Ask the average man-on-the street what the most important country in the history of American foreign affairs is, and you will probably get similar answers. It could be Britain, due to America inheriting her economic, cultural and political institutions. It could be the Soviet Union, due to the Cold War shaping American militarism for nearly a century. It could be Israel, due to their influence over post-Cold War geopolitics. These are all good answers. But the most important country in American foreign affairs rarely gets discussed today, and it’s located 700 miles off of the Florida coast. Foreign policy often affects domestic policy. This is why the most important country in the history of American foreign relations is Haiti.
The reasons for this may not be transparent. Haiti is a failed state whose economy almost entirely relies on foreign aid. Yet, it has no more influence over our current foreign policy than any other failed state that drains the American coffers. Haiti has gone through numerous periods of instability. In the absence of an official head of state or military, it has relied heavily on United Nations peacekeeping task forces to help keep the lights on and the toilets flushing. While never being a major trading partner or military target (the Woodrow Wilson administration did support an intervention in 1915), Haiti, on the surface, is the same as any other third world country. So, what sets Haiti apart? Why is Haiti, a neighboring country roughly the size of Maryland, so important? It’s important because events in Haiti have influenced racial affairs in America from the start.
Some background on Haiti’s position in the Western Hemisphere is required to understand this. Haiti is located on the Western part of the island of Hispaniola, the other part consists of the modern-day Dominican Republic. Christopher Columbus and his Spanish crew reached Hispaniola in 1492, marking the first time the native Taino people of the island interacted with Europeans. Despite what popular history teaches, initial relations were friendly. But years later, the Taino were almost entirely wiped out by disease and conflict with the settlers. Before, after, or simultaneously, depending on your historical interpretations, the Taino also violently executed the majority of the Spanish settlers.
In 1512, Spain passed the Laws of Burgos, which banned mistreatment of New World “primitive” peoples, and in many ways, slavery. Spain was just coming out of the Reconquista, and while they violently expelled their Moslem conquerors, a neglected aspect of the Reconquista is that Spain had to come up with a Christian solution for their defeated enemies, who were integrated into Spanish civilization for centuries by that point. This largely affected how they treated the New World, and their “conquered” peoples. Things get complicated when the French arrive.
The French established a presence on Hispaniola in the early 17th century, and a series of concessions led to the Spanish conceding modern day Haiti to the French, while the Spanish kept a presence on the remaining part of the island. The French brought African slaves to Hispaniola to replenish the labor force, and this greatly affected the islands political makeup. African slaves outnumbered the French 10 to 1. The French turned Hispaniola, now recognized as “Saint-Domingue” into a major economic power, supplying most of Europe’s sugar and coffee. This was accomplished through slave labor. But in addition to slavery, the French brought revolutionary Jacobin politics to Haiti. Political ideologies were alien to the non-white peoples of the island, and tensions reached a boiling point in the late 18th century.
In 1791, the Haitian slaves revolted against their colonial masters, led by Toussaint Louverture. Louverture was influenced by the universal popular sovereignty attitudes of the Jacobins. The French Revolution is occurring at roughly the same time, and in 1793, when the leftist Jacobins gain control of the French assembly, they abolish slavery in France’s foreign possessions. When word of both of these revolutions reached the newly constituted United States, fear of left-wing revolutionary upheaval becomes a lingering concern.
American attitudes towards Haitian affairs were mixed. Anti-slavery proponents such as President John Adams supported the Haitians in their quest for freedom, and recognized their independence. Thomas Jefferson later revoked the United States’ recognition of Haitian independence, but the reasons for this are more complicated than a binary slavery vs. anti-slavery attitude.
Jefferson was far more progressive on the slavery issue than he is given credit for. While governor of Virginia, Jefferson proposed laws to ban the practice, but he did not possess the votes to get them enacted. As president, Jefferson banned the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which he believed would lead to a gradual erosion of slavery. Jefferson is often portrayed by modern academics as a “man of complex duality”, but I think this is incorrect. Jefferson absolutely was an agrarian, and slavery benefited his pre-industrial disposition. But Jefferson is remarkably consistent in his views. He believed that while slavery was a blight, it needed to be eradicated through the political process. Abolished slaves should then be gradually integrated into American citizenship. He understood that immediate emancipation, especially if it involved granting political power to the politically illiterate, would lead to violence. And what happened in Haiti largely proved his instincts correct.
By 1801, the Jacobins who abolished slavery in Haiti were gone. Napolean was now in power, and he sent 20,000 men to the island of Saint-Domingue to restore order. There were economic reasons for doing so. Sugar dropped to 13% of pre-revolutionary numbers, and cotton dropped to 15%, at a time when France was providing most of Europe’s sugar and coffee. The revolting slaves of Haiti adopted “scorched-Earth” policies towards agriculture to antagonize their colonizers, and this destroyed any semblance of productivity on the island. Napolean’s brother-in-law, General Charles Leclerc, led the expedition to Saint-Domingue.
At the time, Toussaint Louverture was putting down his own uprising in Haiti, ironically against his own nephew. Louverture’s forces had executed over 2,000 native Haitian rebels before Leclerc arrived. When Leclerc did arrive, the conflict, to his surprise, wasn’t as one-sided as Napolean thought it would be. The French were massacred by a combination of the Haitian rebels and yellow fever. After a long war, Louverture was captured and sent to a prison in the French Alps, where he died of pneumonia on April 7, 1803. Leclerc himself had died in November 1802 of yellow fever. Only 8,000 men made it back to France after the conflict. The catastrophic results of the Haitian expedition influenced Napolean to give up on establishing a French empire in the Western hemisphere.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines becomes the leader of an independent Haiti and executes 5,000 of the remaining white population. He gave an evacuation order to the white women and children and promised safe passage from the island. This was a false promise, as they were massacred by axe-wielding Haitians before they could board the ships. President Jefferson, who was often sympathetic to French causes, was horrified by the Haitian Revolution’s barbarism. He ignored Dessalines’ overtures to reestablish diplomatic relations. The carnage of the Haitian revolt influences Jefferson’s attitudes towards abolition in America.
And this is why Haiti is important. It is difficult to play “what if” with history, because there are so many moving parts. But the reality is that slavery in America was already changing by the time abolition was achieved. Not all slaves were plantation workers, many were artisans. They could negotiate their contracts, albeit owing a portion of their contract to their masters. Most of the civilized world had abolished slavery peacefully by the 1860’s, yet America remained an outlier. Fear of a repeat of the Haitian revolution is largely to blame for this.
The more violent aspects of the Haitian revolt influenced many of the early American abolitionists. Men such as John Brown and William Lloyd Garrison are looked at favorably by proponents of modern racial grievance politics, but these men were hardly honorable. One must understand the 19th century Utopian movement to fully grasp this. You see a lot of these types pop up during the time (Marxism and modern leftism also come from this mindset). They were not motivated by equal justice or egalitarianism; they just needed a crusade. The cause could be anything, temperance, suffrage, or in this case, abolition. If the Utopian could achieve their cause, whatever that may be, he could bring about Heaven on Earth. William Lloyd Garrison didn’t care what happened to blacks if slavery was abolished, that was someone else’s problem. Ironically, the first person John Brown’s raiders killed at the Harper’s Ferry incident was a free black man. The Utopians almost always used violence, or calls to violence, to achieve their cause. This further stoked the fears of what total abolition could do a la the Haitian Revolution. There were peaceful abolitionists in America, but they were few and far between. The insane actions and rhetoric of Utopian abolitionists prevented America from abolishing slavery peacefully, with Haiti as their casus belli.
The Haitian revolution could be seen as a major cause of the American war between the states. Abraham Lincoln was not an abolitionist, nor a racial egalitarian. But he was able to cement his place in history under this facade. As mentioned, slavery was already eroding by the 1860’s, and many nations had already peacefully abolished it. Fear of what a repeat of the Haitian Revolution could produce in America led to increased antagonism between Southerners and the loudest Northern Utopians. The war of the 1860’s was largely a war of agrarian vs. industrial economic interests, but one cannot ignore how much violent rhetoric was used to provoke a repeat of Haiti’s revolt, see Harper’s Ferry.
Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation is another example. The southern states had already seceded from the Union by this point, and President Lincoln had no authority over them. The Proclamation did not free a single slave. But that isn’t what it was designed to do, as Lincoln still allowed states in his Union to keep their slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation was a call for slaves to revolt against their masters. Their masters were off fighting the war by this point, so in reality this was a call for violence against southern women and children. They were the real targets of Lincoln’s rhetoric, very similar to how Dessalines used vengeance politics to massacre women and children in Haiti. The Haitian revolt is the inspiration for using racial issues to justify political violence against innocents.
Haiti also created the first international refugee crisis in American history. Blacks and whites flooded Louisiana’s coast after the revolution. Some brought with them revolutionary attitudes and Jacobin ideas, alien to American principles. Many states formed coastal guards to keep the refugees back. Abolitionist Theodore Weld published Slavery As It Is, which argued that the Haitian revolution was peaceful (it was anything but). His book also claimed that slaveholders tore the eyes and ears off of their slaves, so we should accept these people on a humanitarian basis. Sensational, but not true. But rhetoric such as this further inflamed interracial politics in America. Weld later withdrew from abolitionism, but his rhetoric survived. We must take in anyone who is “oppressed”, regardless of their compatibility with American ideals. The legacy of the Haitian Revolution.
Today, we still feel the effects of this. All of American internal politics revolve around racial divides and the “legacy of slavery” or “America’s original sin.” It is literally the only thing a good portion of our politicians talk about. We spend billions on the racial grevience industry each year. If not for the Haitian revolution, slavery may have ended peacefully. We may still have these United States instead of a United State. Again, history is complicated and playing “what if” is difficult. But it is hard to argue that Thomas Jefferson’s fears were not justified. The American “Civil War” killed a million people. The Civil Rights regime of grievance politics created a permanent antagonist paradigm of justice for some, but not all. Affirmative action. Unrestricted immigration. All legacies caused by the fear of abolishing slavery. This could have been done peacefully, but what happened in Haiti prevented that from ever happening in America.
In American foreign policy, Great Britain is important. But Britain abolished slavery peacefully (ironically, fearing a class revolution a la the French). The Soviet Union and fear of spreading class revolution are synonymous via the Cold War paradigm, but Haiti did it two hundred years before Moscow did. And Israel has America’s ear when it comes to foreign intervention and immigration, but Haiti was literally the first massive immigration crisis America faced, on behalf of a foreign power they had on-and-off relations with (France). BLM riots, affirmative action, unrestricted immigration, using aggrieved classes as political weapons, Haiti did it all first.
Haiti was unique in that it was one of the only slave revolts in history that achieved its goal of kicking the oppressors out (never mind the fact that the black Haitians almost immediately reintroduced slave labor). Today, Haiti is a failed state. It is in a constant state of civil war, instability and economic catastrophe. It is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere by far. And after 200 years, we are long past the point where we can blame this solely on slavery or economic sanctions. Haiti is proof of what happens when politics are rapidly enforced on a politically illiterate class, and the violent consequences of this influenced American politics for almost all of her existence. So many of the domestic problems in America today have their genesis on a tiny island that most Americans don’t even think about.