HomeOld_PostsJean-Jacques Dessalines steers Haiti to independence

Jean-Jacques Dessalines steers Haiti to independence

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By Tawanda Kapfidze

AFTER Toussaint L’Ouverture’s capture by the French in June 1802, Jean-Jacques Dessalines became the leader of the Haitian Revolution.

Dessalines was a brilliant soldier and talented military leader.

Where L’Ouverture failed to share his political motives with his generals, Dessalines spoke clearly to his army, calling on them ‘to rise together’ against the colonial forces. 

He had no time for L’Ouverture’s diplomatic approach towards the white colonial representatives whom he believed wanted to perpetuate the slave regime.

He served as a lieutenant under L’Ouverture after the 1791 slave revolt and later eliminated French rule.

Dessalines renamed the colony Haiti in 1804 and declared himself emperor. 

Honoured as one of Haiti’s founding fathers, he was killed in a revolt on October 17 1806, in Pont Rouge, near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. 

There are two contradictory stories of his birth. In one, Dessalines was born in Africa’s ancient kingdom of Kongo (present-day northern Angola and Republic of the Congo) around 1758. 

Together with his parents, they were enslaved and transported to the island of Saint Domingue in the French West Indies.

The other story claims that Dessalines was born in Saint Domingue (Haiti) in 1758, to Congolese parents.

He was named Jean-Jacques Duclos after the owner of the plantation on which he was born. 

He worked on the plantation until he was 30, rising from a farmhand to the role of foreman.

At around age 30, he was sold to a free blackman named Dessalines and his surname was changed again.

Jean-Jacques’ master proved to be cruel and brutal; treatment that he may have adopted later in life as a means to an end.

In 1791, a slave rebellion broke out in Saint Domingue and Dessalines was able to escape the plantation and join rising rebel leader L’Ouverture. 

Though illiterate, Dessalines was a quick study, positioning himself as L’Ouverture’s lieutenant and earning the nickname the ‘Tiger’ for his ferocity in battle.

Initially, their fight was to free all slaves on the island, but, over time, the goal would become independence.

In 1793, the French Republic declared an end to slavery in France and all colonies and soon after L’Ouverture and Dessalines switched their allegiance to the French against the Spanish and British.

Over the next 10 years, Dessalines’ skill and leadership proved vital to L’Ouverture’s success in capturing the Spanish-controlled eastern half of the island. 

By 1799, Dessalines had risen to the rank of brigadier general.

With Europe temporarily distracted due to the rise of Napoleon, the slave rebellion turned into a civil war and L’Ouverture and Dessalines fought for control of the island, crushing rivals and slave owners alike.

By 1801, L’Ouverture was serving as Governor-General of Haiti and Dessalines was second in command. 

Many whites and mulattos in Santa Domingue had lobbied France to re-establish slavery and Napoleon sent a force to restore French rule on the island. 

L’Ouverture and Dessalines repelled the invading forces in the battle of Crête-à-Pierrot in 1802.

After the battle, Dessalines became disenchanted with L’Ouverture’ leadership and briefly sided with the French.  Some historians claim that the move was a ruse to trick the French into trusting Dessalines as he worked out a plan to continue with the fight for independence. 

This move saw the arrest and deportation of L’Ouverture’s to France, where he died months later in 1803. 

When it became clear that the French intended to reinstate slavery, Dessalines switched sides again and commanded rebel forces against the French.

In a series of victories, Dessalines’ coalition of blacks and mulattos was successful in forcing the French to surrender and leave the island. 

In 1804, Dessalines proclaimed independence. In 1805 he declared himself emperor of Haiti, adopting the name Jacques I and making his wife, Marie Claire Heureuse Félicité Bonheur, the Empress. 

Haiti became the first black independent republic in the world. 

The revolution was the only slave uprising that led to the founding of a state which was both free from slavery, and ruled by non-whites as well as former captives. It is now widely seen as a defining moment in the history of the Atlantic World.

It represents the largest slave uprising since Spartacus’ unsuccessful revolt against the Roman Republic nearly 1 900 years earlier. 

It challenged long-held European beliefs about alleged black inferiority and about enslaved persons’ capacity to achieve and maintain their own freedom. 

The rebels’ organisational capacity and tenacity under pressure inspired stories that shocked and frightened slave owners in the hemisphere.

As emperor, Dessalines took drastic measures he felt necessary for Haiti to stay independent. 

He enforced a system of forced labour to prevent Haiti from reverting back to a subsistence economy.

To eliminate rule by whites, he confiscated their land and made it illegal for them to own property.

Probably his most extreme measure was a campaign to eliminate the white population of Haiti. 

Between February and April 1804, Dessalines ordered deaths of approximately 3 000 to 5 000 white people of all ages and genders.

The elimination of these French would serve not only as the final step in completing the war of emancipation, it would also ensure that no remaining foreigner would continue to plot “…to trouble and divide us” (Dubois and Garrigus 189). 

More importantly, Dessalines stated that a final act of massacre would send the most dramatic message possible to dissuade France and any other power that this fledgling nation could ever be reclaimed for slavery:

“…know that you have done nothing if you do not give the nations a terrible, but just example of the vengeance that must be wrought by a people proud to have recovered its liberty and jealous to maintain it. Let us frighten all those who would dare try to take it from us again; let us begin with the French. Let them tremble when they approach our coast, if not from the memory of those cruelties they perpetrated here, then from the terrible resolution that we will have made to put to death anyone born French whose profane foot soils the land of liberty.”(Dubois and Garrigus 189).

Importantly, in the declaration’s closing lines, Dessalines also claimed his own legacy: “Recall that my name horrifies all those who are slavers, and that tyrants and despots can only bring themselves to utter it when they curse the day I was born…” (Arthur and Dash 44).

In April 1804, following the actual killings of the remaining French planters, Dessalines proclaimed:

‘We have rendered to these true cannibals, war for war, crime for crime, outrage for outrage. Yes, I have saved my country; I have avenged America. The avowal I make in the face of earth and heaven, constitutes my pride and my glory. Of what consequence to me is the opinion which contemporary and future generations will pronounce upon my conduct? I have performed my duty; I enjoy my own approbation: for me that is sufficient’ (Barskett 183).

Dessalines carefully posited his acts against a history of the French slave system notorious for its excessive cruelties, tortures as well as rapes, and he orchestrated the executions to be a signal to the greater world of an unrepentant blackness that grounded the newly created Haitian identity.

To his credit, Dessalines also tried to implement reforms to improve Haiti’s economy. 

He enforced tight regulation of foreign trade, and favoured commerce with Great Britain and the United States over France. He placed well-educated Haitians, primarily mulattos, into key positions in his administration.

The exact circumstances of Dessalines’ death are uncertain. 

What is known is that people of all classes were upset with his draconian labour and agricultural policies, including the peasants, the fair-skinned elite and the military. 

A conspiracy to overthrow him was organised by none other than his lieutenants, Alexandre Pétion and Henri Christophe.

On October 17 1806, Dessalines was ambushed by Pétion and Christophe and brutally murdered. 

They dragged his body through the streets before dismembering him.  

He was just 48 years old.

Pétion and Christophe then split the island into two and ruled each section separately.

Dessalines lives on as a figure of pride for Haitians. The day of his death, October 17 1806, is a national holiday in Haiti. 

Dessalines’s legacy is embodied in Haiti’s national anthem, ‘La Dessalinienne’.


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