On This Day in History: August 14

The Haiti uprising of enslaved people

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There is only one uprising of enslaved people that led to the formation of a state that was not just free of slavery, but also ended up being ruled by former enslaved and other non-whites. It is the nation of Haiti. The country’s independence began with a Vodou ceremony.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: August 14, 1791--

Vodou is an African diasporic religion that began among enslaved in Haiti in the 16th century. It evolved as a combination of West African religions merged with Roman Catholicism. Dutty Boukman was a man born in West Africa in 1767 who was captured and transported as a slave to Jamaica, then transferred to Haiti. While there, he became a Vodou houngan (priest). Alongside Vodou mambo (priestess) Cécile Fatiman, the daughter of an enslaved African woman and a white Frenchman, the two held a ceremony in a forest called Bois Caïman on the night of August 14, 1791 that was attended by about 200 African enslaved people. It was at that ceremony the Haitian Revolution began.

Boukman prophesized that their fight would result in freeing them from slavery; Cécile sacrificed a pig said to have magical powers, and the attending enslaved swore a pact in its blood that they would rise up and overthrow their white oppressors.

Many years of enslavement and brutal oppression filled them with a hatred for whites. The revolt spread quickly and in a matter of days they had taken control of the entire northern province. The revolution was vicious, with the enslaved seeking revenge through rape, mutilation, and death. Within weeks, over 100,000 enslaved had joined the uprising, making it the largest uprising of enslaved since Spartacus in 73 BCE, and over the next two months they killed over 4,000 whites and burned over a thousand coffee and sugar plantations.

The surviving whites organized into a militia, fighting back and killing thousands of insurgents. One of those killed was Dutty Boukman. The French displayed his head in an effort to dispel his air of invincibility to the revolutionaries.

The war would rage for another dozen years, with both Spain and Britain getting involved. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, a Black French soldier who had become leader of the Haitian Revolution, declared Haiti a free republic on January 1, 1804, and immediately ordered a massacre of the remaining French in the country. Over the next few months soldiers went from house to house, torturing and killing entire families.

Dessalines made no apologies, saying he had saved his country and that “We have given these true cannibals war for war, crime for crime, outrage for outrage.” The rebels’ tenacity, along with their ability to organize and fight, filled many enslavers across the Americas with fear.

France, for its part, was a sore fucking loser. Haiti suffered political and economic isolation, and France, with warships ready to unleash hell, refused to recognize the country unless it paid the equivalent of $21 billion in reparations to former enslavers. That’s right. France made former enslaved pay their former owners for the “crime” of freeing themselves from slavery. The payments had a devastating effect on the Haitian economy; they didn’t finish paying off the debt until 1947. 

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