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200 YEARS OF FORGETTING
Hushing up the Haitian Revolution
THOMAS REINHARDT
FrobeniusInstitut
246
Reinhardt/ HUSHINGUP THE HAITIANREVOLUTION 247
was no way they could possibly have understood it. Not only
becausehistoryis such a mess for those who live it, butbecausethe
very fact of a Black revolutionwas in itself unthinkable(Trouillot,
1995, p. 73) at the time it happenedand for many years to come.
Why is that? Knowledge (be it scientific or philosophical)
doesn't evolve in steady progression.It doesn't follow a straight
path from past to future.It takes detours,makes wrong turns,gets
stuckin deadends, andstartsover again.At anymomentin history,
there are ideas that can be thought and others that simply can't.
Well, of course they can. But they won't make any sense in the
opinion of most contemporaries.To think them, one has to break
with the very foundationsof contemporaryknowledge. An earth
orbitingthe sun?That'snotjust an astronomicalstatement.It shat-
ters fundamentaltruthsof theology andphilosophyas well. If you
happen to live in, say, 16th-centuryEurope, it is definitely not a
thoughtthatyou would come up with easily.
The confines of reasonablethinking are defined by discourse.
One mightcall these discursivelimits worldviews.Otherscall them
paradigmsor commonsense. But whatevernametag we give them,
it is they that determinewhat is right and wrong, true and false,
thinkableand unthinkable.12 They determinewhat is and what is
not, whatcan be andwhatcan't. And for Westernhistoriographyin
the 19thandearly 20th centuries,a revolutionby Blacks definitely
was somethingthatcould not be.
Slaves could run away, alright.They could kill their overseers
(not nice, but it had happenedbefore). They could even gang up
against their mastersand burndown whole plantationsand cities
(very unpleasantbutpossible). But they were certainlynot capable
of organizingthemselves and combating(let alone successfully) a
well-trainedEuropeanarmy.
Yet, they did. Here was the West, equippedwith a whole ontol-
ogy basedon the notionthatBlacks areinferiorto Whites,unableto
take care of themselves, naturallydesigned for slavery,the bottom
rungof the ladderof humanevolution- andthese Blacks keptwin-
ning battleafterbattle.They defeatedthe French,they defeatedthe
British, they defeated the Spanish. This simply could not be.
Impossible.
Reinhardt/ HUSHINGUP THE HAITIANREVOLUTION 25 1
ing against a Black army for about 2 years. One might think that
this shouldhavebeen time enoughto somehowrealizethathis ene-
mies had neither White faces nor were they fighting under the
Union Jack.But havingbeen beatenby Blacks, very obviously,was
not somethingthathe considereda possibility.
Finally and third, the events are judged from an exclusively
Westernvantagepoint. This, too, was a powerfulsilencer.Accord-
ing to Westernstandards,the revolutionhad been a failure.It had
been a failureon the economic level, andit hadbeen a failureon the
politicalandsocial levels. No matterhow muchdamage 13 yearsof
civil warandthe subsequentembargoesby France,Britain,andthe
United States had done to the local economy, the fact is that
althoughFrenchSaint Domingue once was the richest colony the
world had ever seen, the independentstate of Haiti soon was to
become the poorestcountryin the Westernhemisphere.And free-
dom?Sure,the countrywas now ruledby Black dictators.But does
the absence of a White ruling class alreadyqualify as freedom?
Dealing with the Haitian Revolution, the critical question for
historiographyusually was, Did it improvethe living conditionsof
the people accordingto Westernstandards?And the verdict was
almostunanimous:No, it didn't.Thingschanged,butthey changed
for the worse. This assessmentis certainlytruefor largepartsof the
20th century.The situationwas, however, less clear in the years
immediately following the revolution. The enormous death toll
amongthe slaves, which requiredconstantimportationof Africans
to keep the laborforce at least to some extentstable,droppeddown
to a level thatcould be evened out by births.And comparedto the
living conditions of working class people in Europe,the Haitians
wereprobablyratherbetteroff thanmanyof theirWesterncontem-
poraries(notto mentionthe slavesin the southernUnitedStates).
The underlying principle of the latter argument makes no
attemptto disguise its teleological nature. It is deeply rooted in
an understandingof history as evolution. Revolution, in this
worldview,is seen as nothingmore thana shortcutof evolution- a
greatleap towarda brightfutureinsteadof many small steps. And
this brightfuture,of course,is one accordingto Westernstandards.
It leaves no space for alternative value systems or lifestyles.
254 JOURNALOF BLACK STUDIES / MARCH 2005
NOTES
States" (Senator Thomas Hart Benton, 1825, Register of Debates in Congress, cited in
Montague,1940, p. 53). SenatorRobertY. Hayneof SouthCarolinachimed in: "Ourpolicy
with regardto Hayti is plain. We never can acknowledgeher independence. . . which the
peace and safety of a largeportionof our Union forbidsus to even discuss" (Benton, 1825,
cited in Montague, 1940, pp. 47, 53).
Whenthe U.S. Senatefinally decidedto acknowledgethe existence of its southernneigh-
bor,the seats from which over the past six decades Southernplantershad pronouncedtheir
vetoes were mostly vacant,due to the secession of the confederatestatesprecedingthe civil
war.The Senatepasseda bill recognizingHaition April4, 1862, by a decisive vote of 32 to 7.
The House of Representativesvoted 86 to 37, andthe presidentgave his assenton the 5th of
June {CongressionalGlobe, cited in Montague, 1940, p. 86).
Europeangovernmentswere a little faster.France,England,anda numberof otherstates
formallyacknowledgedHaiti'sindependencein 1825. A final satisfactorysettlement(thatis,
satisfactoryfor France) was eventually reached in 1838, when the Haitian government
agreedto pay reparationsto France,thus de facto buying its independencevery much as a
slave might have boughthis freedombefore (Montague, 1940, pp. 13-14, 52-53).
12. The literatureon paradigmchangesis abundant.Among the most importantthinkers
that(independently)developedthe conceptareKuhn(1962), Bourdieu(1980), andFoucault
(1968).
13. In the absence of a word foxfreedom in most non-Westernlanguages,see Patterson
(1982, p. 27), Miers and Kopytoff(1977, pp. 17, 54), and Geggus (2002, pp. 42, 232).
14. Therearefew exceptionsto this rule, notablyRainsford(1805), Lundy(1847), Buch
(1976, 1986), and Geggus (2001, 2002).
15. Both termsareborrowedfromTrouillot(1995, p. 96). AlthoughI thinkthatTrouillot
is too pessimistic in his conclusions, he is certainlycorrectin identifyingthe rhetoricalele-
ments in the strategiesof silencing.
16. The earliestexample of this theme is Loverture(1804). Since then, however,it has
been adoptedby almost everybodywritingon Haiti (e.g., Barskett,1818; Parkinson,1978;
Phillips, 1954, to name only three). A very skeptical view of Toussaint'scharacterand
actions is first elaboratedin Carruthers(1985).
17. Perhapsthe most strikingexample for the "Europeanization" of Toussaintcan be
found in a quite successful youth novel, publishedin Englandin the last decade of the 19th
century.In it, we encountera ToussaintLouverturemakingthe following remarkablestate-
ment:"We[the Blacks] have had no trainingfor self-government.We shall have destroyed
the civilization that reigned here, and shall have nothingto take its place, and I dreadthat
insteadof progressingwe may retrogradeuntil we sink back into the conditionin which we
lived in Africa. . . . When I say equal rightsI do not mean thatthey [the Blacks] shall have
votes. We are at presentabsolutelyunfitto have votes or to exercise political power.I only
mean thatthe law shall be the same for us as for the whites" (Henty,n.d., p. 313).
18. Fleming(2001), for example,succeedsin puttingdownthe outcomeof the revolution
completely to the workof a tiny insect, Aedes aegypti,thatdecimatedthe Frenchtroopsby
infectingthemwith yellow fever.True,his essay is apiece of "counterfactualhistory,"trying
to determinewhat could have been. Still, it is astonishinghow (at the beginningof the 21st
century)Fleming managesto presentthe Black leaders of the revolution- withoutexcep-
tion- as mere playthingsof the (White) actorsin the Haitiandrama.
19. Aurora General Advertiser,January 14, 1804. Rochambeau'snegotiations with
Dessalines andthe commanderof the Britishfleet, a CaptainLoring,arewell documentedin
258 JOURNALOF BLACK STUDIES/ MARCH 2005
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