Slavery: The Haitian Revolution

Slavery is the result of taking away one’s freedom and humanity by exploiting the individual physically and psychologically to be productive on the plantation. The maximization of profit is of essential goal. Viewed as the largest and most successful revolution of its era, Haiti became the first black Republic in the western hemisphere. The once pearl of the Caribbean consisted of large coffee and sugar plantations turned to blood and fire with its ruling class eliminated and economy ruined. Very few revolution could be compared as the slaves of Saint Dominique took charge of their fate by ruling themselves politically and economic. This stems national pride and black consciousness to the ones who were once classified as property. Now the

This was difficult however as he tried to maintain the plantation system and employed a quasi-slave system to force people back on the coffee and sugar plantations once burnt (Fick, 1990). Louverture issued a constitution in 1801 demanding Saint Domingue operating as a sovereign state and of loose ends with the French (Fick, 1990). This however, angered Napoleon Bonaparte in which he sent General Victor Emmanuel Leclerc to reinstitute slavery in Saint Domingue. The next series of struggle turns out to be the struggle for independence. On Leclerc arrival with his French army stemmed a big eruption in the colony as former enslaved realized that freedom was never an assurity under the French therefore they had to fight for their independence (Girard, 2012). Louverture was then tricked and deported to France as Jean-Jacques Dessalines took the leadership to hurdle the final stage of the revolution (Girard, 2012). Fighting tactically deploying guerrilla warfare and with the aid of tropical disease such as the yellow fever that the French army was not accustomed to, Dessalines was able to defeat the French army (Girard,

This meant that majority of the enslaved people were severely lacking in technical skills to move the nation forward (Geggus, 2002). On the other hand, at the higher level the government and ruling body has no experience in administrative nor legislative therefore, the successful controlling of the island was always and experiment (Geggus, 2002). Opportunities was far and few thus limiting the former enslaves to the plantation in which they did not want to continue their lives on the plantation. Many favoured jobs such as such as soldiers or peasant cultivators (Geggus, 2002). While the island was now independent, there was the constant fair an invasion or institutional self-interest that led to the stagnant growth of Haiti (Geggus,