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Abstract
Girard's article covers the 1802–4 period in Haiti, during which an expeditionary force sent by Napoleon Bonaparte on the one hand, and an army of Blacks and Mulattoes (most of them former slaves) on the other hand, openly considered genocide of the enemy population. Whites carried out massacres but fell short of genocide because of the French military defeat; Blacks won the war and eradicated Haiti's white population in 1804. The article offers five main explanations for this genocide. First, the Haitian slave revolt coincided with the French Revolution, and the slaves and soldiers borrowed from the metropolis the idea that the survival of a revolution justified murder, war and even large-scale massacres, that ideology was worth dying, and killing, for. Second, economic interest was at the heart of the planters’ desire to force black slaves to work, but it also influenced the rebellious slaves’ decision to kill all planters and their families: black generals, who replaced Whites as plantation owners, directly benefitted from the genocide. Third, the 1802–4 period marks the conclusion of a bloody, thirteen-year slave revolt that was itself a reaction to a century-old colonial rule characterized by the brutal exploitation of a large slave population. War, by creating a context in which violent death was the norm rather than the exception, made it easier to resort to mass murder. Fourth, with few exceptions, those who perpetrated the genocide were former slaves, while most victims were former slave owners and soldiers supporting slavery; the genocide was thus a form of class warfare in which an exploited lower class exacted revenge against the master class. Finally, in its last stages, the war turned into a racial conflict that pitted Whites against Blacks and Mulattoes. The usual characteristics of racism (hatred, oversimplification, conspiracy theories, dehumanization) all facilitated the genocide. Girard concludes that the 1804 genocide must be understood in a specific, Haitian context, but that it was also the product of ideas (racism and class warfare, notably) that were central to more modern genocides.
Notes
Jean-Jacques Dessalines, ‘Proclamation’, 1 January 1804: Archives Nationales, Paris (hereafter AN), AB/XIX/3302/15. All translations from the French, unless otherwise stated, are by the author.
From 1697 to 1804, Haiti was known as Saint-Domingue, and only changed its name after it declared its independence. The article will use the name ‘Haiti’ for both the colonial and the national period.
Philippe R. Girard is Assistant Professor of Caribbean History at McNeese State University, Lake Charles, Louisiana, and the author of Paradise Lost: Haiti's Tumultuous Journey from Pearl of the Caribbean to Third World Hot Spot (forthcoming from Palgrave Macmillan).
Quoted in Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2004), 298.
Letter from Guillaume Mauviel to Portalis, French Council of State, [early 1804]: AN, F/19/6212.
[Leonora Mary Hassall Sansay], Secret History; or, The Horrors of St Domingo, in a Series of Letters, Written by a Lady at Cape Francois to Colonel Burr (Philadelphia: Bradford and Inskeep 1808), 152–3.
Moreau de Saint-Méry, Description topographique, physique, civile, politique et historique de la partie française de l'isle Saint-Domingue, vol. 1 [1797–8] (Paris: Société de l'histoire des colonies françaises 1958), 86–100.
About 10,000 refugees reached Louisiana from 1792 to 1810. Another 10,000 arrived in Cuba from 1801 to 1806. Carl Brasseaux and Glenn Conrad, ‘Introduction’ and Gabriel Debien, ‘The refugees in Cuba’, in C. Brasseaux and G. Conrad (eds), The Road to Louisiana: The Saint-Domingue Refugees, 1792–1809 (Lafayette: Center for Louisiana Studies 1992), vii, 72.
Lieutenant Débuour, ‘Précis des événements militaires qui se sont passés aux Cayes avant l’évacuation de cette place’, 30 Fructidor Year XII [17 September 1804]: AN, CC9A/35.
See also Sibylle Fischer, Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of Revolution (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2004).
Raphaël Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 1944), 80. See also Robert Melson, ‘A theoretical inquiry into the Armenian massacres of 1894–1896’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 24, no. 3, July 1982, 483.
A. Dirk Moses, ‘Genocide and settler society in Australian history’, in A. D. Moses (ed.), Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian Society (New York: Berghahn Books 2004), 20–8.
‘Rapport d'espionnage’, 23 Messidor Year XI [12 July 1803]: AN, 135AP/3.
Letter from Brigadier General Lavalette to Minister of the Navy [Decrès], 2 Ventôse Year XII [22 February 1804]: AN, CC9B/19.
Letter from Pichon, French ambassador to the United States, to Minister of the Navy [Decrès], [c. July 1804]: AN, CC9B/18.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines, ‘Proclamation’, 28 April 1804: AN, AB/XIX/3302/15.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines, ‘Proclamation aux habitants de la partie espagnole’, 8 May 1804: AN, AB/XIX/3302/15. Dessalines's invasion of Santo Domingo failed.
Saint-Méry, Description topographique, i.86–100; ‘Questions sur la population et les productions de Saint Domingue et des isles du vent’, [c. 1785]: Centre des Archives d'Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence (hereafter CAOM), DFC/XXXIII/Memoires/3/202.
Yves Benot, La Révolution française et la fin des colonies, 1789–1794 (Paris: La Découverte 2004).
Letter from Blanchelande to M. De Thevenard, [c. September 1791]: CAOM, F/3/197.
[Moreau de Saint-Méry?], ‘Notes de quelques événements particuliers arrivés dans l'insurrection des noirs à Saint-Domingue en 1791’, 14 January 1792: CAOM: F/3/197. See also Jeremy Popkin, ‘Facing racial revolution: captivity narratives and identity in the Saint-Domingue insurrection’, Eighteenth Century Studies, vol. 36, no. 4, 2003, 511–33.
Gabriel Debien, Les Esclaves aux Antilles françaises: dix-septième au dix-huitième siècles (Basse Terre: Société d'Histoire de la Guadeloupe 1974), 424. See also François Girod, La Vie quotidienne de la société créole: Saint-Domingue au dix-huitième siècle (Paris: Hachette 1972), 168–9.
Carolyn E. Fick, The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press 1990), 6, 60.
Pierre Pluchon, Toussaint Louverture (Paris: Fayard 1989), 148.
Toussaint Louverture, ‘Adresse aux officiers, sous-officiers et soldats, composant l'armée en marche’, [c. January–February 1798]: AN, CC9A/19.
Pamphile de Lacroix, La Révolution de Haïti [1819] (Paris: Karthala 1995), 333; Jan Pachonski and Reuel K. Wilson, Poland's Caribbean Tragedy: A Study of Polish Legions in the Haitian War of Independence, 1802–1803 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs 1986), 203; Dubois, Avengers of the New World, 103–5.
Letter from Brigadier General Cangé to Battalion Chief Delpech, 6 Frimaire Year XI [27 November 1802]: AN, CC9B/19.
Dessalines, ‘Proclamation’, 28 April 1804.
Colonial Office (Ministry of the Navy), ‘Rapport aux Consuls de la République’, 12 Frimaire Year VIII [3 December 1799]: AN, CC9B/18.
Gautier, ‘Aperçu sur les intérêts du commerce maritime’, Frimaire Year X [November–December 1802]: AN, CC9A/28.
Toussaint Bréda Louverture, Mémoires du Général Toussaint l'Ouverture écrits par lui-même (Paris: Pagnerre 1853), 127–8; Emmanuel de Las Cases, Mémorial de Sainte Hélène, 2 vols (Paris: Gallimard–La Pléiade 1956), i.769. See also Barry Edward O'Meara, Napoléon en exil: relation contenant les opinions et les réflexions de Napoléon sur les événements les plus importants de sa vie, durant trois ans de sa captivité, recueillies, 2 vols (Paris: Garnier 1897), ii.277.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism [1951] (New York: Meridian Books 1958), 138.
Letter from Battalion Chief Saint-Martin to Ministry of the Navy, 22 Messidor Year VII [10 July 1799]: AN, CC9A/21. Louverture's nephew Moïse enjoyed an annual income of £1.2 million. Letter from ‘Painty’ to Moreau de Saint-Méry, 27 February 1802: CAOM, FM/F/3/202.
Pluchon, Toussaint Louverture, 369.
Colonial Office, Ministry of the Navy, ‘Rapport aux Consuls de la République’, 7 Vendémiaire Year IX [29 September 1800]: AN, CC9B/18; letter from Leclerc to Minister of the Navy [Decrès], 20 Pluviôse Year X [9 February 1802]: AN, CC9B/19. Even when he was exiled to a French prison, Louverture adamantly demanded that his plantations be given back to him. Letter from Rochambeau to Minister of the Navy [Decrès], 16 Frimaire Year XI [7 December 1802]: AN, CC9B/19.
Commandant Delaunay, ‘Extrait d'un rapport sur la situation politique de Saint-Domingue’, 7 Vendémiaire Year VIII [29 September 1799]: CAOM, FM/F/3/202; [Commissioner Roume?], ‘Rapport aux consuls de la république’, 1 Nivôse Year VIII [22 December 1799]: AN, CC9A/18.
[Government Land Office], ‘Etat de divers baux à ferme passés par l'administration des Domaines en vertu des ordres de l'administration supérieure’, [c. 1802]: AN, 135 AP/3.
Letter from Leclerc to Minister of the Navy [Decrès], 20 Pluviôse Year X [9 February 1802]: AN, CC9B/19.
Napoleon Bonaparte, ‘Notes pour servir aux instructions à donner au Capitaine Général Leclerc’, 31 October 1801, reproduced in Gustav Roloff, Die Kolonialpolitik Napoleons I (Munich: Drud und Berlag von R. Didenbourg 1899), 245. See also Paul Roussier (ed.), Lettres du Général Leclerc (Paris: Société de l'histoire des colonies françaises 1937), 28; Ralph Korngold, Citizen Toussaint (Boston: Little, Brown 1945), 246.
Letter from Leclerc to Minister of the Navy [Decrès], 8 Ventôse Year X [27 February 1802]: AN, CC9B/19. One of Leclerc's officers later wrote that Leclerc exaggerated losses due to diseases in order to divert attention from his losses in combat. Lacroix, La Révolution de Haïti, 336.
Lacroix, La Révolution de Haïti, 328.
Rochambeau estimated that Louverture had killed 10,000 to 12,000 civilians, Leclerc 10,000 and Lacroix 3,000; Rochambeau, ‘Précis des opérations de l'expédition de Saint-Domingue de 1802 à 1803’, 6 October 1803: AN, CC9A/36. Letter from Leclerc to Minister of the Navy [Decrès], 5 Germinal Year X [26 March 1802]: AN, 416AP/1; Pluchon, Toussaint Louverture, 572.
Letter from Toussaint Louverture to Jean-Jacques Dessalines, 19 Pluviôse Year X [8 February 1802], reproduced in Lacroix, La Révolution de Haïti, 319.
Letter from Leclerc to Napoleon Bonaparte, 5 Vendémiaire Year XI [27 September 1802]: AN, CC9B/19.
Lacroix, La Révolution de Haïti, 351.
‘Providence’ means ‘God’, but it was also the name of Cap's main hospital. Lacroix, La Révolution de Haïti, 352.
Dessalines, ‘Proclamation’, 28 April 1804. In French, ‘génie’ can refer to a gifted person or to the spirit of the nation. It is not clear whether Dessalines was referring to himself in his speech, or to the collective will of his people.
Hector Daure, ‘Rapport confidentiel sur l’état de la colonie et de son administration’, [c. November 1803]: AN, CC9A/36.
Letters from Rochambeau to Minister of the Navy [Decrès], 10 Brumaire Year XII [2 November 1803] and 19 Brumaire Year XII [11 November 1803]: AN, CC9B/19.
[Sansay], Secret History, 99.
Poterat, ‘Mémoire sur la colonie de Saint-Domingue’, 21 Fructidor Year XI [8 September 1803]: AN, CC9A/35; Pachonski and Wilson, Poland's Caribbean Tragedy, 69; Christophe Paulin de la Poix, Chevalier de Fréminville, Mémoires du Chevalier de Fréminville (1787–1848) (Paris: Librairie Ancienne Champion 1913), 78.
Letter from Brigadier General Louis Noailles to Rochambeau, 9 Nivôse Year XI [30 December 1802]: AN, 416AP/1; Rochambeau, ‘Précis des opérations de l'expédition de Saint-Domingue de 1802 à 1803’, 6 October 1803: AN, CC9A/36.
Pachonski and Wilson, Poland's Caribbean Tragedy, 114.
Dessalines, ‘Proclamation’, 1 January 1804.
‘Dessalines aux hommes de couleur habitant la partie ci-devant espagnole’, 6 Nivôse Year XI [27 December 1802]: AN, CC9A/32.
Dessalines, ‘Proclamation’, 28 April 1804.
[Government Land Office], ‘Etat de divers baux à ferme’.
One survivor labelled the Khmer Rouger ‘Kum-munists’, after the Khmer word for ‘revenge’. Haing Nor and Roger Warner, Survival in the Killing Fields [1987] (New York: Carroll and Graf 2003), 171.
Letter from Toussaint Louverture to General Hédouville, 23 Thermidor Year VI [10 August 1798]: AN, CC9B/6; Colonial Office (Ministry of the Navy), ‘Rapport aux Consuls de la République’, 27 Fructidor Year VIII [14 September 1800]: AN, CC9B/18.
Letters from Commissioner Roume to Sieyès, 19 Fructidor Year VII [5 September 1799] and 9 Vendémiaire Year VIII [1 October 1799]: AN, 284AP/13/6.
Colonial Office (Ministry of the Navy), ‘Rapport aux consuls de la république sur la colonie de Saint-Domingue’, Vendémiaire Year IX [September–October 1800]: AN, CC9B/18.
Napoleon Bonaparte, ‘Proclamation du consul à tous les habitants de Saint-Domingue’, 17 Brumaire Year X [8 November 1801]: CAOM, FM/F/3/202.
Letter from Leclerc to Minister of the Navy [Decrès], 16 Floréal Year X [6 May 1802]: AN, CC9B/19; Colonial Office (Ministry of the Navy), ‘Extrait de différentes lettres écrites par le Général Rochambeau’, 3 Floréal Year XI [23 April 1803]: AN, CC9A/34. See also Marcel Dorigny and Yves Benot, 1802: Rétablissement de l'esclavage dans les colonies françaises (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose 2003).
Letter from Toussaint Louverture to Brigadier General Domage, 20 Pluviôse Year X [9 February 1802]: AN, CC9B/19. See also General Rigaud, ‘Réflexions du Gén. Rigaud sur les événements survenus à Saint-Domingue depuis le départ du Gén. Hédouville’, [c. 1799]: AN, 284AP/13/6.
Commandant Figeat, ‘Mémoire’, 14 Vendémiaire Year XI [6 October 1802]: AN, CC9A/32.
Letter from Leclerc to Minister of the Navy [Decrès], 26 Prairial Year X [15 June 1802]: AN, CC9B/19. See also Fick, The Making of Haiti, 213–14, which demonstrates that Blacks found the theoretical difference between cultivateurs and esclaves negligible.
Letter from Leclerc to Minister of the Navy [Decrès], 21 Thermidor Year X [9 August 1802]: AN, CC9B/19.
Admiral Villeret Joyeuse, ‘Proclamation aux habitants de la Martinique et de Ste Lucie’, [c. 1802]: AN, CC9B/19.
Letter from Brigadier General d'Arbois to Général de Division Desbureaux, 23 Thermidor Year X [11 August 1802]: AN, 135AP/1 (emphasis in original): the term ‘nigger’ (nègre), used commonly in Haiti, is not as pejorative in the local French as in modern English.
Letter from the Council of Notables of Jérémie to Brigadier General d'Arbois, 8 Brumaire Year XI [30 October 1802]: AN, 135AP/1. The term ‘revolting’ was obviously chosen with great care.
Quoted in Lacroix, La Révolution de Haïti, 306.
Letter from Leclerc to Minister of the Navy [Decrès], 4 Thermidor Year X [23 July 1802]: AN, CC9B/19.
Letter from Chef de Brigade Naverrez to Ministry of the Navy, 2 Ventôse Year XI [21 February 1803]: AN, CC9A/30.
Dessalines, ‘Proclamation’, 1 January 1804 (emphasis in original).
Dessalines, ‘Proclamation’, 28 April 1804.
Saint-Méry, Description topographique, i.86–100.
An alternative to the prevalent, race-based interpretation of the war is that Generals Rigaud and Louverture merely used racism to justify a highly personal power struggle for control of Haiti. Dubois, Avengers of the New World, 230–3.
Lacroix, La Révolution de Haïti, 347; A. J. B. Bouvet de Cressé (ed.), Histoire de la catastrophe de Saint Domingue (Paris: Peytieux 1824), 58.
Lacroix, La Révolution de Haïti, 360, 364.
Quoted in Pachonski and Wilson, Poland's Caribbean Tragedy, 121.
Letter from Rochambeau to Minister of the Navy [Decrès], 23 Frimaire Year XI [14 December 1802]: AN, CC9B/19.
The rebel army kept a few white priests, enlisted some Polish deserters and received the support of the British navy and US merchants. ‘Extrait du journal du lieutenant de vaisseau Babron, embarqué sur la Surveillante’, Brumaire Year XII [October–November 1803]: AN, CC9A/36.
Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, 185–91, 317, 447–9.
Letter from Leclerc to Napoleon Bonaparte, 7 October 1802, quoted in English translation in Henry Adams, History of the United States of America during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Earl N. Harbert (New York: Library of America 1986), 280. See also Lacroix, La Révolution de Haïti, 360.
Letter from Rochambeau to Minister of the Navy [Decrès], 16 Frimaire Year XI [7 December 1802]: AN, CC9B/19.
Colonial Office (Ministry of the Navy), ‘Extrait de différentes lettres écrites par le Général Rochambeau’; letters from Rochambeau to Minister of Navy [Decrès], 25 Nivôse Year XI [15 January 1803] and 2 Ventôse Year XI [21 February 1803]: AN, CC9B/19; letter from Rochambeau to Ministry of the Navy, 8 Floréal Year XI [28 April 1803]: AN, CC9A/34.
Letter from Leclerc to Ministry of the Navy, 30 Fructidor Year XI [17 September 1803]: AN, CC9B/19.
Letter from Rochambeau to Ministry of the Navy, 29 Frimaire Year XI [20 December 1802]: AN, CC9B/19.
For example, see Colonial Office (Ministry of the Navy), ‘Extrait de différentes lettres écrites par le Général Rochambeau’, in which Rochambeau's letters are transcribed and annotated, and the status of each of his demands is listed in the margin, apart from those referring to the immediate restoration of slavery and the extermination of the rebels.
Letters from Rochambeau to Ministry of the Navy, 25 Floréal Year XI [15 May 1803] and 23 Frimaire Year XI [14 December 1803]: AN, CC9B/19.
Letter from Rochambeau to Ministry of the Navy, 8 Floréal Year XI [28 April 1803]: AN, CC9A/34.
Letter from Alliot-Vauneuf to Lescalier, Council of State, 3 Prairial Year VIII [23 May 1800]: AN, CC9A/27.
General Lavaux, ‘Rapport’, 20 Brumaire Year VII [10 November 1798]: AN, CC9A/20.
Letter from Adjutant General Devaux to Ministry of the Navy, 11 Frimaire Year VIII [2 December 1799]: AN, CC9A/23; Toussaint Louverture, ‘Adresse faite par le général en chef aux généraux de brigade et aux chefs de colonne’, 24 Ventôse Year VI [14 March 1798]: AN, CC9A/19.
Dessalines, ‘Proclamation’, 1 January 1804.
A. Dirk Moses, ‘Conceptual blockages and definitional dilemmas in the “racial century”: genocides of indigenous peoples and the Holocaust’, Patterns of Prejudice, vol. 36, no. 4, 2002, 16; Jürgen Zimmerer, ‘Colonialism and the Holocaust: towards an archeology of genocide’, in Moses (ed.), Genocide and Settler Society, 51.
Jean-Louis Margolin, ‘Cambodia: the country of disconcerting crimes’, in Stéphane Courtois (ed.), The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1999), 577–635.
Christophe Paulin de la Poix, Mémoires du Chevalier de Fréminville, 78.
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth [1961] (New York: Grove Press 1968), 35, 37.
Arendt barely referred to the Caribbean at all, selecting instead the English experience in South Africa as a precursor of the death camps; Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, 440. Arendt herself was less than categorical about imperialism–genocide links in some passages of her book; Roy T. Tsao, ‘The three phases of Arendt's theory of totalitarianism’, Social Research, vol. 69, no. 2, Summer 2002.