preview

What Did The Haitian Revolution Do For End Racial Slavery And How Successful Was It?

Good Essays

Anneliese Carrascoso 3/2/17
What did the Haitian Revolution do to end racial slavery and how successful was it in doing so? The Haitian Revolution was the first ever ‘successful’ slave rebellion, which took place from 1791-1804. This was followed by the Independence of Haiti,

Racial Slavery is the forced labor of individuals and discrimination based on race, in which racism and hatred are the core. Racial slavery leads to the dehumanization of the slave. One of the greatest instances of racial slavery was the importation of African slaves in America and the West Indies. The black slaves in the French colonies and America, among other places, were worked like animals, and given rations too small for human survival (The Black …show more content…

This is not as much the case as seen in the U.S. during this time. Despite having a parent of high class, if one didn’t look white, one was condemned to slavery.

The French Revolution, started in 1789, sparked the beginning of the Haitian Revolution (The Black Jacobins). The theme ‘Liberty, equality, fraternity’ for all sat in the minds of everybody, especially the enslaved (The Black Jacobins). Many realized the irony of this statement, and argued that full civil and political rights should be granted to free blacks. Some of the early supporters of the French Revolution discussed plans for gradual abolition in the French colonies.

As the French Revolution broke out, Saint Domingue planters overthrew the much hated French colonial administrators in Haiti and sent delegates to the new French parliament (The Black Jacobins). Slave owners demanded the liberty of their right to choose what happened to their slaves under the threat of movement for independence as well. The National Assembly eventually granted the rights of citizens to the land-owning tax-paying Mulattoes after much controversy. The colonial administrators in Haiti refused to enforce this, which caused a Mulatto rebellion in 1790, led by Vincent Oge, which was violently put down. In 1791, a coordinated slave revolt erupted, leading to the massacre of slave-owners and burning of plantations to the ground (The Black Jacobins). As the revolution gained momentum,

Get Access