On this day, 21 August 1791, the Haitian revolution began as enslaved Africans rose up in the northern plantations of the then-French colony known as St Domingue.
Historian CLR James explained how enslaved people prepared the revolt:
“Voodoo was the medium of the conspiracy. In spite of all prohibitions, the slaves travelled miles to sing and dance and practise the rites and talk; and now, since the revolution, to hear the political news and make their plans.”
Then, once the rebellion began:
“The slaves destroyed tirelessly. Like the peasants in the Jacquerie or the Luddite wreckers, they were seeking their salvation in the most obvious way, the destruction of what they knew was the cause of their sufferings; and if they destroyed much it was because they had suffered much. They knew that as long as these plantations stood their lot would be to labour on them until they dropped. The only thing was to destroy them. From their masters they had known rape, torture, degradation, and, at the slightest provocation, death. They returned in kind.”
Over the next 13 years, the rebels would eventually overthrow slavery and create the world’s first Black republic. Their revolutionary army also defeated Spanish colonial forces in what is now the Dominican Republic, as well as the British army, which came to the aid of the colonialists. The US feared that the revolution could spread to enslaved people within their own borders, and refused to recognise the republic, only eventually doing so in 1862.
In this book, CLR James recounts the history of the Haitian revolution, and other Black rebellions around the world: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/a-history-of-pan-african-revolt-c-l-r-james
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