| I've written before about how monarchist reactionaries recoiled in shock and horror when the earlier French Revolution shattered their world. Unable to face the fact of their own terrible misrule, or possibility that the people themselves could turn against, and act to overthrow them, they instead fantasized the existence of a hidden counter-elite, the shadow projection of their own naked lust for power, blaming it, most notoriously in the form of the "Bavarian Illuminati", for all the calamity that they themselves had sown. This act of heroic blame-shifting was the fountainhead of modern conspiracist thought, and it was Robertson's devotion to conspiracism, as displayed most openly in his book, The New World Order, which precipitated Michael Lind's defection from the right, after he unsuccessfully tried to get other leading conservatives to denounce Robertson.
But if reactionary monarchists and their sympathizers around the world were horrified by the prospects of European democracy, and thus quite receptive to the myth of the Bavarian Illuminati, the prospects of slave revolts and universal democracy had an even wider appeal. In particular, in America, it was the Federalists, following their electoral defeat in the "Revolution of 1800" who embraced the conspiracist narrative of the Bavarian Illuminati. But it was the victorious Democratic-Republicans, under Jefferson, who joined forces with the revolutionary French forces, under Napoleon, to try to reverse the Haitian Revolution. In fact, the Federalists, who were traditionally anti-French, were generally supportive of Haiti, particularly Hamilton. Things changed only after Jefferson discovered that Napoleon's "Phase II" involved sending troops to the American mainland, securing their claim to the entire Louisiana Territory-a claim that had been entirely secure until the Haitian Revolution destroyed the foundation of French power in the New World.
At Consortiumnews.com, Robert Parry, who broke the Iran/Contra story half a year before the rest of the DC press corps took it up, provides an excellent recap of this early American history in his article, "Haiti and America's Historic Debt"
more than two centuries ago, Haiti represented one of the most important neighbors of the new American Republic and played a central role in enabling the United States to expand westward. If not for Haiti, the course of U.S. history could have been very different, with the United States possibly never expanding much beyond the Appalachian Mountains.
In the 1700s, then-called St. Domingue and covering the western third of the island of Hispaniola, Haiti was a French colony that rivaled the American colonies as the most valuable European possession in the Western Hemisphere. Relying on a ruthless exploitation of African slaves, French plantations there produced nearly one-half the world's coffee and sugar.
Many of the great cities of France owe their grandeur to the wealth that was extracted from Haiti and its slaves. But the human price was unspeakably high. The French had devised a fiendishly cruel slave system that imported enslaved Africans for work in the fields with accounting procedures for their amortization. They were literally worked to death.
The American colonists may have rebelled against Great Britain over issues such as representation in Parliament and arbitrary actions by King George III. But black Haitians confronted a brutal system of slavery. An infamous French method of executing a troublesome slave was to insert a gunpowder charge into his rectum and then detonate the explosive.
So, as the American colonies fought for their freedom in the 1770s and as that inspiration against tyranny spread to France in the 1780s, the repercussions would eventually reach Haiti, where the Jacobins' cry of "liberty, equality and fraternity" resonated with special force. Slaves demanded that the concepts of freedom be applied universally.
When the brutal French plantation system continued, violent slave uprisings followed. Hundreds of white plantation owners were slain as the rebels overran the colony. A self-educated slave named Toussaint L'Ouverture emerged as the revolution's leader, demonstrating skills on the battlefield and in the complexities of politics.
Despite the atrocities committed by both sides of the conflict, the rebels - known as the "Black Jacobins" - gained the sympathy of the American Federalist Party and particularly Alexander Hamilton, a native of the Caribbean himself. Hamilton, the first U.S. Treasury Secretary, helped L'Ouverture draft a constitution for the new nation.
That's just the beginning of Parry's excellent piece. Here's the heart of it:
Despite Hamilton's sympathies, some Founders, including Thomas Jefferson who owned 180 slaves and owed his political strength to agrarian interests, looked nervously at the slave rebellion in St. Domingue. Jefferson feared that slave uprisings might spread northward.
"If something is not done, and soon done," Jefferson wrote in 1797, "we shall be the murderers of our own children."
....
Through secret diplomatic channels, Napoleon asked Jefferson if the United States would help a French army traveling by sea to St. Domingue. Jefferson replied that "nothing will be easier than to furnish your army and fleet with everything and reduce Toussaint [L'Ouverture] to starvation."
But Napoleon had a secret second phase of his plan that he didn't share with Jefferson. Once the French army had subdued L'Ouverture and his rebel force, Napoleon intended to advance to the North American mainland, basing a new French empire in New Orleans and settling the vast territory west of the Mississippi River.
In May 1801, Jefferson picked up the first inklings of Napoleon's other agenda. Alarmed at the prospect of a major European power controlling New Orleans and thus the mouth of the strategic Mississippi River, Jefferson backpedaled on his commitment to Napoleon, retreating to a posture of neutrality.
Still - terrified at the prospect of a successful republic organized by freed African slaves - Jefferson took no action to block Napoleon's thrust into the New World.
In 1802, a French expeditionary force achieved initial success against the slave army, driving L'Ouverture's forces back into the mountains. But, as they retreated, the ex-slaves torched the cities and the plantations, destroying the colony's once-thriving economic infrastructure.
L'Ouverture, hoping to bring the war to an end, accepted Napoleon's promise of a negotiated settlement that would ban future slavery in the country. As part of the agreement, L'Ouverture turned himself in.
Napoleon, however, broke his word. Jealous of L'Ouverture, who was regarded by some admirers as a general with skills rivaling Napoleon's, the French dictator had L'Ouverture shipped in chains back to Europe where he was mistreated and died in prison.
Foiled Plans
Infuriated by the betrayal, L'Ouverture's young generals resumed the war with a vengeance. In the months that followed, the French army - already decimated by disease - was overwhelmed by a fierce enemy fighting in familiar terrain and determined not to be put back into slavery.
Napoleon sent a second French army, but it too was destroyed. Though the famed general had conquered much of Europe, he lost 24,000 men, including some of his best troops, in St. Domingue before abandoning his campaign.
The death toll among the ex-slaves was much higher, but they had prevailed, albeit over a devastated land.
By 1803, a frustrated Napoleon - denied his foothold in the New World - agreed to sell New Orleans and the Louisiana territories to Jefferson. Ironically, the Louisiana Purchase, which opened the heart of the present United States to American settlement, had been made possible despite Jefferson's misguided collaboration with Napoleon.
One detail that Parry doesn't dwell on is that Haiti was forced to pay reparations to France for the value of the slaves who freed themselves-probably the only case in history where the winners of a war paid reparations to the losers. That debt was a major contributor to Haiti's long history of national impoverishment. Commerce with the US, the largest economy in the region, was also cut off. The US did not even recognize Haiti until 1862, the second year of the Civil War.
Parry concludes his piece:
Washington's conventional wisdom on Haiti holds that the country is a hopeless basket case that would best be governed by business-oriented technocrats who would take their marching orders from the United States.
However, the Haitian people have a different perspective. Unlike most Americans who have no idea about their historic debt to Haiti, many Haitians know this history quite well. The bitter memories of Jefferson and Napoleon still feed the distrust that Haitians of all classes feel toward the outside world.
"In Haiti, we became the first black independent country," Aristide once told me in an interview. "We understand, as we still understand, it wasn't easy for them - American, French and others - to accept our independence."
A few other highlights of Haitian history worth noting: - The US intervened military on a number of occasions, usually only briefly. But not so briefly from 1915 to 1934.
- The US tacitly supported the back-to-back dictatorships of
"Papa Doc" Duvalier (1957-1971) and "Baby Doc" Duvalier (1971-1986), as well as virtually every other gang of thugs to grab power in Haiti.
- But the US could not abide the most popular political leader ever seen in Haiti since its revolutionary period, former priest Jean Bertrand Aristede, who won 67% of the vote in 1991. He was ousted by a US-backed later that year. He was only reinstated with US support after agreeing to abandon his promise to establish a minimum wage law in Haiti, and to acquiesse to the imposition of neoliberal policies backed by the US. He none-the-less managed to be elected for another term, after which he ousted in a second coup in 2004. While his political opponents have tried to paint him as a violent demagogue, the US has never shied away from supporting violent Haitian leaders who supported US interests. Moreover, a major reason Aristeded was deposed a second time was precisely because he had dismantled the state security apparatus, thus making himself vulnerable to private gangs. To this day, Aristede's party, Lavalas, remains the most popular party in Haiti. It is also excluded from elections, to ensure that the Haitian people will not be represented by leaders of their own choosing.
Some of this history was discussed on Democracy Now! this week in an interview with Randall Robinson, former leader of TansAfrica, and the leading figure in the US anti-Apartheid campaign of the 1980s:
AMY GOODMAN: President Obama has tapped President Clinton and former President George W. Bush to coordinate the aid relief to Haiti. I was wondering your thoughts on that.
RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, Amy, I'm, of course, troubled by that. I don't think this is the time-neither the time nor the place to discuss those things that have troubled me for a long time in the history of American policy towards Haiti. Now the focus must be upon the rescue efforts that are underway to save lives.
But I hope that this experience, this disaster, causes American media to take a keener look at Haiti, at the Haitian people, at their wonderful creativity, at their art, at their culture, and what they've had to bear. It has been described to the American people as a problem of their own making. Well, that's simply not the case. Haiti has been, of course, put upon by outside powers for its whole post-slavery history, from 1804 up until the present.
Of course, President Bush was responsible for destroying Haitian democracy in 2004, when he and American forces abducted President Aristide and his wife, taking them off to Africa, and they are now in South Africa. President Clinton has largely sponsored a program of economic development that supports the idea of sweatshops. Haitians in Haiti today make 38 cents an hour. They don't make a high enough wage to pay for their lunch and transportation to and from work. But this is the kind of economic program that President Clinton has supported. I think that is sad, that these two should be joined in this kind of effort. It sends, I think, the wrong kind of signal. But that is not what we should focus on now. We should focus on saving lives.
But in the last analysis, I hope that American media will not just continue to-the refrain of Haiti being the poorest country in the western hemisphere, but will come to ask the question, why? What distinguishes Haiti from the rest of the Caribbean? Why are the other countries, like the country in which I live, Saint Kitts, middle-income and successful countries, and Haiti is mired in economic despair? What happened? And who's had a hand in it? If Haiti has been under a series of serial dictatorship, who armed the dictators? There are other hands in Haiti's problem. Of course Haiti is responsible for some of its own failures, but probably not principally responsible. We need to know that. We need to be told the whole story of these wonderful, resilient, courageous and industrious people. And we have not been told that. I would hope that this would be an opportunity for doing so.
AMY GOODMAN: In talking about President Bush, while most people may not know the role the US played in the ouster of President Aristide February 29th, 2004, probably what would come to mind when there's any discussion of relief efforts is Katrina.
RANDALL ROBINSON: Yes. The problem of what happened in February 2004 continues. We had democracy in Haiti, and that democracy was blighted by the Bush administration. And now President Aristide's party is prohibited from participating in the electoral process. His party is the largest party in Haiti. And why should we be so afraid to let his party participate? If Haitian people don't want them, they won't vote for them. That is the very essence of democracy, that people get a chance to stand for election, and the electorate gets a chance to make a decision. But we have obstructed that process in Haiti. We have done that under the Clinton administration, under the Bush administration, and that continues under the Obama administration. And that is indeed unfortunate. I am imploring American media to examine this in whole part, in ways that media have failed to do so up until now.
The outpouring of support for Haiti we are currently witnessing is deeply heartening. It is an accurate reflection of what's best in America-which is the basic decency and compassion of the American people. But in order for what's best in America to triumph over what's worst, we have a chronic need for political self-education. I join with Randall Robinson in hoping that this moment of compassion can also be something more, an awakening to the deeper historical reality, and a sense of responsibility to once and for all align the American people and their government in full long-term support of the Haitian people and their self-determination, a people who have, in essence, given America more than any other people on Earth. |
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