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Dr. Rodrigue Francois has written an interesting and what might be called an apographyl history of the Haitian Revolution. In this year, 2004, when many Americans are celebrating the two-hundred year anniversary – the bicentennial – of the epoch making journey of William Clark and Merriwehter Lewis across the western half of what has come to be these United States of America, Dr. Francois reminds us that without the Haitian Revolution, there, quite possibly, might not be a land mass that stretches to the Pacific ocean.
On January 1, 1804, Jean Jaques Dessalines, Henri Christophe and assorted revolutionary heroes of the Haitian resistance, declared the free and independent Republic of Haiti. In its time it was the second great revolutionary entity of the western world —after the fledgling United States -and the first great modern Black republic. We also might include the fact that Haitians are the only enslaved people, in recorded history, to revolt and have that revolt become a successful military, political and social victory.
South African sociologist and political scientist, Chinwezu, reminds us in his important work, HOW THE WEST UNDERDEVELOPED AFRICA, that the price conquered or colonial or primal peoples pay for entering the modern world is spectacularly high. Dr. Francois emphasizes this with the statement that the new Haitian republic could never attain financial independence because on April 17, 1825, King Louis Philippe the 1st issued the Charles X ordinance demanding a payment of one-hundred-fifty gold francs from Haiti as a debt of independence. To back up his demand, he sent a whole fleet to the island. If one considers that France’s budget itself was only ninety million francs per year, it is not difficult to figure out how long it took the young nation to meet this obligation. It took about sixty years just to pay the down payment of sixty million. The entire debt was paid in 1948, after a patriotic drive, where even primary grade children chipped in with their lunch money. Dr. Francois remebers this vivdly, becaus, alas, he was one of those children.
C. L. R. James, the great Trinidadian poet, novelist and political scientist is the recognized authority on the Haitian Revolution. Through his many years of gleaning information from British, French and Spanish national archives he has created a picture of this enormous event that makes us aware of the world political forces at play in the late eighteeth and early nineteeth century.He shows us a desperate Napolean Bonaparte, in the midst of military and economic crisis, willing to sell the French territory of Louisiana, in order to raise money for his grandiose military adventures. Thus, the United Stsates is able to acquire the land mass that now comprises the major western portion of this country.
Dr. Francois reminds us of the inalienable facts of Haitian history. The eight-hundred Haitian volunteers who fought in the American Revolution. Under French Admiral Charles Hector, they exerted tremendous pressure on the British forces encircling Savannah in the winter of 1779 and caused the British to release the air tight grip on that pivotal American stronghold. He recounts the visits to Haiti of Latin American liberators Miranda and Bolivar and the important financial and military assistance that was extended to these historical giants. He recounts the journey of th idealistic Haitian volunteers who fought with panaioti in Greece to free that beleaguered people from the repressive yoke of Turkish rule.
Whereas James tells the talein broad and intellectually challenging strokes, Dr, Francois brings us into the camps of the revolutionaries and into the strategy sessions of French Captain General Le Clerc, Napolean’s brother-in-law, a lets us feel the blood and sweat, the elation and desperation of both sides in the historical face-off that will literally change the world. In many ways this conflict is still being played out two-hundred years later. The successful challlenge to apartheid in South Africa, the victories of the American civil rights movement, Ghandi’s People’s revolution ( although non-violent, stilla true challenge to the western status-quo ) all trace their spiritual energy and vision to that great victory that the African slaves of St. Domingue – now Haiti – created from will and the blood of their hearts.
Dr. Francois has done us a great service in generously recreating the Haiti of 1804. In 2004 it may be misunderstood, but it still lives.
