History
Jean Jacques Dessalines
Jean Jacques Dessalines was a key figure in the Haitian Revolution and the first ruler of an independent Haiti. He played a crucial role in leading the slave rebellion against French colonial rule and ultimately declared Haiti's independence in 1804. Dessalines is remembered for his fierce determination and leadership in the fight for freedom and the establishment of Haiti as the first independent black republic.
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4 Key excerpts on "Jean Jacques Dessalines"
eBook - PDF- Steeve Coupeau(Author)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Greenwood(Publisher)
Having a majority of African people has been important to the foundation of Haitian society. This distinguishes Haiti from other Latin American countries, where African people and their descendents are a minority. Dessalines’s view that the riches of the country should be shared among all of the sons and daughters of the Haitian nation brought him to scrutinize land and labor contracts. This penchant eventually cost him his life. Dessalines is attributed Independence and Empire (1804–1843) 45 the following statement “and those children whose fathers are in Africa, they would have nothing” This statement came amid conflicts between the planter class and the peasants. The slaves liberated by the Haitian Revolution— known as nouveaux libres (newly freed)—were for the most part without properties, often squatting on vacant land left idle. In contrast, the affranchis (free people of color) not only possessed land from before the revolution but also acquired properties from their fathers and departing whites. They also seized vacant properties. As Dessalines sought fairness in land distribution, he lost the support of mulatto landowners and a new group of black generals who secured land grants from the state. The deviation from the revolution of 1791, in the aftermath of independence, which resulted in the appropriation of the best land by oligarchs in power broke the contract of liberty of Arcahaie. The conquest of the real liberty still remains a social project. In the end, Dessalines sided with the Creole planter class, which strove for the reinforcement of the plantation economy. In an effort to secure the rebirth of agriculture and to arrest the desertion of rural areas, Dessalines enacted and enforced coerced labor as the rule for the peasantry. At the same time, the barons of the Dessalines administration enjoyed their large domains and their servile labor force.
eBook - PDF- Charles Arthur(Author)
- 2002(Publication Date)
- LAB (Latin America Bureau)(Publisher)
The history books have it that this illiterate former slave, whose back bore scars from his owner's whip, had already escaped to join the bands of runaway slaves in the forests and mountains before the revolution began. He became one of the principal officers in Toussaint's black army, and after Toussaint was taken prisoner, he took up the fight against the French. In April 1803, Dessalines met with Alexander Petion, a leader of the mulatto forces, and the latter agreed to switch sides and make common cause with the black armies. At this meeting at the coastal town of Arcahaie, Dessalines created the Haitian flag by tearing the white band from the French tricolor, eliminating the symbol of the whites and joining the blue and the red, representing the blacks and the mulattos, together. The combined forces of Dessalines and Petion overcame the French troops, capturing the capital, Port-au-Prince, in October 1803, and, a month later, at Vertieres, outside Cap-Fran(:ais, the conclusive battle was fought. The defeated French forces left the colony, and on January 1, 1804, Dessalines read the Proclamation of Independence, swearing to renounce France forever and to die Dessalines 21 rather than live under domination. Dessalines is remembered for his bloodthirsty, battle cry, Koupe tet, boule kay'' (cut off heads, burn down houses), and for ordering the massacre of all remaining whites in the first months of independence. His strong, decisive, and often ruthless leadership is still revered by Haitian nationalists across the political spectrum. Independence and Dependence Dessalines was assassinated in I 806 and was succeeded by Henri Christophe, who used military force to attempt to revive the plantation-based export system. The extent of his rule, though, was restricted to the north of the newly independent Haiti because, the following year, the mulatto-controlled southern part of the country seceded.
eBook - ePub- Jeremy D. Popkin(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
4 On 17 October 1806, the conspirators ambushed and killed Dessalines at Pont Rouge as he was travelling back to Port-au-Prince from a trip to the North Province. Several of his closest supporters, including Capois-la-Mort (“Capois-Death”), the hero of the victory at Vertières three years earlier, were also killed.At the time of his death Dessalines had become extremely unpopular: after his assassination, a crowd tore his body apart. According to legend, it was left to a local madwoman, Défilée-la-folle (“Crazy Défilée”), to gather the scattered remains and bury them. As time passed, however, attitudes toward the man who had rallied the population to defeat the French changed. Eventually, Dessalines became the only Haitian leader to be incorporated into the pantheon of vodou spirits or lwa , where he is recognized as one of the avatars of the warrior Ogou or Ogun.5 In contrast to Toussaint Louverture, who had never entirely abandoned the hope of coexistence with the whites and who never took the ultimate step of declaring independence from France, Dessalines has been transformed into a symbol of black liberation and national self-assertion. Haiti’s national anthem, composed in 1904 to mark the hundredth anniversary of independence, is called “La Dessalinienne,” and its words “United let us march! Let there be no traitors in our ranks! Let us be masters of our soil!” recall his ambition of bringing the different groups of the population together and eliminating white claims to property ownership. Whereas Toussaint Louverture remains better known in the world at large, in Haiti it is Jean-Jacques Dessalines, “this proud deity whose courage defied the murderous points of bayonets,” as one twentieth-century Haitian historian called him,6
eBook - PDF- Charles Forsdick, Christian Høgsbjerg, Charles Forsdick, Christian Høgsbjerg(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Duke University Press Books(Publisher)
Of the three principal black Jacobins “to lead their brothers to freedom”— Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Henri Christophe, and Toussaint Louverture—only Toussaint had any “constructive ideas” of the rights of man before 1789; James had no doubt that his hero “did not make the revolution. It was the revolution that made Toussaint. And even that was not the whole truth.” 19 James is ada-mant that Toussaint cannot be fully understood outside the context of French Enlightenment philosophy and Jacobinism; the Abbé Raynal planted the germ of freedom and revolutionary destiny in Toussaint: “Toussaint alone read his Raynal. ‘A courageous chief only is wanted.’ ” 20 We do not know enough about Boukman to make a final judgment on the source of his inspiration for revolutionary emancipation. James does not im-pute foreign influence, except that the political wrangling in the colony pro-voked by the metropolitan revolution provided an opportune moment for a successful strike against slavery. If the account of Boukman’s transfer from Ja-maica is correct, one must objectively take into account that island’s long tradi-tion in revolutionary struggle. The only insight James ofers into Boukman’s philosophy of revolution comes from his status as “Papaloi or High Priest” of Voodoo. Unlike classical Marxists, James recognizes that African cosmol-ogy, often expressed through song, dance, and sacred rituals, could not be the mere “sighs of the oppressed”; thus, he emphatically inscribes Voodoo as “the medium of the conspiracy,” 21 which underscores the ideology of Boukman’s leadership as decidedly African and creole. Having completed his address to the war party at Bois Caïman, Boukman announced “that the loas (deities) had agreed to his plans.” 22 If Toussaint did not make the revo-lution, Boukman certainly did: The loas did not instruct Boukman; rather, they ratified his plan, thus making him the ultimate master of the situation.
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