| It shares space with the Dominican Republic and their capital, Santa Domingo, is where TheMomCat is flying this morning.
It will be quite an adventure even getting to Port Au Prince or someplace near.
But enough about them, Haiti is the really romantic and interesting part of the island.
It was the site of one of the earliest European colonies in the Americas, La Navidad, which was promptly destroyed by the naked, weaponless, and cowardly Taíno.
The natives didn't really ever get less restless since after the introduction of Arfican slavery in 1517 (most of the Native American slaves being killed off by European diseases and all) it was also the site of the first and only successful slave revolt in the Americas (and I would argue about Spartacus, since it ended badly).
The Spanish mostly abandoned the Western part of the island (except when they were busy killing Indians) and it was taken over by French pirates which explains why French is the primary language today.
The Pirates also found that there was safer money to be made in exploiting slaves on indigo, tobacco, and sugar plantations and after some disputes over squatter's rights the Western part of the island was ceded to France in the Treaty of Ryswick.
Under French rule it became the richest and most repressive part of the island, but with the successful examples of Revolution in The United States and France the African slave population became restive.
The French Revolutionary government to it's great credit opposed slavery on ideological grounds and abolished it for certain classes of mixed race people in 1791. After resistance from slaveholders to implementing the new laws a general rebellion of those covered by the new policies and more traditional slaves soon succeeded in seizing control of what was France's most profitable colony. Fearing British exploitation of the rebellion (as they themselves had exploited the American Revolution) France issued a general emancipation and abolished slavery in 1794.
Now the French Revolution is really complicated and enmeshed with the geo-political rivalries between the Continental and Colonial powers of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, France, and Britain (I'm excluding the Dutch and Portugese because their empires were primarily Colonial, but they also had European ramifications).
It was a time of quickly shifting allegiances of which it could truly be said that there were no eternal allies or perpetual enemies, only enduring interests.
As soon as 1801 Napoleon Bonaparte dispatched expeditionary forces because he was dissatisfied with the leadership of Toussaint L'ouverture who was showing a disturbing independence.
Defeated by the French (joined by Jean-Jacques Dessalines), L'ouverture signed a treaty swearing that slavery was abolished and retired to his farm for a full three weeks after which he was seized, deported to France, and died of "pneumonia" after repeated interrogation in captivity.
Dessalines in turn promptly booted the French and proclaimed the new nation of Haiti the second independent country in the Western Hemisphere and himself Emperor for Life. George Washington he wasn't.
More recently Haiti has become a nation of grinding poverty where people eat dirt to ameliorate their hunger and suffered a succession of brutal dictatorships interspersed with revolutions and hurricanes.
Bonne chance.
Also posted at The Seminal. |
