00:04:15.220Okay, fair. But just so everybody can be, so we know a time and a place for people who
00:04:19.520don't know this background, like Haiti, what was it called at the beginning of Jean-Jacques
00:04:25.180Dessalines' life? And what was the situation as he was growing up?
00:04:28.840In the 18th century, it was called Saint-Domingue, and it was a colony of France.
00:04:35.420It is in the Caribbean. It shares the island of Hispaniola with the Spanish colony Santo Domingo.
00:04:42.300It is just east of Cuba, and so, you know, very close to what is now the United States,
00:04:48.140and also surrounded by colonies of other European empires like Jamaica, Puerto Rico,
00:04:55.580and other French colonies in the Lesser Antilles.
00:04:58.840And it is the most lucrative colony because of the sugar crops. Is that right?
00:05:06.340Yeah, a lot of people often say that it's the richest colony. And I'm always like, well, it's the most wealth producing. Certain people were very rich.
00:05:15.800Yeah, in the 18th century, it was most wealth producing colony. And that's primarily from sugar cultivation and export, but also coffee and indigo, some cotton. So there was a variety of crops, but sugar was the main moneymaker.
00:05:33.400And the people who were working those plantations, just to be clear, were a whole lot of enslaved people from Africa.
00:05:40.800Like, proportions of the population, like most of the population was these enslaved people.
00:05:46.360Like, there was so many workers, right?
00:05:48.380Yes, most of the plantations were worked by enslaved people, the majority of whom had been born in Africa,
00:05:55.080although a lot of the enslaved population were also born in the colony.
00:06:00.640And the demographics of the population, you know, over the course of the 18th century kind of changes.
00:06:05.400But at the time of the beginning of the Haitian Revolution in the late 18th century, there were about half a million enslaved people in the colony.
00:06:13.660And the free population was somewhere around, I think, 50,000.
00:06:21.720Like, you know, spoilers, there's going to be a revolution.
00:06:24.700But one of the forces to keep in mind behind this revolution is the fact that the owners, the plantation owners, the free people were so vastly outnumbered by how many enslaved Black people there were.
00:06:40.340Can you also explain about at the time we're looking at, which is like the mid 1700s, what the different, I don't know, I don't want to say pasts or just sort of like classes of people of like black people, free black people, there's mixed race people, like how, what was the society like?
00:06:58.480Yeah, I mean, I think it's like caste, but kind of. And there's, you know, classes, but kind of. Right. So the population legally was kind of divided into free and enslaved. But then, as I said before, within the enslaved population, there's a kind of social divide between people born in the colony and people born in Africa.
00:07:21.900Within the free population, they're divided between white people and free people of color.
00:07:28.560And free people of color could be of mixed race, but also could be people who were at the time considered black, or a term used at the time would have been nègre.
00:07:37.840And then, you know, the white population was also kind of further divided between rich white people and poor white people.
00:07:44.660some of whom kind of owned larger plantations some of whom owned smaller plantations or
00:07:50.940worked as kind of merchants or trades people in towns so it was a really kind of complex society
00:08:00.660stratified society hierarchical the power relations were deeply skewed and kind of people
00:08:07.820could be labeled and categorized in various ways. And one specific label did not necessarily
00:08:15.480kind of describe their lives in their entirety. And so there were these overlapping characteristics.
00:08:23.240It's, I really wanted to have this discussion before we get into the story of Jean-Jacques'
00:08:27.480life, because this is a really, just of other places I've read about, this is a distinct and
00:08:33.020specific culture and situation that I haven't read about this exact situation really anywhere
00:08:38.520else. Maybe, maybe some of the other Caribbean islands were the same way, but this was,
00:08:42.440it's like, it's different from America. It's different from France. It's different.
00:08:45.780It's really its own ecosystem going on on this island.
00:08:51.340Yeah, it's its own ecosystem. It's a, um, I think it's a, you know, a small,
00:08:57.760it's a kind of a small, but big place. Um, there are regional differences.
00:09:01.880um and uh there's a the the book takes place in the northern region um of the colony uh primarily
00:09:12.100this is where desaline spent most of his life and it's very connected place um you know even
00:09:20.700though there's a lot of people there the the kind of different parishes are connected by
00:09:26.320roads where people kind of travel regularly even though the plantations are large there's
00:09:32.420communication between the plantations there's deep connections with the port cities and then
00:09:36.840there's this kind of different distinct regions of the colony um where it's difficult to travel
00:09:43.740over land and so a lot of the the communication and travel between those places happens by sea
00:09:49.360right? So it's easier to take a boat from Cap Francais to Port-au-Prince than it is to go over
00:09:56.560land. And so there's these kind of pretty insular different regions within the colony.
00:10:03.540And so the way that your book is divided up, it's by what name he went by, really, which works to
00:10:10.700differentiate the sections of your book very well, I think, just that worked out. So Jean-Jacques
00:10:16.040Dessalines, that's not the first name he's known by. What do you know, or what do we, what can we
00:10:20.520know about his, where he was born and where he was a child in that era? Right. He's typically
00:10:26.440like by historians and popularly just known as primarily as Dessalines. But as you say,
00:10:32.880is divided up into three different sections, Jean-Jacques, then Dessalines, and then Jacques
00:10:38.960the first. And I think those were his kind of three different eras of his life. And it's difficult
00:10:46.780to know exactly what he went by for the first three plus decades of his life. And I think that
00:10:54.840he primarily just went by the name Jean-Jacques, which was kind of common for enslaved people.
00:11:01.120And then they would be also known by the last names of the people who enslaved them. And so
00:11:06.960I suspect, and the kind of evidence suggests, that his first full name would have been Jean-Jacques Duclos.
00:11:15.840And the first person who enslaved him was a poor white person named Duclos, first name unknown.
00:11:23.060And the Haitian historian Thomas Madieu, who wrote in the 19th century, noted that some of the people who he fought with during the revolution later in his life still referred to him as Duclos.
00:11:36.120because they had known him during this early period of his life.
00:11:40.120And so he was enslaved on two different coffee plantations
00:11:43.160in the kind of mountainous region south of the primary city, Cap Francais,
00:11:49.120and along the border with the Spanish colony.
00:11:52.780He was probably legally enslaved by three or four different people during his life.
00:11:59.940And the or four is the kind of legality of who enslaved him.
00:12:04.140is kind of unclear because documentation of his early life is thin, to say the least.
00:12:10.740So we know a little bit about his early life, but we don't know a whole lot.
00:12:15.700We don't know anything about his parents, which is deeply frustrating as a biographer.
00:12:22.960But we know a little bit about some of his other family members.
00:12:26.500From his time during slavery under Duclos, he was likely enslaved with a woman who he later referred to as his aunt, a woman named Victoria or Toya Montu.
00:12:39.740And then when he was transferred to a different plantation or sold by Duclos, he was enslaved with kind of extended family members, an uncle, some aunts and some cousins, some of whom I think remained kind of, you know, key people in his life for the rest of his life.
00:13:00.780And in terms of his personality, I forget if it was with Duclos or if it was with Dessaline,
00:13:06.500you open a chapter where you're talking about the job he's doing and people are calling out
00:13:10.880to him as he walks down the street. And he was given, he was somebody who fought back against
00:13:16.480many jobs he was given. And so the slave owners were just like, what can we get this guy to do?
00:13:21.540He's got such a strong personality and such a strong will. Can you explain that,
00:13:25.440what you know about his personality and how you're able to find that out?
00:13:28.380Right. He seems like somebody who resisted his enslavement for his whole life, right? That what we really learn about him during the revolution was a kind of different iteration of what he had been doing his whole life.
00:13:47.480And there's an early 19th century French consul who kind of accurately described a lot of the details of his early life, who described him as a mauvaise esclave, like a bad slave.
00:14:00.600And, you know, this means somebody who did not take orders, who ran away and was violently punished for doing so, right?
00:14:09.080And the memory and the trauma from his time during slavery stayed with him for the rest of his life, as did the scars from the violent punishment for his resistance to slavery.
00:14:21.440This is something that I've talked about on this podcast before in the context of the American Revolution and slavery in America, and also in Portugal and other places.
00:14:31.400Like, there's always slave resistance to some extent everywhere where there is slavery, really.
00:14:36.740so he was this was his personality this like you said he fought enslavement for the whole period
00:14:42.560that he was enslaved and lots of other people were too and this is where I want to get back
00:14:46.260to like the demographics of of this place where such a large proportion of the people
00:14:53.360of what is now Haiti were enslaved like there's they so vastly outnumbered the people who owned
00:15:01.080the slaves. So it's kind of like, if you think about if they got together, like that would be
00:15:07.740an insurmountable army, which eventually it kind of does become. So he, there's people,
00:15:13.740there's discontent everywhere, obviously, because of enslavement. I think it's also interesting,
00:15:17.980you mentioned that the Duclos was a poor white man. So even poor people could afford
00:15:22.340to have a plantation and to own slaves, which is interesting.
00:15:26.640I mean, maybe it's like, you know, it's relative. And the term that is used would be, you know, petit blanc. So like, it gets translated as to kind of, you know, it's not a direct translation, but poor white, rather than kind of small, small white, right?
00:15:45.580The distinction is grand blanc, big or rich white person, and then petit blanc.
00:16:11.000So the next two or three people who enslaved him were free Black people, two men and one woman.
00:16:19.420And the region where he was enslaved in Grand Rivière du Nord was a place that had a higher proportion of free Black plantation owners, coffee plantation owners.
00:16:33.240And the demographics and the kind of power dynamics on that kind of plantation would have been different.
00:16:39.700And the people who he was enslaved with, as I said, were family members, and so they kind of would have worked together in a different way, but probably also worked alongside the person who owned the plantation, initially a man named Philippe Jasmin, sometimes who also went by the name Désir.
00:16:59.200um and so they probably worked together um and possibly with um jasmine's wife a woman named
00:17:06.840marie mart who may have been uh the the second or the third person who enslaved um desaline
00:17:14.080after jasmine died and then the final person who enslaved him a man named janvier desaline who
00:17:21.440it's also kind of questionable whether he was the legal uh scare quotes owner of of desaline
00:17:28.100because of like marriage and inheritance, but his name was Jean-Vierre de Salines. And this is where
00:17:34.060Jean-Jacques de Salines gets the last name that he uses for the rest of his life.
00:17:40.620So he grows up and becomes an adult in this enslaved situation, like being against his will,
00:17:47.120like moved from kind of household to household. And then there's a point where, again, like you
00:17:51.820don't, I can understand the frustration of trying to find a paper trail for somebody for whom there's
00:17:55.760not allowed a paper trail for his early life. But you say in your book that potentially he might
00:18:01.160have been given military training. That was one of the ways that people could escape enslavement
00:18:07.200was if you joined the army. Right. And this is a claim that is highly speculative and the evidence
00:18:16.020behind it is thin to say the least. But the final person who enslaved him, Jean-Bierre Desalines,
00:18:37.400And militia service was possible for enslaved people.0.92
00:18:42.440And it was one of the only ways, only tax-free ways
00:18:46.100that they could secure freedom in the colony
00:18:51.140by the late 18th century. And so, you know, I think this is an area where as a biographer,
00:18:59.960it's difficult given the lack of sources. But I do think it is worth thinking about the fact that
00:19:07.580somebody who became a key general of the Haitian Revolution was enslaved by somebody who had made
00:19:16.900their career in the colonial militia. Did he spend any time himself in the colonial militia?
00:19:25.040I don't know, but I do think it is worth thinking about.
00:19:28.560Well, and I do think that it's, you know, we're kind of like going slowly step by step through
00:19:33.460his life, but he becomes such an effective military person later on. It's like, where did
00:19:39.940he learn that? Like, he must have learned this somewhere. And this seems like a place where he
00:19:45.180could have learned that potentially right and the and the area where he spends most of his time
00:19:50.260fighting in the mountains in Grand Rivière but in the Artibonite region are the regions that he
00:19:57.980might have kind of traveled in the colonial militia but again you know highly speculative
00:20:05.260it's possible that evidence about that exists I have yet to find any but I think we should leave
00:20:12.880the possibility open. And so can you explain both his relationship with Toussaint Louverture
00:20:19.680and also who was Toussaint Louverture? Yeah, it's a it's a complicator and long long-term
00:20:28.060relationship. Toussaint Louverture is the kind of most well-known globally hero of the Haitian
00:20:36.540Revolution. He kind of became a governor general during the revolution, but his relationship with
00:20:45.600Jean-Jacques Dessalines started many years before the revolution. So the woman who may have been
00:20:53.360the legal enslaver of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, this woman Marie-Marthe, was Toussaint Liberture's
00:21:00.460daughter with his first wife. And so Toussaint Louverture, who at the time went by the name
00:21:08.400Toussaint de Breda, was the father-in-law of Philippe Jasmin, the second person who enslaved
00:21:17.240Dessalines. And it's unclear exactly when Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines first met,
00:21:25.080But when Dessalines was enslaved by Jasmin, Jasmin leased his plantation and the labor of the 13 people whom he enslaved to his father-in-law, Toussaint de Breda, later L'Ouverture.
00:21:40.860And so during this time, Dessalines was not exactly enslaved by Toussaint-Louis Velture, but his labor was leased to Toussaint-Louis Velture for two and a half years.
00:21:57.220And it's likely that they worked alongside each other, but definitely in a hierarchical relationship, right?
00:22:04.000Toussaint-Louis Velture was in control.
00:22:08.460He was the one who was managing and running the plantation.
00:22:12.100And according to that contract, he was kind of responsible for the people and the buildings on the plantation.
00:22:19.660And so that's where their relationship really starts.
00:22:24.880Dessalines later becomes a soldier and then an officer under Toussaint Leverture in his military forces during the revolution.
00:22:35.680but throughout their life is a hierarchical relationship with Toussaint Louverture giving
00:22:41.640orders and Dessalines obeying those orders and I think he was not a person who always obeyed orders
00:22:49.120but the fact that he was kind of willing to be in this hierarchical relationship with Toussaint
00:22:56.820Louverture says a lot about his respect for Louverture and about their professional relationship
00:23:04.120but I think also friendship. And so to me, white person in Canada who's never really studied the
00:23:11.760Haitian Revolution, it seems like kind of the main, the three guys of the Haitian Revolution
00:23:18.020are Toussaint Louverture, Henri Christophe, and Dessalines. Those are kind of like,
00:23:22.800those are the guys. Am I missing somebody? Is there another one? I think there's a lot of other
00:23:28.680kind of players. And, you know, Alexandre Pétion, André Rigaud are key players of the
00:23:36.100revolution, not always on the same side as people like Dessalines. I would say Charles Belair
00:23:45.600and Belair's wife, Sanité. I think, you know, I think you could go, there's like a long list of
00:23:54.740people who you could add. But yes, those are some of the kind of key and most well-known of the
00:23:59.940revolutionaries. And so again, like you have a book that people can read that explains all of
00:24:06.020this very step by step, but in the broadest possible sense, could you explain how the
00:24:10.920Haitian revolution begins? What's the like storming of the best deal moment where it's
00:24:16.260just kind of like, this is happening now. So this is in August of 1791. And there are
00:24:22.920kind of several meetings of people, mostly enslaved people, but from different plantations,
00:24:32.260but enslaved people who were kind of in positions of authority, you know, drivers,
00:24:37.600coachmen, those types of things, people who would have had some kind of ability to move between
00:24:43.580plantations, which was illegal for most enslaved people. And they coordinate an uprising between
00:24:51.880plantations in August of 1791. And it begins with coordinated attacks on plantations in which
00:25:00.420fire is a primary weapon for kind of destroying plantations. You know, it's destruction,
00:25:09.640but it's also targeted and strategic destruction while simultaneously kind of preserving tools that would be useful for their freedom.
00:25:20.040So, you know, they destroy the sites and the people that were kind of key to their subjugation, right?
00:25:30.180So there is, they kill enslavers and they burn the plantations and they kind of move strategically east to west in the region south of Cap Francais, which is the kind of primary sugar growing region in the north.
00:25:45.880And then there's a kind of coordinated or plan for a coordinated attack on the city of Cap-Francais that doesn't end up coming to fruition. And so they retreat into the mountains south of the sugar growing region where Jean-Jacques de Salines lives.
00:26:04.120And so this is 1791. What is the connection, if any, between this and the French Revolution, which started 1789? Because there was the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and word of that came back to Haiti, right?
00:26:20.100Yes, of course. This is not a document that is lost on the people of Saint-Domingue. And agitation for equal rights begins in 1789 and continues for the few years or the two years before the August 1791 uprising and primarily among free people of color in the colony.
00:26:42.980And in the book, I explain that a lot of this agitation for rights among free people by free people of color happened in the parish where Jean-Jacques Tessaline lived.
00:26:56.980Jean-Baptiste Chavannes and Vincent Auger were kind of key players in this fight for equal rights as free citizens.
00:27:05.620And they were meeting and organizing in Grand Rivière, you know, and in the town of Grand Rivière, which was like two miles from where Dessalines lived.
00:27:16.020And so, you know, again, this is one of those instances where the evidence doesn't really exist for us to know how Dessaline learned of this fight for equal rights.
00:27:28.020But, you know, this was happening so close to his home.
00:27:32.480They were moving throughout the parish.
00:27:35.380It's likely that he knew about this fight for equal rights.
00:27:39.540But in kind of learning about this fight for equal rights, which was a fight for equal rights among free people and very much not about the abolition of slavery and the people making the case for why they should be given equal rights were making the case based on their key role as people who preserved order in the colony, right, supported the slave system, particularly in their role in the colonial militia.
00:28:06.760And so, you know, it's a kind of complicated fight for equal rights that does not include enslaved people, but also shows enslaved people how difficult the fight for their own rights would be, right?
00:28:23.380The people who led this rebellion end up getting kind of brutally executed very publicly as a way to kind of show like this is what happens if you try and disrupt the system.
00:28:37.820So they're kind of, you know, learning about the hypocrisy of the French Revolution while also learning about, you know, the violence that they would face if they argued or fought for their own equal rights.
00:28:53.380I think it's such an interesting time period. Like this is what I've been looking at all season on this podcast. Like we started with the American Revolution and now we're in the French Revolution and just kind of like simultaneously the Haitian Revolution is kicking off.
00:29:06.260just for people in America, France, Saint-Domingue, to just feel like anything is possible,
00:29:14.780like the social order that always, or it seems like always was, can be cast aside, can be changed.
00:29:20.700The fact that America was able to successfully break off from the monarchy was very inspirational
00:29:26.960to the people in France. And then what was happening in France has an effect on the people
00:29:30.340in Saint-Domingue. And just kind of feeling like, oh, wow, change is possible, but it's scary and
00:29:35.560it's violent and people are probably going to die like it's it just seems like what we know how
00:29:41.400these stories end but they didn't and the possibility must have been very to grow up like
00:29:47.060desaline did enslaved and resenting it and fighting against it his whole life did to hear
00:29:52.840about successful like revolutions where people were able to to fight against authority would
00:29:58.680have been i think like of course he he was on that side of course he like rose through the ranks like
00:30:03.220that's that would have been so inspiring to him i would think yes i mean but also like you know
00:30:09.000those are those are narratives of of like white people overthrowing white people systems right
00:30:14.100yeah and so i think the uh the risk um not to say that the risk wasn't great uh elsewhere but
00:30:24.580there is a different kind of risk um in kind of fighting against you know the racist system of
00:30:31.780enslavement that, I don't know, you know, might have framed the possibility. But I think it also,
00:30:39.980you know, shows that nevertheless, they were willing to take that risk. And that is suggestive
00:30:47.740of just how bad and how brutal the system of slavery was in Saint-Domingue for so many people
00:30:55.820to say yes it is worth the risk um the chances of of our revolution being put down are high
00:31:04.640and yet we're going to do it you're right it's like that whole level of um the fact that it's
00:31:12.380black for the most part black people fighting against white people is is a whole different
00:31:17.960context from what the other revolutions would have been and it is i've seen described as the
00:31:21.640only successful revolt of enslaved people kind of ever i mean i mean revolt might not like
00:31:29.640revolution revolution kind of successful like there you know there are other uh successful
00:31:35.000revolts i guess large scale where like it ends with someone being named emperor right that's
00:31:42.140that's the revolution part of it um and so yeah i mean i think it is it is an absolutely remarkable
00:31:48.720event. And I think, you know, maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves, but the speed at which they,
00:31:54.520you know, secure the abolition of slavery in the colony is extraordinary. It happens within two
00:32:01.760years. And that is like, I think it's the, it's like a wild thing to think about that in two years,
00:32:08.800they completely overturn the system. And it's, it is like a shocking success.
00:33:08.820and armies scattered like bones in the dust.
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00:35:07.500and we're back so dessaline at this so the there was this first um the burning of the plantations0.90
00:35:18.960everything happened at what point do we know that he became actively involved in this cause
00:35:23.840again what we know what we suspect um so the the revolution moves um south into the the mountains
00:41:43.520They're kind of known for like a no-holds-barred fighting style, very radical, very like aggressive.
00:41:52.840And so they're, it's the fourth demi-brigade, but they're known as the sans-culottes.
00:41:58.140And this is his unit and kind of remains his unit throughout the revolution.
00:42:03.440And so he's, as the revolution is happening, so Toussaint Louverture really emerges as the leader of the whole movement.
00:42:11.100And his title becomes, he's the governor general or the governor?
00:42:16.000He eventually in 1801 becomes governor general for life. But before that, he's the kind of top general of the colony.
00:42:27.520And so the fact that he's, this is the person who's kind of the top general and he relies on Dessaline, like this would be, this is partially probably why Dessaline is given various different promotions and stuff.
00:42:40.640Like Toussaint Louverture knows like, this is a good guy. Like I can trust this guy.
00:42:43.780Right. So after the French finally concede and abolish slavery, Toussaint L'Eventure and Dessalines ally with the French Republic. And so they become generals, officers and generals within the colonial army of the French Republic.
00:43:06.220And they serve the French Republic in this capacity by fighting against the Spanish who have kind of invaded from the east.
00:43:17.860And they had done so with the assistance of Louverture and Dessalines, but then who have now switched sides.
00:43:24.460And then they also fight against the British who have invaded from Jamaica.
00:43:30.080And so they've occupied parts of the south and west.
00:43:32.760And so fighting against the British is where Dessalines really starts to rise in the ranks and he achieves success on the battlefield and kind of gets more and more responsibility fighting against the British, defending the French Republic.
00:43:50.660And I think this is a really interesting phase of his life and one that does not typically get remembered as part of his kind of bigger narrative, right?
00:44:02.120This, like, Republican era of Dessalines' revolutionary life.
00:44:08.680And, you know, what Republicanism meant in the colony is often kind of vague.
00:44:17.840But Dessalines gets framed and frames himself as, like, a good Republican.
00:44:25.040and he gets, you know, gifts from representatives of the French Republic as like rewards for his
00:44:35.520commitment to republicanism and defense of the French Republic. And there's this kind of amazing
00:44:43.160quotation that I cite in the book that's like, you know, I can't remember exactly,
00:44:49.260But it's something like, you know, the French Republic will never forget your service to the nation. And of course, the French Republic very much does forget Dessalines' service to the nation. But it's in this era where he kind of really establishes himself as a military leader.
00:45:10.160and it's the fact that they're hand in hand with the french republic like things are so chaotic
00:45:17.580back in france like that truly affects what happens in haiti because in in short order
00:45:24.220the like napoleon ends up taking over in france and he's just like not cool with this situation
00:45:29.740he is really pro-slavery um he names himself emperor like it's a different vibe from the
00:45:38.360the republic like france is just so we don't need to get into this because i'm doing like 25
00:45:43.340episode series about month by month what's happening in france but like that affects
00:45:48.780what's happening at what point do they start calling it haiti that's in the early 1800s
00:45:53.820yeah so i mean yeah napoleon very much not cool with what is happening in in the colony um
00:46:00.980And pro-slavery forces have kind of gained power in France.
00:46:08.120And, you know, even though slavery had been abolished throughout the French Empire in 1794, it was never really, you know, safe.
00:46:21.160It was never clear that this could not be undone.
00:46:24.060And as one kind of way to try to ensure that slavery would not return to Saint-Louis-Verture commissions and publishes a constitution in 1801.
00:46:39.140And it's a document that reasserts that slavery is forever abolished in the colony.
00:46:46.520And, you know, this was partially in response to the French constitution that had said like,
00:46:51.000oh, special laws can be allowed in the colony.
00:46:53.340And people are like, oh, I don't want those special laws to be slavery.
00:46:57.020And many at the time kind of interpreted Louverture's 1801 constitution as a declaration of independence,
00:47:04.200even though he very much said, you know, this is a constitution for Saint-Domingue.
00:47:09.000Saint-Domingue is a French colony, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
00:47:13.080And, you know, claimed after the fact that this was not a declaration of independence, but the British saw it as a declaration of independence. And certainly Napoleon felt threatened by this constitution that it was kind of issued from the colony and then sent for, you know, imperial approval, but not really with imperial input.
00:47:34.560And so it's only after, you know, France or Napoleon sends an expedition to kind of invade the colony, regain control in response to this 1801 constitution.
00:47:47.220And it's only after there's a big fight, but after they kind of successfully defeat this expedition, even though the expedition does not concede defeat, that Dessalines and his generals rename the colony and they turn it into a country and rename it Haiti.
00:48:07.560And Haiti is drawn from the original indigenous people of the island, the word?
00:48:13.820Right. IET was what the island was called before the arrival of Columbus. And it means mountainous. And so it is a reflection of the geography of the island. And I think the selection of it as a name is significant and meaningful because it kind of erases French colonialism, right?
00:48:37.300We will just return to a time, and Spanish colonialism, right, a time before colonialism. But I think it's also significant because the mountains were so important for the success of the revolution. They were a place of refuge, a place of freedom, and in the independence era were a kind of place of national defense.
00:48:58.640and so like again listeners like there's a there's a book that julia's written that gets into all
00:49:06.580this stuff in great detail but just to kind of focus on what happens next to dessaline
00:49:10.340and how do we get to this point of him becoming the emperor we need to skim past a bunch of stuff
00:49:15.420but it's important to say what the stuff is um that happens and one of those things is a massacre
00:49:20.780which is one of the things that he's most to people who've heard of him he's very connected
00:49:27.360to this situation. Can you explain what that was? Right. So, the Haitian Declaration of
00:49:33.640Independence is January 1st, 1804. There is a second Declaration of Independence, although it's
00:49:40.780really a first, a previous Declaration of Independence in November of 1803. And that
00:49:46.400first declaration happens after the French troops evacuate from the western side of the island.
00:49:54.320They evacuate, but very importantly, they don't concede defeat.
00:49:59.800And in between this kind of 1st November Declaration of Independence and the January 1st 1804 Declaration of Independence,
00:50:07.640it really becomes clear that the French do not admit that the war is over, do not admit that they lost,
00:50:16.160and claim loudly that they have plans to kind of reinvade and reclaim the territory as a colony
00:50:26.720or kind of they continue claiming the territory as a colony, but reclaim power over the colony.
00:50:33.880And so I think that kind of a month between the two declarations highlights the difference of
00:50:39.240the declarations. And the first one says like, okay, former colonists will be safe and free
00:50:45.140here. We have no ill will. And the second declaration says like there, we hate them
00:50:51.700forever. This war is eternal. We can never live in the same places they do. And I think that that's
00:50:58.940a sign or a kind of result of the fact that the French were like, we don't give up. This is our
00:51:05.300colony forever. And the threat was that slavery would return. And so after the January 1st
00:51:11.360Declaration of Independence, which is very much a kind of call to arms. Desalines and the kind of
00:51:17.560leading generals on the island, they execute, the numbers are unclear, but probably several hundred
00:51:24.640white French people who remained on the island. And at the time, as you said, these killings get
00:51:33.400described as massacres. I use the term executions. And I do that because they're kind of targeted
00:51:42.440killing of people who either were a threat to the new nation or people who had participated in
00:51:51.840the expedition that Napoleon sent under first his brother-in-law, Charles Leclerc, and then
00:51:58.320his successor, Donatian Rochambeau, who had committed kind of extreme atrocities in the
00:52:04.680colony. And so there were punishment for those crimes. And so these people were executed as
00:52:10.740kind of threats to the new nation. I just wanted to interject just to say that in terms of the,
00:52:16.560like the word massacre is what you say in your book. It's like, if you look at like the Wikipedia
00:52:20.420about it, there was like another podcast that was talking about it. Like this is,
00:52:23.980And that word gets connected to these acts, I think, partially because of the propaganda against Haiti at this time, because this terrified all colonial powers that like, wait a minute, the workers could come together and cut us off entirely and become their own country.
00:52:42.840And this is terrifying to England and Spain and France and places that they were really vilifying the people like Dessaline who were on the front, like the faces of this revolution.
00:52:54.000The revolution was also recast as a rebellion or a revolt rather than a revolution.
00:53:00.740And so to kind of, in an act of war, like there's in the Napoleonic Wars, I'm sure there's lots of instances where hundreds of people died in military endeavors.0.96
00:53:12.840in lots of situations but this was really set up as like this black man did this look at this evil0.52
00:53:19.600person and what he did so that's kind of and this gets like still is very connected to dessaline's
00:53:26.080name and legacy as this kind of like genocidal monster where in your booklet and what you're
00:53:32.860describing now too like putting it in the context of this war and what was happening
00:53:36.400like what he was doing was a response to the war that was going on he wasn't just like coming out0.84
00:53:43.320of nowhere and killing a bunch of people because he's this like black man who like i don't know
00:53:50.160you know right i mean like all of the descriptions of these events um just play into these super0.99
00:53:56.820racist tropes about like you know um savage black people being kind of like thirsty for blood which0.88
00:54:05.380is, you know, it's like, it's, it's all kind of insane. And if you look at the sources and look0.96
00:54:11.100at them kind of with a critical eye, it's very clear what's happening. And they're, you know,
00:54:18.800taking everything out of context, framing the alleged victims as these poor, innocent people
00:54:27.400who, you know, hadn't participated in slavery, hadn't participated in these extremely violent
00:54:35.940campaigns by the French Expeditionary Army, you know, thought of kind of colonizers as
00:54:42.560innocent victims who had done nothing wrong, right? It's very, yeah, disconnected from
00:54:52.860there's this quote i just wanted to this it's not from that specific time but it's you know
00:54:58.260part of the story and it's from your book um in 1799 toussaint louverture wrote a letter
00:55:02.840where he was um explaining how um black people are being spoken of as rebels insurgents and he
00:55:10.160writes but if black people are treated as such for having demanded their rights what epithets
00:55:14.080should we give to the french people who overthrew the best deal and decapitated louis 16th then king0.91
00:55:18.560of France. Right. And they're repeatedly just like held to a different standard and kind of0.98
00:55:29.680disconnected from this broader age of revolutions context. And, you know, they're, they're
00:55:36.620criticized for not respecting the, this kind of fictional like rules of civilized warfare or
00:55:43.960whatever, when nobody had ever respected those same fictional rules of civilized warfare when
00:55:49.580fighting against the Haitian revolutionaries, right? And so there's these kind of inconsistencies
00:55:55.300and hypocrisies in all of the descriptions of these events, but it still is something that is
00:56:04.040kind of deeply connected with Dessalines' memory, particularly in the international sphere.
00:56:10.340So the execution of these French people is one of the, it's sort of a major event in this ongoing war, which is the Haitian Revolution. How do we get, so Toussaint Louverture is the, he was described as the, what was it, Governor General for Life?
00:56:32.000Yep. That was according to the 1801 Constitution.
00:56:34.840Right. And that's a title that inherently means that you're connected to France. You're not like calling yourself governor general, not calling yourself emperor or king kind of indicates a certain relationship. And then Toussaint Louverture, what's the end of his story? Just briefly, because.
00:56:50.840So during the expedition sent by Napoleon, he is kind of deceived, tricked, and then arrested by Charles Leclerc and deported to France, where he is imprisoned in the Dura Mountains and dies a very sad death of kind of neglect.
00:57:16.080And, you know, he spends his final days kind of arguing for the injustice of his imprisonment and writes a memoir while in prison. And so he does not live to see Haitian independence.
00:57:34.900And then this is at the point where Dessaline becomes the new leader.
00:57:40.400There's a, you know, there's a kind of complicated set of months.
00:57:43.880It's not a straightforward situation, but in the context of this brief conversation.
00:57:47.900Yes. During the war for independence, Dessalines emerges as the kind of primary leader of the military that adopts the name the Armée Indigène, the indigenous army. And that is the kind of, those are the military forces that force the French to evacuate and declare independence.
00:58:07.560And on the same day, the kind of Haitian Declaration of Independence has three different components to it. There's the Act of Independence signed by several generals. There's a long speech kind of from Dessalines to the people of Haiti. And then there's a final nomination of Dessalines to the position of Governor General for Life, the same title that Toussaint Louis Veltier had held.
00:58:34.580and so it's similar to me in a very simplistic way but like to how Napoleon became the leader
00:58:41.980of France because of his military success and I thought we need the person in charge of France
00:58:46.720to be a military leader and so Dessalines similarly and also Toussaint Louverture like
00:58:51.500the people who were in charge it wasn't like let's just choose a hereditary king like who
00:58:54.980seems like a nice person it's like no we need our leader needs to be military expert really
00:59:01.180And so at this point with Tucson Louverture sadly deceased, de Saline kind of steps in because that's who they know they need to be in charge, somebody who can make the military strategies and the plans and that sort of thing.
00:59:12.180Right. This is a country at war. And that is very clear in the Declaration of Independence. And that is very clear with a lot of de Salines policies.
00:59:23.100You know, he very soon after, even as he's preparing for independence, you know, starts building a set of military forts inland in the mountains where the military and the nation can kind of retreat because they are expecting another French invasion to try to get the colony back.
00:59:43.840And so he was kind of selected as the military leader for the War for Independence.
00:59:49.060And because it is still a nation at war, he is a kind of, you know, the natural fit to lead the country.
00:59:56.920And initially, the country is called the State of Haiti.
01:00:01.480And as you said, you know, within the first year of independence, it becomes the Empire of Haiti.
01:00:08.480And de Salines becomes Emperor Jacques I.
01:00:12.360And he is crowned emperor in October of 1804.
01:00:16.480And there's a kind of, you know, complicated process through which that happens.
01:00:20.480But his advisors and some of the top generals make the case that governor general is a title that assumes an outside power.
01:00:34.000And those are, you know, that's the title of all the other leaders of colonies in the Caribbean.
01:00:39.260And they want to avoid the appearance of their kind of acknowledging any kind of outside power because it very quickly becomes clear that nobody else is going to recognize Haitian independence, right?
01:00:54.060And so trying to eliminate any suggestion that Haiti is a colony is part of this kind of plan in the first years of independence.
01:01:05.560Does he call himself Jacques I, or does he just call himself Emperor Jacques?
01:01:11.380His title as emperor is Emperor Jacques I.
01:01:15.380It's interesting that he does. Is that just, do you think, to suggest there will be subsequent Jacques?
01:01:22.000Like, because in, for instance, other histories, like if you're the first, Pope Francis was just Pope Francis because there wasn't a Pope Francis before.
01:01:30.120So you don't add a one until there's a second.
01:01:33.360I just think it's interesting that he gives himself the first, just kind of like presuming that there's going to be another one later.
01:01:38.780And yes, and that might be might have been the presumption.
01:01:41.900It was not a hereditary position, but he did have the power to name his successor.
01:01:52.700I do want to mention that we've been talking about the major part of his life is these military operations and what's happening politically and stuff.
01:02:01.060And his wife is a cool person also. She's like throwing balls. And we talked about this in the episode I did about Henri Christophe because he, you know, built a castle and like they had this kind of like Bridgerton, but actually black people were there sort of situation where.
01:02:17.000so while this political stuff was happening like the they were the wives of these military generals
01:02:24.520are kind of serving a similar role to what they would be serving over in France just kind of like0.77
01:02:29.600being the society hostess and just and this is part of what they wanted everyone to see like
01:02:33.660Haiti is like other countries like we have an upper class we have an aristocracy we have
01:02:38.620elegant houses and so like that's happening too it's not just like a nation it's not purely just
01:02:44.980nation at war like they're trying to show like we are like you also like here is our upper class
01:02:49.460and look at our excellent soiree that we're throwing can you just talk a bit about his wife
01:02:54.860because i think she comes up she's an interesting person i think she's um an absolutely fascinating
01:03:01.560person marie claire heureuse who initially had that name also bonheur um and then becomes madame
01:03:09.160de Céline, an empress of Haiti. I think she is a fascinating person, mainly because, right,
01:03:18.680she serves this, she is a, like, a society person, but, you know, like, I think she's like a diplomatic
01:03:23.800wife too, right? And is engaging with, like, other diplomats' wives and kind of serving in that
01:03:31.020purpose as well. She's also, there's, you know, slim evidence about a lot of her life, but there's
01:03:38.540evidence, you know, that she was kind of close to battlefields, you know, like traveling with
01:03:43.740Desalines during the revolution. And so I think it would, I mean, it is really interesting to
01:03:50.760imagine what her experiences would have been like. And I think if ever there's a movie about
01:03:56.680the Haitian revolution, a movie from her perspective would be remarkable. And one of
01:04:01.800the things that I find most remarkable about her is, as we've talked about, but as you've
01:04:07.760also talked about with Marlena Doubt, there are a lot of criticisms of Haitian revolutionaries,
01:04:15.440you know, over the last 200 years. People have criticized Haitian revolutionaries in various
01:04:20.140ways, all of them. She is somebody who, like, nobody criticizes. And she appears to have been
01:04:28.280somebody who was well-loved at the time, even after Dessalines' assassination, we'll get there,
01:04:35.060but kind of lived a long and full life in Haiti
01:04:50.360Like nobody has said any bad things about her.
01:04:53.040And some of that, I think, is, you know,
01:04:58.660a device to kind of highlight the parts of de Saline
01:05:03.620that people don't like, right? She's always contrasted with him in terms of her kindness
01:05:08.680and generosity and warmth and how she softened him allegedly. But I think that there is a genuine
01:05:14.980aspect that people really loved and adored her. And so, you know, I did as kind of as much as I
01:05:24.240could with the evidence at hand to include her in his story. But I think a fiction writer could
01:05:32.700really do a lot with her story. But she, I think, was a remarkable person.
01:05:38.240And their marriage was, as far as we know, like a love match. Like they met each other
01:05:42.600and got married. It wasn't any sort of arrangement or anything like that.
01:05:46.420Not to my knowledge. That being said, you know, I think Desalines, like many other people at the
01:05:53.180time, had mistresses and, you know, children with other women. But I think their relationship
01:06:02.500does seem to have been, you know, a good one, one of respect and, and perhaps love.
01:06:09.720And so, you know, we've, you've just mentioned he gets assassinated. So what, how does that,
01:06:16.780how does that come about? What, what is his final chapter?
01:06:21.120Yeah, you know, I think, and this, this ties back to what we were talking about in terms of,
01:06:25.580of um him being you know a general you know the the the need for a general to to lead the country
01:06:32.920and i think that there's that there was a you know tension between the needs of a nation at war
01:06:41.700and the needs of a population who had kind of you know suffered suffered slavery suffered a
01:06:49.200revolution and wanted a different version of the future and version of freedom. And so I think that
01:06:57.080there's limits in terms of what was possible because of things like France's ongoing threats
01:07:06.080of attacking the new nation, because of the refusal of any foreign nation to recognize
01:07:12.920Haitian independence. And this ends up, you know, I think forcing Dessaline to lead the country as
01:07:20.400a military general, prioritizing military service, prioritizing the plantation economy because of
01:07:26.940the need for, you know, export goods so that they could secure military supplies. And, you know,
01:07:34.000so I think that this limits his popularity among the general population because this is not what
01:07:39.920they wanted, right? He's forcing the continuation of the plantation economy because of these
01:07:46.740outside constraints, but there is deep resistance to that. He also, you know, had managed to kind
01:07:54.220of unite opposing factions during the war for independence, but is not successful at maintaining
01:08:00.740that unity in independence. And I don't think he does a really good job kind of including
01:08:07.240people, you know, all of the different generals from the different regions in his reign as emperor.
01:08:15.980And so there's a Republican revolution that starts in the South and kind of ends with his
01:08:25.600execution on, or assassination on October 17th, 1806. And then soon after the country divides in
01:08:35.840civil war. And that's, and if people want to know what happens next, you can listen to my
01:08:39.900episode. I'm really in a doubt about Henri Christophe because that's who takes the reins
01:08:44.260from there. But I was just looking, when I was reading your book, I just saved this, I think it's
01:08:49.240the very last paragraph of your book, but you're just sort of outlining how, what's remarkable
01:08:54.080about Dessalines, just as the, he issued the world's second successful declaration of independence
01:08:59.440and doing so he founded the first abolitionist state in the Americas. What do you think
01:09:05.520like a lot of people listening to this won't have heard of him before so which i like like
01:09:12.840your book talks a lot about like how his name has been he has this bad reputation and he has
01:09:17.800had for a long time among many people but there's a lot of people who've never heard of him before
01:09:21.920so to both of those camps like people who thought like oh i've heard that he's this kind of like
01:09:27.320genocidal monster or people who are like who is this guy like what would you say his legacy is
01:09:31.800how would you explain that? I think his legacy should be or is, yeah. You know, one of somebody
01:09:43.300kind of deeply committed to the abolition of slavery. And that, you know, ties in to somebody
01:09:53.160who is kind of deeply committed to, you know, independence and sovereignty, right? Anti-colonial
01:09:59.400as well. And then also somebody who is deeply committed to equality, right? The abolition of
01:10:04.980racism as well, right? And these three things kind of go hand in hand. But it is, I think,
01:10:12.460remarkable and a real shame that he is not remembered as this kind of key abolitionist.
01:10:18.860You know, he's not, like, more people know about Thomas Clarkson, who, like, did not advocate for
01:10:25.000the same kind of abolition, right? But it's part of this kind of broader story about how a violent
01:10:32.400resistance to those very violent historical, you know, facts really kind of has shaped his memory.
01:10:42.400So I think he was somebody deeply committed both to his own personal freedom, but then
01:10:47.060the freedom of the entire nation. Thank you so much for joining me today to talk about,
01:10:53.140Talk with this remarkable person. I have one question, one final question for you. Like, I know that this is your area of research interest. What made you decide to write a book about him? Was it partially just to sort of recontextualize what you're saying about how he's remembered?
01:11:09.000I mean, there's various reasons, I guess. My first book, Haitian Connections in the Atlantic World, had studied a lot of his international diplomacy.
01:11:23.280And I just, I really started realizing how many kind of misconceptions there were in the current historiography. And I really saw a need for a biography of his kind of full life to better understand him as a person, better understand where he was coming from.
01:11:40.720And I also saw the need, you know, for people kept writing biographies of Toussaint Louis
01:11:46.600Veltier, and I'm like, great, there should be many biographies of Toussaint Louis Veltier,
01:11:49.960but also there should be a biography of Jean-Jacques de Salines.
01:11:54.520And I just, I think that, you know, his is part of this broader story of the age of
01:11:59.780revolutions and people really need to learn this story.
01:12:04.240Well, thank you so much for writing this book.
01:12:05.620And thank you so much for talking with me about it.