Toussaint

You can click on the picture to enlarge it.

It shows Toussaint L'Ouverture (1743-1803).

Toussaint broke France's grip on Haiti, and destroyed any chance that Haiti could ever be enslaved again.

Toussaint was the leader of the Haïtian Revolution, and the first leader of a free Haiti.

Toussaint was not the first revolutionary in Haiti's history. In 1791, slave revolts broke out in Haiti, and plantations went up in flames. It took Toussaint a while to join the revolution. The early leaders of these rebellions were far too willing to compromise with whites who sounded radical.

Toussaint scorned those early rebel leaders, and used his experience in administration and implementation of authority to gather a following of his own, to train soldiers, and to lead a Black Haitian army to victories against the European troops.

Toussaint led Haiti to victory over the European occupiers, and established his control over Haiti in 1797.

He expelled the French commissioner, Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, as well as the British armies, invaded Santo Domingo to free the slaves there, and wrote a constitution naming himself governor for life.

Between 1800 and 1802, Toussaint tried to rebuild the collapsed economy of Haiti and to re-establish commercial contacts with the United States and Great Britain. Although he was deceived by Napoleon, caged, and exiled to France, he had given the colony a taste of freedom that could not ever be taken away.

He had destroyed slavery forever in Haiti.

As early as 1797, General Toussaint had written this, to France:

“Blind as they are!...Do you think that men who have been able to enjoy the blessing of liberty will calmly see it snatched away?...If they had a thousand lives they would sacrifice them all rather than be forced back into slavery again. But no, the same hand which has broken our chains will not enslave us anew.”

--This quote is taken from C.L.R. James' book entitled "The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution" (Published in 1938).


France went broke fighting Haiti.

That’s why France sold the “Louisiana Purchase” to the United States.

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You can click on this picture to enlarge it.

It shows C.L.R. James (1901-1989), pioneering historian of the Haitian Revolution.
He was also a leader of pan-African political thought, and Chair of the International African Friends of Abyssinia, which fought against Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.
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