Jamaica, and the Carolinas in the U.S.A.

The war had caused the large irrigation system to break down. It was vital to sugar production. Without large gangs of slaves to repair and extend it, it was never restored. Sugar production dropped to a tiny fraction of the pre-war levels. Many freed slaves set up their own small, family farms and lived as best they could. The U.S.A., scared of slave revolt spreading, blockaded Haiti for years so guaranteeing that the economy would never recover.

Now, Haiti is one of the poorest nations on Earth. Constantly suffering from natural disaster, war, famine and disease, it is totally dependent on international aid and produces very little for export – only Haitians migrants looking for work.