Page 7 - Hispaniola

Haiti

A F R E E N A T I O N

VOCAB
After the fall of Louverture in 1802, most of the colonies in Saint Domingue
were captured and claimed as French territory. At the time Louverture’s
GUERRILLA WARFARE - top general Jean Jacques Dessalines had already submitted to the French
WARFARE IN WHICH A Regime as he thought that slavery would not be reinstated in the Saint
SMALL ARMY FIGHTS A Domingue colony. However in 1803, after Napoleon Bonaparte revealed his
intention to reintroduce slavery to Saint Domingue, Dessalines and many
BIGGER ARMY BY
other black and mulatto leaders rose back in rebellion. Soon, chaos and
USING PETTY TACTICS panic erupted in Saint Domingue, and all the white people were driven out
SUCH AS SABOTAGE, or killed. This angered Napoleon and he decided to crush the blacks once
RAIDS AND AMBUSHES and for all. Dessalines was aware that Napoleon would easily crush his
forces so he decided to start the scorched earth campaign, a campaign in
which the sugar plantations on Saint Domingue were completely burnt
down in an attempt to decrease the value of Saint Domingue. This tactic
CONSTITUTION OF 1801
worked marvelously and Napoleon soon realised that Saint Domingue was
- THE CONSTITUTION not worth the trouble, as it was not valuable without its plantations, so he
THAT WAS retreated. So on January 1st 1804 Hispaniola was finally an independent
nation! Jean Jacques Dessalines then proclaimed himself to be the
ESTABLISHED BY
Governor General for life and decided to change the name of Hispaniola to
TOUSSAINT an “Arawak-derived name Haiti” - (Britannica, Biography, Jean Jacques

LOUVERTURE THAT Dessalines). Napoleon was a sore loser and didn’t accept the fact that Haiti
ISSUED THE NEW LAWS was independent so he took precautions to make sure that the newly
independent Haiti would have a crippled economy forever: He told
OF SAINT DOMINGUE
countries not to trade with the colony thus making the very little items
that they could trade, completely useless. Later on in 1825 at the time of
King Charles X (of France), France demanded Haiti to pay damage fees of
150 million francs (amounts to around 21 billion dollars today) to be
recognized as an independent nation, Haiti accepted this offer and spent
the next 122 years trying to pay if this debt.