The Slave Revolt That Changed the World and the Conspiracy Against It: The Haitian Revolution and the Birth of Scientific Racism

Abstract

This paper argues, first, that despite the transnational impact of the Haitian Revolution, it remains mostly unknown in the Western hemisphere. This is primarily the result of an international racist project to repress the idea of Black Revolution and undermine Haiti’s progress. Second, I argue that, since the second half of the 19th century, intellectuals and social scientists have contributed to this racial project, and thus that scientific racism was born primarily as a response to the Haitian Revolution. The proliferation of racially oriented pseudosciences was part of significant efforts on the part of European and American intellectuals to undermine the notion of Black Revolution and Black power, and to demonstrate that Blacks were not capable of self-governance.

Keywords

Haitian Revolution racial conspiracy scientific racism Black Revolution

The [Haitian] revolt is the only successful slave revolt in history and the odds it had to overcome is evidence of the magnitude of the interests that were involved. The transformation of slave, trembling in hundreds before a single white man, into a people able to organize themselves and defeated the most powerful of European nations of their day, is one of the great epics of revolutionary struggle and achievement.

—James (1963, p. ix)

The tremors of the Haitian Revolutions extended globally. In the Caribbean and South and Latin America, it galvanized, inspired, and contributed to the struggle against slavery. In Europe and North America, it instigated a new discourse on slavery that catalyzed the abolition of the slave trade, and later, the practice of slavery itself. To the entire world, it stood as and still remains a symbol of Black emancipation. Despite its transnational impact, the Haitian Revolution remains mostly unknown in the Western hemisphere. My purpose in this paper is to analyze the causes of such a “silence surrounding the Haitian Revolution” (Trouillot, 1995).

Utilizing an historical analysis of postrevolutionary reactions and building on the concept of racial project by Omi and Winant (1994), I hypothesize, first, that the Haitian Revolution was a subject of an international racial conspiracy. This racial conspiracy was part of a racist project to repress the idea of Black Revolution and undermine Haiti’s progress. Second, I argue that, since the second half of the 19th century, intellectuals and social scientists have contributed to this racial conspiracy. Scientific racism was born as part of this effort to undermine the notion of Black Revolution and Black power. To assess the transnational impact of this tremendous event and the emergence of the new racial discourse that it provoked in the Western and nonWestern world, three broad questions need to be answered: First, how did the West respond to the Haitian Revolution? Second, in what way did the Haitian Revolution stimulate resistance among slaves and people of color? And finally, how did Western reactions against the Revolution contribute to the emergence of scientific racism?

The Hegemonic Construction of Race and the Haitian Revolution

Although the concept of race based on skin color was an 18th-century invention (Fredrickson, 2002), practices of racialization have a much longer history. During the medieval period, race helped to describe national cultures and served to trace the genealogy of Europe’s upper class (Fouron, 2006). However, beginning in the 16th century, race became the primary psychobiological agent used to evaluate intelligence and cultural achievements among Europeans and nonEuropeans (Fouron, 2006; Wallerstein, 2006), and served to justify the emerging modern system of slavery (Cooper, 1988). The 16th century corresponded with the construction of the world system and the fledgling capitalist world economy. The modern concept of race is both the cause and the consequence of these phenomena. As Howard Winant (2001) argues, the creation of modern nation-states, the construction of the world capitalist economy, and the Enlightenment’s vision of a unified world culture were “all deeply racialized processes” (Winant, 2001, p. 19).

In this perspective, Winant (2001) considers the construction of the world system as a global project of racial formation. The concept of racial formation was previously developed by Omi and Winant (1994) to analyze race and racism in a national context, particularly that of the United States. In the work “Racial Formation in the United States,” racial formation is defined as “the sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed and destroyed” (p. 55). Accordingly, Omi and Winant (1994) strive to establish a link between the meaning of race and social structure. In a given society, social structure can be racialized through the application of specific social policy and order. This process is, thus, a racial project (Omi and Winant, 1994, p. 56).

By applying the racial formation concept to a global scale, Winant’s (2001) aim is to present the creation of the world system economy as a racial project. Slavery is, therefore, a key feature of this Western racial project. At the beginning of the 16th century, the world was composed of “inferior” and “superior” races, and rules for self-governance were established according to each group’s perceived potential. The “inferiors” were considered incapable of self-governance and denied natural rights, while the “superiors” enjoyed the right of self-governance and the right to dominate the others (Fouron, 2006).

Such conceptions of racial definition and hierarchy, known today as racism, began to gain legitimacy during the Enlightenment. A good example is the case of the naturalist Swedish Carl Linnaeus, who in 1735 described Europeans as acute, inventive, and governed by laws. On the contrary, he described Blacks as crafty, indolent, negligent, and governed by caprice (Fredrickson, 2002). However, it was Pierre Victoire de Malouet that offered the best example of this account during the Enlightenment period. Malouet was a French administrator in Saint Domingue.¹ In his Memoires Sur l’Esclavage des Nègres (Memoirs on the Slavery of the Negroes) published in 1788, he wrote:

Surely no one will make us desire the incorporation and the mixing of races? Yet, slavery is essential if we wish to avoid this. Only the ignominy attached to an alliance with Black Slave secures the nation’s own affiliation. If this prejudice is destroyed, if Black man is assimilated to the Whites among us, it is more than probable that in short order we shall see mulattos as Nobles, Financiers [and] Traders, . . . [and their] wealth will soon procure wives and mothers [with colored skins] to all Estates within the State. It is thus that individuals, families, [and] Nations become altered, debased, and that they dissolve. (Cited by Garrigus, 2006, p. 161)

As a result of such attitudes, race and racism became an essential ideological weapon for imperialism and the development of nationalist discourse. Racism reached hegemony in the 19th century, as intellectuals and scientists attempted to grant ground to racial discourses proclaiming White superiority. It was at the junction of racial discourse on White superiority and Black inferiority that the Haitian Revolution occurred, and therefore challenged the entrenched racial ideology of the 19th century. As the Revolution continued and European powers were unsuccessful in their attempts to quash it, the White world saw the Haitian reality as irrational and abnormal (Fouron, 2006). What I want to show here is that the Haitian Revolution produced a double-edged racial project. While it inspired antislavery and abolitionist movements, it paradoxically accelerated the reactionary racist project—a racial conspiracy—against Black self-determination. Racial conspiracy, therefore, is defined as manifest and targeted action to repress any social and political movement or an ethnic group based on perceived racial status. Racial conspiracy can occur at the transnational level and the national level; the Haitian Revolution resulted in the former type. Thus, before exposing the racial conspiracy against the Haitian Revolution, I will analyze the Revolution’s transnational impact.

The Haitian Revolution: A World-Historical Event

The Haitian Revolution remains one of the most critical revolutionary events of the modern era. It challenged 300 years of Black slavery imposed by the modern world system. Its importance as a world event could be argued to have been more significant than the American Revolution. When the English colonies created the United States as an independent and sovereign nation, they did not alter the preexisting social and economic conditions, particularly slavery (Fouron, 2006). In Haiti, independence coincided with the abolition of the country’s practice of slavery, the main engine of the world economic system at that time, and gave birth to a new country under the governance of former slaves. This prominent place in world history is gained not only because of the radical change that the Haitian Revolution produced in Saint Domingue but also and foremost because of its reverberations throughout the world system and the promise of liberty the Revolution carried.

Indeed, after the former slaves of Saint Domingue had defeated the most powerful army in the world and established their own independent nation, the world became racially and politically agitated and White powers threatened. However, understanding what was happening in Saint Domingue and how the Revolution was made possible requires analyzing it in the broader context of the French Revolution.

Repercussions of the French Revolution

The slaves of Saint Domingue seemed never to have accepted their enslavement. Numerous slaves escaped the plantations and established refuges in the mountains. This practice was so common that it had its own term: marronage. Beginning in 1751, a maroon slave named François Mackandal began to organize a movement of rebellion against slavery. For 6 years, Mackandal organized a series of successful revolts, resulting in the pillage of plantations, the burning of refineries, and the liberation of other slaves. Mackandal’s vision was to eliminate all the masters and for former slaves to take possession of Saint Domingue (Heinl & Heinl, 2005). When Mackandal was captured and executed in 1758, the movement then lost its intensity.

The marronage constituted the first steps of the slaves toward independence. However, the upheavals unfolding in France around 1789, especially the French Revolution, profoundly affected the course of social, political, and economic relationships in Saint Domingue. Among the slaves, it galvanized the idea of freedom and, particularly among the mulattoes (considered by the French to be semi-citizens), racial equality. The French Revolution was in large part a product of the Enlightenment thought that marked 18th-century France. Indeed, French thinkers articulated a new philosophy centered on the happiness of humankind, tolerance, and reason. They anticipated a new society based on equality, liberty, and fraternity. Influenced by such ideals, the General Assembly proclaimed in July of 1789 the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which stipulates in its first article that “all men are born and live free and equal in rights” (Ishay, 2008). The reference to “all men” provoked confusion in France among the defenders of slavery in the colonies, and it brought many worries among the plantation owners. However, the mulattoes, those who were born from one White and one Black parent, intended to make good use of it by claiming civil rights and equality with the Whites (Cooper, 1988; Garrigus, 2006; Ishay, 2008).

The “all men” article of the Declaration created significant discussion among the planters of Saint Domingue until, eventually, the news reached the ears of some domestic slaves who covertly passed it on to others. The news created a great opportunity for the enslaved people of Saint Domingue, deeply animated by a desire for freedom and independence, to put an end to their enslavement. A great movement of insurrection was organized in the North of Saint Domingue during 1791. The leader of this movement was Boukman, a slave and Voodoo priest. In the summer of 1791 in Bois Cayman, a very remote place in a plantation near Cap Haitian (the northern part of Saint Domingue), Boukman convened a nocturnal religious and political meeting in which he intended to articulate a plan to end slavery. The plan was conceived as a massive extermination of the masters and the construction of an independent Saint Domingue under the control of the former slaves (James, 1963).

The plan did not reach its goal, but placed the colony on an irreversible path toward independence. From that moment, Saint Domingue became a land of turbulence: the Revolution had begun. “Within two months after Bois Cayman, 180 sugar plantations and 900 of coffee, cotton, and indigo had been sacked and burned” (Heinl & Heinl, 2005, p. 42). France decided to send a civil commission, which landed in November 1791, to restore order in the colony, but this mission failed. By early 1792, most of the rich Northern plantations were under the control of the slaves. Concurrently, in France, the legislative assembly approved the decree of April 4 that conceded full citizenship and equal rights to all free men of color. This act created even more turbulence in the colony, as the reactionary planters would have preferred to cede Saint Domingue to other powers before accepting equality with people of color. France’s possession of its richest colony was being threatened; it sent a second civil commission² to Saint Domingue with the mission of enforcing the law of April 4, 1792, reestablish peace in the colony, and save Saint Domingue for France. The mission arrived in Saint Domingue on September 18, 1992. The slaves did not trust the French, and so turned to the Spanish Empire on the Eastern side of the island and made an alliance with them. The Spanish supplied weapons and munitions to the slaves, and the fight continued in Saint Domingue.

In February 1793, France declared war on the British, which complicated the situation in the colony. Many White planters, propelled by a deep sense of separation from France, were poised to side with the British. The French Civil Commissioner, Léger-Félicité Sonthonax was faced with an eventual attack by the British, the opposition of the White planters, and a slave army trained by the Spanish; thus, he unilaterally declared the emancipation of the slaves in Saint Domingue on August 29, 1793. Sonthonax’s decision to emancipate the slaves constituted a strategic move to save the colony for the French (Garrigus, 2006; Garrigus & Dubois, 2006; Heinl & Heinl, 2005).

As expected, the British debarked in the southwest part of Saint Domingue on September 19, 1793 and began to gain ground. By June of 1794, they had already occupied Port-au-Prince. The British were welcomed by the White planters and the slave owners, who traded their support for the reestablishment of slavery in Saint Domingue. It was at this contentious time that General Toussaint L’Ouverture came to prominence. Toussaint L’Ouverture was a former slave. His participation in the planning of the slave insurrection remains unclear; however, in 1791, L’Ouverture was a free man. He was among the slave generals and soldiers who fought alongside the Spanish against the French. He would eventually take leadership of the first successful slave revolt in history. L’Ouverture is often described as skilled man of high intelligence and a Jacobin (Garrigus & Dubois, 2006; James, 1963; Manigat, 2001). C. L. R. James (1963), the author of The Black Jacobins, argues that L’Ouverture “incarnated the determination of his people never to be slaves again” (p. 198). Now, surrounded by a weakened colonial system and international jockeying, Toussaint L’Ouverture found himself weighing his allegiance between three rival camps in Saint Domingue: the British, the Spanish, and the French.

L’Ouverture analyzed each camp individually. The British had the reactionary intention to reestablish slavery. This was not in his faction’s interest. The Spanish power in Europe was declining. The French also wanted to reestablish slavery, but their own Civil Commission had just emancipated the slaves, so the best thing for L’Ouverture was to consolidate this victory. Thus, he decided to support French and functioned as an officer in charge of a group of slave insurgents. He helped the French to eliminate the British and Spanish presence in the colony, and pressured them into an official abolition of slavery in 1794 (James, 1963; Manigat, 2001).

However, after Napoleon Bonaparte took power in France through a coup d’état, he decreed the reestablishment of slavery in Saint Domingue. In 1802, Bonaparte sent an expeditionary force to enforce the decree. In the ensuing fight, the French army was completely defeated. Then, on January 1, 1804, the slave army declared the independence of Saint Domingue. The newly independent nation was called Haiti, was the second independent country of the hemisphere, and was the first Black Republic in the world.

Significance of the Haitian Revolution

Of the Revolution, Mimi Sheller (2000) writes, “Haiti’s radical break with the French colonial system was a unique rejection of the power of whites, sugar planters, and colonial rule; it fundamentally challenged the entire basis of the Atlantic-slave economy and the European-system” (p.73). The world economic system, at the time of the Haitian Revolution and before, relied heavily upon slavery, which offered a massive input of coercive labor to the developing capitalist economy in the Americas (Winant, 2001).

Although slavery was not always a condition solely imposed on Blacks, the Europeans did not take long to racialize the practice following the 1492 conquest of the New World. Based on Las Casas’ proposition that the Blacks would be well suited to the hard work of mining, the process of the racialization of slavery and the slave trade began. The first slave shipment was brought into the Caribbean in 1517. This commerce was highly lucrative and soon became institutionalized. Every year, 4,000 African slaves were brought to the Caribbean. Slavery became the engine of the colonial system and the modern world economy (Cooper, 1988). In 1791, The Haitian revolutionaries stood up against 200 years of the European colonial establishment. On January, 1804, they defeated the French army, the most sophisticated army of the time.

The Haitian Revolution weakened Napoleon’s military power enormously, and thus undermined his imperial ambitions. Within 2 years of fighting, the French army lost almost all its troops in Saint Domingue. Recounting the damages, the historian Lacroix (cited by Heinl & Heinl, 2005) estimated the total mortality to be 62,481 dead. This loss occurred at a moment when Napoleon could least afford it, as he planned to reestablish French colonial power in North America, including the reconquest of Louisiana (Heinl & Heinl, 2005).

The economic impact of the Revolution was no less substantial. With the independence of Saint Domingue, France lost its most prosperous colony. Saint Domingue produced half the world’s coffee and exported almost as much sugar as Jamaica, Cuba, and Brazil combined (Davis, 2001; Robinson, 1983). Nevertheless, if there is one primary significance of the Haitian Revolution, it is that the Haitian Revolution anticipated the end of slavery in the world by the power of example. In a speech at the 1883 Chicago World Fair, Frederick Douglass—former U.S. Consul General in Haiti—declared:

We should not forget that the freedom you and I enjoy to-day; that the freedom that eight hundred thousand colored people enjoy in the British West Indies; the freedom that has come to the colored race the world over, is largely due to the brave stand taken by the black sons of Haiti ninety years ago. When they struck for freedom. . . they struck for the freedom of every black man in the world. (Davis, 2001, p. 1)

Karl Marx frames the Haitian Revolution in a more significant and even transnational dimension, by placing it at the center of a struggle for human freedom and world liberation. In the German Ideology, he writes: “the insurgent Negroes of Haiti and fugitive Negroes of all colonies wanted to free not themselves, but man” (Marx & Engels in Lawrence & Wishart, 2010, p. 309).

The Transnational Impact of the Haitian Revolution

The news of the Haitian Revolution was immediate and widespread. However, it was received differently around the world. In the West, particularly in countries like England, Spain, and the United States, the Haitian Revolution was received as an anomaly and a threat to White supremacy; in the periphery, the Haitian Revolution was seen as a symbol of Black liberation and power.

Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the West

The Haitian Revolution created widespread panic among powerful countries, wealthy planters, and slaveholders in the Americas. Nwankwo (2008) points out that even the name, Saint Domingue, evoked a moment of alarm and terror in the minds of slaveholders. In the United States and Britain, even before the Revolution, the abolitionists argued that slavery itself was a prominent cause of slave revolts. The Haitian Revolution strengthened the abolitionist arguments against the slave trade and resulted in the end of the American slave trade in 1808 (Davis, 2001). The British, however, seemed to offer the most precise case of how the revolution impacted abolition. Knight (2000) maintains that the anti-slavery movement grew more rapidly and stronger in Great Britain while the colonial slaves became increasingly rebellious, leading the British to abolish their slave trade in 1807 and slavery itself in 1834 (Knight, 2000, p. 13). The French abolished their slave trade in 1818 and dismantled the slave system in all French colonies in 1848. In 1865, the United States’ disastrous civil war also ended slavery, and Spain abolished slavery in Puerto Rico in 1873.

The impact of the Haitian Revolution did not stop there. In the United States, for instance, the Revolution had other positive impacts. Economically, the Revolution produced advantageous agricultural shifts and an increase in trade between the United States and other countries. This was most visible in New Orleans, Virginia, and Louisiana where, according to James (1963) more than 10,000 French planters of Saint Domingue emigrated during the Haitian revolutionary war. Those planters introduced the cultivation of tropical crops such as coffee and cotton, which opened new frontiers for American commerce. The same effect also occurred in Jamaica and Cuba. In Cuba, the French from Saint Domingue established more than 200 coffee farms by 1910, which allowed Cuba to surpass Haiti in the production of coffee in the world (Greggus, 2001).

In addition to the positive economic impact that Haiti’s war of independence had on the United States, we also need to highlight its political contribution. Indeed, the future of the United States in the Union was not quite bright, beginning in the 19th century. Napoleon Bonaparte’s objective was to reestablish colonial power in North America and Europe. Bonaparte decided to let his troops make a small detour of about 6 weeks to end the little slaves’ insurrection and then to move on to America. However, the situation appeared to be more complicated and more demanding than expected. When President Jefferson decided to send James Monroe and Robert Livingston to Paris to try to reach an agreement with Bonaparte on April 1803, they were surprised to find him offering to sell the whole Louisiana territory, which would effectively double the size of the United States. According to Reinhardt (2005), as a result of Bonaparte’s costly endeavors in the Caribbean, he sold Louisiana to the United States for a bargain price: “without the Haitian Revolution, the United States today quite likely would be little more than a small strip of land on the Eastern coast” (p. 93).

Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Caribbean and Latin America

After the Revolution, Haiti became a symbol of slave revolt and Black liberation among both free and enslaved Afro-Caribbean and Latin Americans. Haiti was conscious of its role in transnationalizing the Revolution. In the Spanish colonies of South America, Haiti provided aid to several budding revolutions. One of these was Venezuela, from which Simon Bolivar, a Spanish-American freedom fighter, retreated to Haiti on several occasions for sanctuary. Haiti’s President Alexandre Pétion provided Bolivar with training, financial aid, and military assistance. Venezuela’s slave revolt was inspired by the Haitian Revolution and was successful due to the help from Haiti. The Bolivian revolutionary hero, Francisco de Miranda, also went to Haiti in search of supplies to continue his fight against the colonizers (Heinl & Heinl, 2005).

Haiti also provided a haven for people of color and slaves escaping captivity. The Haitian constitution gave protection to any slave or Black person that set foot on Haitian soil. The most exceptional example was the pilot boat, Deep Nine. In early January of 1817, three Jamaican slaves escaped and landed in Haiti. M’Kewan, the master of the three slaves, went to Haiti in search of them. He went to president Pétion and personally requested that his slaves be returned to him. However, his attempt failed, as President Pétion said that the slaves were no longer slaves, but Haitian citizens. Pétion based his decision on Article 44 of the Haitian Constitution that recognized all Black slaves to be citizens of Haiti the moment they landed in its territory. Against all of those signs of progress, a conspiracy movement was unleashed by the Western powers of the time to undermine the young nation.

Conspiracy Against Haiti: A Racist Project

After the successful Revolution and subsequent proclamation of Haitian independence, the White world mobilized to use race against Haiti and repress the symbolic meaning associated with its nationhood, namely that of the Black Revolution. This racial conspiracy was a political project of the Western powers, reinforced by the complicity of White academics and intellectuals.

International Conspiracy

In the year following the Haitian Revolution, the United States and allied European powers helped France to orchestrate a diplomatic quarantine of the new Black Republic (Farmer, 2006). The Haitian Revolution sowed fear among White powers and countries that used slave labor, so they needed to take action to avoid its potential contagion. However, this was not the real cause of Haiti’s political isolation. The real reason lay in a racial project against the young nation, an attempt to demonstrate that Blacks were not capable of self-governance.

Lawless (1992) reports that, in a letter to President Monroe, the French Minister of Foreign Policy argued that the:

existence of a Negro people in arms, occupying a country it has soiled by the most criminal of acts, is a horrible spectacle for all white nations . . .There is no reason. . .to grant support to these brigands who have declared themselves the enemies of all governments. (p. 48).

Farmer (2006) maintains that the U.S. government, since having consolidated its geographical security with the purchase of Louisiana, was inclined to agree with the French assessment. Indeed, the U.S. government refused to accept Haitian ambassadors. In a speech to the Senate in 1826, Thomas Hart Benton said: “We receive no mulatto consuls or black ambassadors from [Haiti]. And why? The peace of eleven states will not permit the fruits of a successful Negro insurrection to be exhibited among them” (Heinl & Heinl, 2005, p. 143). In 1825, the United States blocked the invitation of Haiti to the Western Hemisphere Panama Conference. Haiti remained unrecognized by the United States for several decades. It was not until 1862 that the United States officially recognized Haitian independence (Farmer, 2006). The explicit rejection of the new Haitian state was not random. As Lawless (1992) writes:

This isolation was imposed on Haiti by frightened white world, and Haiti became a test case, first, for those arguing about emancipation and then, after the end of slavery, for those arguing about the capacity of blacks for self-government. Great Britain was one of the few nations that had diplomatic relations with Haiti, and it was from the writings of English racists and abolitionists that Haiti began to garner widespread bad press. (p. 56)

Besides, as internal conflicts undermined robust domestic politics in Haiti, many Europeans and U.S. intellectuals used the Black nation as a negative reference to express their racial ideology. Among other arguments they used to exemplify Blacks’ inferiority to Whites, they postulated that Blacks were not capable of culture, progress, self-government, and civilization; and that they were also incapable of sustaining political systems to deliver social, political, and economic stability to their populations (Fouron, 2006). As I discuss in the next section, such racist ideologies contributed to the creation of scientific racism.

Academic and Intellectual Complicity

The Haitian Revolution occurred at a moment where racism began to become hegemonic. With its negative reception from Western political and intellectual figures, the Haitian Revolution served as a catalyst for the development of the new discourse on race built upon “scientific evidence.” Racism against Haiti was part of a racial project carried out by the West to show that Blacks were unfit for freedom and self-government. Science has played an ideological role in the application of such a project. This claim is not new; in 2001, Greggus asserted that the Haitian Revolution prepared “the way for scientific racism” in the mid19th century (p. xv).

Scientific racism was born in France, although prescientific racist discourse can be found in England at the beginning of the 19th century (Fredrickson, 2000). The purpose of the French discourse was to find out whether human beings “were of one blood.” Still, French ethnology was at the same time more focused on the “belief that color-coded races were separate and unequal species of the genus Homo” (p.66). Color-based racism gained legitimacy with the attempts of French ethnologists and intellectuals to justify Bonaparte’s re-enslavement policy. George Fredrickson (2000) reports the case of the French writer Claude Henri de Rouvroy, generally known as the Comte de Saint-Simon, who, a year after the emancipation of slaves in France, wrote: “If they (revolutionaries) had asked men of science, they would have learned that Negro in accordance with his formation, is not susceptible under equal conditions of education of being raised to the same level of intelligence as the European” (Fredrickson, 2002, p. 67).

However, “scientific racism” was fully and thoroughly born into public discourse in 1853, with the publication of Joseph Arthur de Gobineau’s De L’Inegalite des Races Humaines (Of the Inequality of Human Races). In the book, Gobineau claimed that Whites are mentally superior to Blacks. The objective of Gobineau was to vilify the Negro race in general, and Haiti in particular (Fouron, 2006). In this publication, Gobineau presented Haiti “as an awful example of what happened when the European form of governments are imposed on people of different and lower races” (Fluehr-Lobban, 2000, p. 459). Such attacks on the Blacks, and Haitians specifically, were further consolidated in the subsequent development of a theory of eugenics by European and American intellectuals. For example, Spencer St. John, consul general of Great Britain in Haiti, wrote in Hayiti or the Black Republic (1888):

I know what the black man is, and I have no hesitation in declaring that he is incapable of the art of government, and that to entrust him with framing and working the laws of our islands is to condemn them to inevitable ruin. (Fouron, 2006, p. 72)

These discourses were, of course, contested. Antenor Firmin offered a seminal academic response to Gobineau’s theory. In 1885, Firmin published De L’égalite des Races Humaines (Of the Equality of Human Races), which constituted of a systematic critique of the anthropometry and craniometry that dominated the anthropology of his day, while simultaneously envisioning a broad, synthetic discipline that would follow once the narrow approach to the study of man was abjured (Fluehr-Lobban, 2000, 2005). Firmin, in his book, defined anthropology as “the study of Man in his physical, intellectual, and moral dimensions as he is found in any of the different races which constitute the human species” (Firmin, 2000, p. 3). The new science will investigate questions such as “What is the true nature of man? To what extent and under what conditions does he develop his potential? Are all human races capable of rising to the same intellectual and moral level?” (Firmin, 2000, pp. 12–13). In this perspective, Firmin saw in anthropology the science which could best answer questions related to the origin and nature of man, and the question of his place in nature (Firmin, 2000).

In his response to Gobineau, Firmin critically analyzed the pseudoscientific anthropometry that Gobineau used and denounced what he titled in the chapter six of his book the “Artificial Ranking of Human Races.” Firmin examined the irregularities in the comparative craniometric data and demonstrated how the pseudoscientists (Gobineau and others) manipulated the numbers by cubing skull measurements and draw their racist conclusions (Fluehr-Lobban, 2005). Firmin (2000) prospectively recognized that the pseudoscientists would not be taken seriously in the 20th century:

Can anthropologists continue to record these figures without modifying those so assertive theories they have erected? Their science will face certain discredit when, in the twentieth century, it is subjected to the critique of Black and White, Yellow and Brown scientists who can write as well and handle as expertly the instruments manufactured by the Mathieu Company [producers of anthropometric instruments], instruments that bring such eloquent results, even in the hands of scientists who doubt their effectiveness (p. 102).

Despite his important (and even radical) work, Firmin remains mostly unknown by mainstream social science. It was not until 115 years later that Firmin’s 662-page essay was translated into English (Fluehr-Lobban, 2000).

In the United States and Britain, scientific racism began with the concept of Social Darwinism, after the publication of Charles Darwin’s book The Origin of Species in 1859 (Halliday, 1971). Social Darwinists used Darwin’s theory of natural selection to justify their belief in the economic, social, and political inequality of the races. Specifically, Social Darwinism was used to justify racism, slavery, and eugenics (Halliday, 1971). In the United States, Social Darwinism was promoted by Herbert Spencer, who argued that slavery advanced the cause of humanity because it permitted superior groups the leisure to develop refined cultures (Dennis, 1995; Halliday, 1971).

During the 20th century, and particularly after World War II, scientific racism lost intellectual ground. However, the academic complicity against the Haitian revolution has persisted. Reinhardt (2005) argues that if we open an average history textbook dealing with the revolutionary period, we likely to find no information about the formation of Haiti, while a great deal is available on the French Revolution. The reason for such silence in Western histories, adds Reinhardt, is because of the very fact that a Black Revolution was, in itself, unthinkable.

Michel-Rolth Trouillot (1995), a Haitian anthropologist, condemns what he calls “the construction of a powerful silence around the Haitian revolution.” Trouillot (1995) argues that contemporaries were incapable of apprehending a Revolution made by slaves. Limited by that incapacity, they reverted to explanations of the Revolution that centered around the decisive role and the pernicious effects of the French Revolution, and the miscalculations of the slaveholders and statesmen. Accordingly, this contemporary inability to understand the Haitian Revolution and to speak the truth helps to explain the relative absence of the Haitian Revolution in the production of historical knowledge (Trouillot, 1995). Analyzing the Haitian Revolution and commenting on Trouillot’s claim, Ada Ferrer (2008) writes:

Unprecedented and unmatched in its challenge to slavery and colonialism, radical in its outcome; it remains little known compared to other revolutions. Though more studied in the last decade than ever before, it still easily earns the label penned by Trouillot in 1995: The revolution that the world forgot. (p. 21)

Counter-Racism, Nationalism and Negritude Discourse in Haiti

Mainstream sociology generally considers nationalism to be an historically White phenomenon. This conception is shaped and built upon the French Revolution and its promise of “liberty, equality, and fraternity.” In this way, nationalism appears to be the political materialization of Enlightenment ideas, and progress through the creation of nation-states. Balibar and Wallerstein (1991) points out that nationalism exists where nation-states exist.

This Eurocentric understanding of nationalism is not uncontested. Far from being initially a European product, Garraway (2008) maintains that the colonized world invented nationalism in its move to eliminate colonial powers. In Haiti, for instance, nationalism began even before the Revolution. However, it took a more structured form under the leadership of Toussaint L’Ouverture. Since 1801, L’Ouverture declared the autonomy of Saint Domingue and wrote a constitution that politically transformed it into a Black nation. As the leader of the new nation, L’Ouverture addressed correspondence to Napoleon with “From the First of the Blacks to the First of the Whites,” and concluded with “for the common good of the citizens of Saint Domingue”. In his famous letter, of November 5, 1797, to French the Directorate, the French government at the time, L’Ouverture made it clear that his government would fight to the death if France ever dared to nullify liberty in Saint Domingue:

If to re-establish servitude in Saint Domingue, this was done, then I declare to you that this would be to attempt the impossible: we have known how to face dangers to obtain liberty, we should know how to brave death to maintain it. (cited by Garraway, 2008, p. 77)

This sentiment to fight for liberty and to maintain it constituted the glue that connected the slaves of Saint Domingue until independence. Haitian nationalism centered around Black power and the valorization of the Black race. Moreover, Haitian nationality was opened to any Black person who set foot on Haitian soil. Météllus, a partisan of Toussaint L’Ouverture who rebelled against Haiti’s first monarch, Henry Christophe, contrasted the aspirations of L’Ouverture to those of Christophe’s monarchy in this way:

We are going to build a country!

All of us together!

Not just to stake out this island!

A country open to all the islands!

To black men everywhere.

The blacks of the whole world! (Breslin, 2008, p. 237)

In this respect, Garraway points out that early Haitian nationalism appeared to be a kind of “negative universalism.” By that, he means:

a universalism distinct from that produced via the generalization of particular explicitly defined (in the case of French Revolution, for example, a certain idea of man conceived as an abstract individual but in fact bearing signs of particular gender, class, national, and/or racial status). (Garraway, 2008, p. 79)

Moreover, Garraway (2008) stresses that early Haitian nationalism produced an implicit notion of Haitian national identity via the exclusion of a group of people: the French. Haitians were, above all, those who have fought and continue to fight the French. The early Haitian nationalism was intended to stand for the whole people of African descent. It was also designed to develop a counter-discourse against racism. In this sense, it was the discourse that gave birth to the négritude movement in Africa and the Caribbean by the second half of the 20th century. Aimée Césaire usually referred to Haiti as the country where “négritude” arose for the first time (Breslin, 2008; Nwankwo, 2008).

If négritude arose in Haiti, Antonin Firmin planted the seed, and Jean Price Mars watered the plant and made it grow. Price-Mars, who was one of Haiti’s most prolific intellectuals, sang Firmin’s praises for sharpening the glorious work of the rehabilitation of the Black race in the 20th century. Regarding Firmin’s critique of pseudoscientific anthropometry and craniometry, Price Mars argued that if the world had paid attention to Firmin, the tragedy of Nazism would have been avoided (Fluehr-Lobban, 2005). Throughout his work, Price-Mars challenged European intellectual racist discourse and White supremacy in the modern world, while arguing for the equality of all races, and the rehabilitation of Black people everywhere. Unfortunately, 60 years after his death, the Haitian people are still struggling and the nation has failed to rise to the hoped-for stature.

Conclusion: The Failure of a Nation

The Haitian Revolution changed the course of history in a very real, transnational sense. In Latin American colonies, it inspired movements for liberation. In Europe and the United States, it fueled the abolitionist discourse, changed the agricultural landscape, and accelerated the end of the slave trade; in Africa, it anticipated the end of slavery; and in the Caribbean, it served as a source of inspiration for the négritude movement. For all Blacks in the world, it represents a symbol of Black Revolution and power. In addition to this transnational impact, I argue that the Revolution catalyzed the construction and implementation of “scientific racism.” An international conspiracy against Haiti began the day after its independence in order to undermine its existence as a Black nation. It was called by White nations “an anomaly among nations on the earth.” The work of intellectuals and scientists supported this racialized construction of the newly independent nation.

Only Haiti was isolated after its independence. Only Haiti has paid actual currency to be recognized as a sovereign nation; it took the country almost the entire 19th century to pay the indemnity to France, which consequently led it to bankruptcy and failure. About 200 years later, Haiti continues to feel the after-effects of its colonization and the payment of a heavy indemnity. However, it is unrealistic to attribute the overall failure of Haiti to the after-effects of the colonization. The U.S. policy toward Haiti has been a significant factor of Haiti’s demise, as well as the neoliberal policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank imposed upon Haiti in the 1980s and 1990s (Dupuy, 1997, 2005; Schuller, 2012; Zanotti, 2010). Internally, many problems have plagued the country: recurrent natural disasters exacerbated by environmental degradation, exponential population growth, a weak economy, an ineffective state, and political instabilities (Hintzen, 2019; World Bank, 2007). The latter, caused by internal power struggles stemming from both historical and recent inequities, has remained constant in the history of the country. All of these factors, preceded and in many ways aided by the country’s early history, hinder Haiti’s progress toward the full self-determination that its earliest revolutionaries envisioned.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Jean Max Charles

Notes

Author Biography

Jean Max Charles is a PhD candidate (ABD) in sociology at Florida International University and a Fulbright Scholar in Haiti (2019-2020). His research focuses on Disaster Aid, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), Sociology of Development, and Race.

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