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Today in Haitian History - October 17, 1806 – Assassination of Jean-Jacques Dessalines

Born a slave in 1758, Jean-Jacques Dessalines rose to become one of the most important military leaders during the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) and Haiti’s first head of state until his assassination in 1806 following an insurrection in the South. 

Although Dessalines’ overall legacy has greatly evolved with time and most historians today recognize the importance of his state-building initiatives, scholars remain divided as to his ultimate legacy. On the one hand, they point out the violent tendencies of Dessalines’ regime. In his influential Haiti, State Against Nation: The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism (1990), Michel-Rolph Trouillot stresses that while Dessalines preserved much of Toussaint Louveture’s governing methods, the Haitian leader particularly insisted on militarizing agriculture, which caused great dissatisfaction among the nouveaux libres. Historian Claude Moïse (2009) echoes much of Trouillot’s assessment and argues that civil and military functions were almost indistinguishable and served to favour Dessalines and those loyal to him. On the other hand, many historians also acknowledge the important achievements of Dessalines’s rule, in particular through his imperial Constitution of 1805. To this respect, historian Julia Gaffield (2007) notes that “in the constitution of 1805, Jean-Jacques Dessalines attempted to define Haiti as a distinct nation by focusing on citizenship, political organization and culture. As both Trouillot and Nicholls have argued, Haiti became a symbol of black equality and freedom in this period.”

While it appears pointless to debate whether Dessalines was a hero or a despot (or if such categories can do justice to the complexity of his political rule), it should be remembered that the Haitian leader inhered many of the unsolved problems of the Haitian Revolution. In 1804, the emerging Haitian state was a multilayered society where deep antagonism existed among the nouveaux and the anciens libres. Pushing the French out of Haiti created only a temporary truce between black military leaders and their “mulatto” counterparts. More than attempting to create a sense of national unity among vastly different individuals, Dessalines also had to deal with the problem of revitalizing the Haitian economy at a time when the country enjoyed no formal recognition from its former metropole nor from the United States (the only other independent nation of the Americas). 

If Haiti was to survive and not succumb to the re-establishment of slavery (like most of the French Caribbean experienced after 1802), it would need to be a stable state. Though it seems possible that Dessalines could have chosen to sit his authority more democratically, the formidable task of governing a unique country in a hostile (and mostly slave-owning Atlantic) world may have inspired some of the leaders’ aggressiveness. Only more scholarship can help us better comprehend the figure and political leader behind Jean-Jacques Dessalines. 

Today in Haitian History - August 23, 1791 - Saint-Domingue’s slaves revolt against their masters 

Although by August 1791 Saint-Domingue was already the theatre of much violence, it was the slave uprising during the night of August 22nd to August 23rd that most historians today recognize as the starting point of the Haitian Revolution. 

The French Revolution sent waves throughout the Atlantic. In Saint-Domingue, while the grand blancs population (taking advantage of the calling of the Third Estate) was arguing for more autonomy from the metropole, most of the gens de couleur libres demanded equal rights to their white counterparts (which, in effect, should have been guaranteed by the Code Noir of 1685).  Against this backdrop of violence erupting between the two fractions (and other competing groups like the petit blancs) Saint-Domingue’s slaves lunched a massive attack against their masters in hopes of freeing themselves. 

Back in Europe, reports regarding the situation in Saint-Domignue triggered various debates and made it clear that the question of slavery had now become too explosive to be silenced. The slave uprising pushed the logic of Rights of Man to its fullest and dared to suggest the humanity of slaves.

It would take another  thirteen years with many twists and turns (including a failed abolition of slavery in 1794, a civil war and a formal removal of French authority) for Haiti to emerge as an independent nation late in 1803.