"Awakening the Ashes" of Anti-colonialism
The legacy of the Haitian Revolution, with Professor Marlene Daut
In Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution, Professor Marlene Daut traces the modern understanding of freedom and equality to Haiti. I thought today would be a good time to share a conversation I had with her. Haiti has low-key been in the news of late, with yet another foreign “security mission” arriving. Further, many of the dynamics Haitians fought against are, sadly, on full display on the global stage today.
Professor Daut is a professor of French and African Diaspora Studies at Yale. She writes about the history of the Haitian Revolution, literary cultures of the greater Caribbean, and racial politics in global media. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Essence Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, and The Conversation, among others.
A condensed transcript edited for clarity is below. You can also listen to the audio of our conversation, which includes further discussion of Indigenous resistance in Haiti, how Haitians contended with being an anti-racist state surrounded by enslaving empires, and more:
Ben: Professor Daut, thanks so much for being here.
MD: Thank you so much for having me.
Ben: Today I’d like to explore the influence of Haitian revolutionary thought around the world today.
Let’s begin in 1804, at the end of the Haitian Revolution. What was the 1804 Principle?
MD: In 1804, Haitian revolutionaries declared their independence from France. Previously, there’d been hundreds of thousands of enslaved people in the French colony, but on January 1st, soon after defeating the last of the French forces, Haitians permanently outlawed slavery and banned imperialism. The principles that undergird the Haitian Declaration of Independence were simple: no human being can ever be legitimately enslaved or colonized, and slavery, racism, and colonialism are the greatest evils of any time.
Together, these ideas constitute the 1804 Principle. Haitian revolutionaries were inspired by centuries of resistance on the island by Indigenous groups like the Caciques and Xaraguas, dating back to the moment Christopher Columbus set foot on the island in 1492.
Ben: You write that the 1804 Principle was less of an origin than “an opening, an invitation for the rest of the world to humanity.”
MD: In extending that invitation, the Haitian Revolution exposed some very embarrassing contradictions for countries like France and the U.S.
Both the U.S. Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789 stated that “all men are created equal” in some form. But neither country exactly acted that way afterward. The French still fought to defend slavery in Haiti. And when you think about the history of Thomas Jefferson writing the Declaration of Independence, or delegates at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, they talked out of both sides of their mouths, right? U.S. leaders said they wanted to abolish slavery but also said they couldn't, because southern enslavers would never have accepted it.
So “liberty,” for both France and the U.S., wasn’t really liberty. In Haiti, it was, and I argue the modern understanding of freedom and equality stems from the 1804 Principle.
Ben: Afterward, can you discuss how Haitian intellectuals coined some of the terms that we use to describe injustice today?
MD: Absolutely. The Haitian writer Baron de Vastey coined the term “white supremacy” in the 1810s. He wanted to take away the innocence of terms like “the slave trade,” which couldn’t capture the subjugation and torture of people forced to work and killed in backbreaking conditions.
The term “racism” was also coined in Haiti — slightly later, in 1824 — by a man named Charles Hérard Dumesle. He said the French colonists sailed to Haiti on the sea of ultraracisme, or ultra-racism, which he defined as the absurd argument that Africans were naturally inferior to Europeans and therefore meant to be enslaved by them.
And in 1807, another Haitian writer and politician, Juste Chanlatte, coined the term “crimes against humanity,” again as a description of slavery and the slave trade. He credited the beginning of that crime against humanity to Spanish and Portuguese enslavers, who initially colonized and brought the plantation economy to the “New World.”
Notably, Chanlatte was writing in the context of Great Britain's 1807 abolition of the slave trade. Today, you’ll often hear that Great Britain was the first nation to abolish the slave trade, but that was actually Haiti. Britain only totally outlawed slavery in 1834.
Ben: As you note, like Britain, many other countries followed the example set by Haiti, including Mexico, France, much of South America, the Netherlands, and later, the U.S. The Haitian Revolution marked “the beginning of the end of the age of slavery.”
But you also write that 1825 marked the end of a period of prosperity and the beginning of Haiti’s long economic and political decline. How was that the case?
MD: By 1825, Jean-Pierre Boyer, one of the leaders of the revolution was president. He united the north and south of the island and also incorporated what is now the Dominican Republic into the Republic of Haiti.
With that work done, he turned his attention to securing recognition for Haitian independence. Astonishingly, not a single nation in the world recognized Haitian sovereignty, which is to say they still considered it, diplomatically at least, a colony of France.
In exchange for recognition on the world stage, Boyer started to negotiate with France for an "indemnity.” Essentially, Haitians would pay reparations to their former enslavers for their “lost property,” including the people they enslaved. The agreed-upon amount of the indemnity was near twice the eighty million francs (fifteen million U.S. dollars) the U.S. paid Napoleon for the Louisiana Territory, even though Haiti was roughly the size of Massachusetts.
Scholars have debated whether or not France would have launched a new war against Haiti if Boyer hadn’t signed the deal. Nevertheless, he did, committing Haiti to loans, fees, and tariffs that they really didn't finish paying until 1947.
Ben: It’s like the U.S. got a coupon code for the Louisiana Purchase, but when Haiti tried to apply the same code at checkout, money was added on.
MD: And then some. A recent investigation by The New York Times showed that Haitians ended up paying $500 million over more than a century, or what would amount to about $22 billion in today's money. As Haitian economists have insisted, the number is larger if you take into account the opportunity costs of paying the debt.
Part of what makes the story of the indemnity so tragic, too, is that it didn’t really change global perceptions of Haiti, despite Boyer’s hope that it would.
The U.S. refused to recognize Haiti as a sovereign country until during the Civil War when most Confederate states had already seceded. Even after recognizing Haitian independence, the U.S. played an integral role in forcing Haiti to continue to pay the loans. In fact, the U.S. occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934 was directly related to forcing Haiti to pay sums connected to the indemnity, which were owed to German and French banks and a subsidiary of what is now Citibank.
The occupation not only deepened Haiti’s economic decline but also sparked a new kind of political decline. Instead of Haitians determining who would lead them, a new pattern of foreign intervention began. Interference in elections or physical armed forces coming onto the island and determining who would be in charge became part of the Haitian fabric of life.
Sadly, the pattern continues to this day.
Ben: On a concluding note, you write that “one thing is clear from examining the long tissue of successive foreign interventions in Haiti and the deliberate destruction of Haiti’s sovereignty... The Haitian Revolution did not fail the world, the world failed the Haitian Revolution.”
What do you mean by that?
MD: Everyone talked about the Haitian Revolution in the nineteenth century. Yet today, too many scholars and too much of the media use the fact of contemporary unrest in Haiti — which is related to punishing Haitians for the Haitian Revolution — as a reason to erase the ingenuity of Haitian revolutionaries.
Haiti’s was not simply a revolution that happened after the French and American revolutions. It was a centuries-long organized rebellion, which resulted in an overthrow of elite colonial authority and the establishment of an anti-racist, anti-colonial, antislavery state. It was far more radical than either the U.S. American or French revolutions.
And the Haitian Revolution didn’t fail. The terms and ideas that its participants generated live on. Instead, if you look around today, it’s all too clear that much of the world failed to adopt Haiti's principles.
Ben: Well, if the 1804 Principle marked “an invitation for the rest of the world to humanity,” as you say, I suppose it’s never too late to RSVP.
Professor Daut, thank you so much for your time and your scholarship.
MD: Thank you so much for having me.