By Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (May 15th 2017)
The Origins of Strife
As with many revolutions, the aims evolved in practice. Haiti’s is no different. And like most it was full of contradictions. It was inspired the martyrdom of two Mulatto (mixed race) leaders Vincent Ogé and Jean-Baptiste Chavannes. They visited France, demanding liberty, equality and fraternity, but within limits. Their demands were just for ‘gentlemen of colour’. The negroes’ woes did not concern them. Political rights and equality were for them, not blacks or even Mulatto slaves. While the black Voddoo Priest, Boukman is acknowledged as the Father of the Revolution, its Mother, Cécile Fatiman, also officiated at the ceremony at Bois Caïman. Fatiman was a Mulatto and a slave. Not for her the eitism of Ogé.
The free Mulattos like Ogé enjoyed wealth and privilege certainly compared to black slaves. Haiti was the jewel in France’s colonial Crown. In 1787 $11m out of a total income from its colonies of $17m came from Haiti alone. It was the most productive colony in the world – based on coffee growth in particular, but that came at a high price.
While some slaves were educated – Toussaint Breda, for example – and experienced a different regime to most – the life of slaves in general was short and subject to great brutality. The severity of that regime sowed the seeds of destruction. New slaves had to be imported fairly regularly and that meant the slaves were not born into it with no memory of life other than as slaves to white men. They still had memories of a different life in Africa that they yearned to get back to. Rebellion and freedom were in their minds.
Some are More Equal Than Others
And they had no articulate advocates championing their rights. The Mulattos wit notable exceptions such as Fatiman, didn’t see them as brothers and sisters. They believed negroes were not deserving of rights, but they were. Liberty, fraternity and equality inspired Ogé and Chavannes to dream, but only for their race. Ogé addressed the President of the Assembly of the Cape as follows. It is an impassioned plea, but just for his people. It is perhaps the most grotesquely prejudiced plea for liberty ever.
“GENTLEMEN: a prejudice, too long maintained, is about to fall. I am charged with a commission doubtless very honorable to myself. I require you to promulgate throughout the colony the instructions of the National Assembly of the 8th of March, which gives without distinction, to all free citizens, the right of admission to all offices and functions. My pretensions are just, and I hope you will pay due regard to them. I shall not call the plantations to rise; that means would be unworthy of me. Learn to appreciate the merit of a man whose intention is pure. When I solicited from the National Assembly a decree which I obtained in favour of the American colonists, formerly known under the injurious epithet of mulattos, I did not include in my claims the condition of the negroes who live in servitude. You and our adversaries have misrepresented my steps in order to bring me into discredit with honorable men. No, no, gentlemen! we have put forth a claim only on behalf of a class of freemen, who, for two centuries, have been under the yoke of oppression. We require the execution of the decree of the 8th of March. We insist on its promulgation, and we shall not cease to repeat to our friends that our adversaries are unjust, and that they know not how to make their interests compatible with ours. Before employing my means, I make use of mildness; but if, contrary to my expectation, you do not satisfy my demand, I am not answerable for the disorder into which my just vengeance may carry me” [my emphasis].
It will be noted that Ogé’s concerns excluded black people. Rights for his race – the lighter-skinned race was all he was concerned with, and it cost him his life. But he predicted the Haitian Revolution even if he got its driving force wrong. A Mulatto would however rise to prominence and become one of Haiti’s greatest sons, Alexandre Pétion. Unlike Ogé, Pétion never had time for slavery. He championed the rights of Mulattos, but was an implacable opponent of slavery – one of the giants of the struggle against that bestial institution – and played an important part in the triumph of the former slaves, once he realised that he and other Mulattos had been duped and that Napoléon’s plan was to restore French control over Haiti and slavery too. Pétion switched sides. The ultimate success of the Haitian Revolution was now assured, but that was still over a decade away from the martyrdom of Chavannes and Ogé.
Martyrdom
Ogé was accepted and supported in revolutionary France, and also by the British abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, but Haiti’s expatriates were in no mood to concede a dilution of their power and rights, even to their children. In October 1790 he returned to Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was called then. Ogé, veteran of the American War of Independence, Chavannes, and up to 300 men of colour began an armed rebellion. In November 1790, 25 of them, including Ogé and Chavannes, were captured in Santo Domingo – the Spanish part of the island of Hispaniola. Despite assurances to the contrary, they were handed over to the French colonial government of the western part, in December 1790.
On February 6th 1791 the white colonialists took their brutal revenge on Ogé, Chavannes and others were sentenced to be hammered to death and viciously executed in Le Cap, but breaking Ogé on the wheel and brutally martyring Chavannes on February 23rd backfired. Ogé became a symbol of resentment, not just of people of colour, but black slaves too. Chavannes protested the treatment of people of African descent to his death. Six months later ‘Dutty’ Boukman and Cécile Fatiman gave the call that began the Haitian Revolution.
The quest for justice