24 - The Haitian Revolutions

Summary

There was not one unified revolutionary process in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, but several revolutions, each with its own rhythm and logic. In the last years of the eighteenth century, each population group asserted itself by opposing the others. The masters of the colony, the White settlers, wanted to be able to govern themselves, until they became practically independent. At first, they clashed with the property-owning men of color, who demanded civil equality for all free men. The revolt of the plantation slaves of the North Plain reshuffled the cards: general liberty and the reality of republican universalism were crucial starting in 1793. If the revolution upset the conditions and status of the whole population, it also took different forms, according to the pre-revolutionary social structures. Moreover, colonial revolutions are always in interaction with the phases of the revolution in the metropole. That interaction took the form of reaction by the white colonists bent on maintaining slavery and free people of color eager to preserve revolutionary achievements. It also took the form of harmony, in which case the search for equality before the law was offered as a step towards a new citizenship.