Athenameilahn’s Reviews > Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War > Status Update

Britain tried to quell the slave uprising in Haiti but had to retreat. At one point the British army used thousands of slaves to fight the battle to control H. More British soldiers died trying to take over Saint Domingue than the American Revolutionary War. But no remembrance of their sacrifice, “marking yet another act of historical silencing in this symphony of erasure.”

St Domingue voraciously consumed slaves. Needed to import from older British colonies like Jamaica with successful Maroons. African religions were forbidden but many were Catholic or at least familiar with it and used it to forge powerful alliances. Which prob precipitated the rev there. Dutty Boukmann (THAT Boukmann/vodou) had escaped from Jamaica (I never knew that!!)

Lots of evidence suggesting the French rev inspired the Haitian rev, but also the wealth generated by slavery and the richness of Nantes, Bordeaux, Le Havre, etc also might have inspired the French rev.

In the Caribb the plantation work was brutal so life expectancy was low & there was no time to develop cohesion-everyone was still “African”. In the US Mississippi Valley cotton plantations were a bit easier, slaves lived longer and had children so replaced their parents (they became known as Creoles= born on American soil.)

The West constructed Blackness. In Africa the idea of black as a race was novel, in part because virtually no Africans had been in the New World, witnessed chattel slavery, then gone back to Africa to document it and explain the stakes for Black people in general.

France became world’s biggest sugar and coffee producer in just 100 yrs. More than 224k Africans sent from Africa to Haiti. By 1789 Haiti produced more wealth that the rest of France’s colonies combined.

1779 hundreds of Blacks brought from Haiti to the IS to fight on behalf of France who were the US’ allies.

There had been other slave uprisings, all squashed, but they continued to inspire. 1712-1760 there were several.

Whites and Blacks alike were freaked out by St Domingue’s independence (to Haiti). Whites like Jefferson & before him Washington worried about slaves revolting. Slaves knew whites *could*be overgrown.

1803 Jefferson arranged Louisiana purchase, 1/4 of size of future US, but would have been worthless wasteland if not for the labor of people who were enslaved.