Horner's Corner

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The Bois Caiman, August 14th 1791: the gathering of the Haitian slaves at the ceremony that marked the beginning of the Haitian Revolution.

Inspired by the tall figure of Boukman (a slave who could read? = bookman?) the slaves struck for freedom – and won, in the first great successful slave uprising. Armies sent against them were all defeated: when French troops were sent against them under Napoleon the Haitians sang La Marseillaise to tell their opponents that they were on the wrong side. The black slaves freed themselves under Toussaint L’Ouverture, and others – making the principles of revolutionary freedom truly universal as nothing else could.  Overthrowing Kings and Slave owners was only the start. Those principles amount to more than being ruled by elites, who deign sometimes to have their rule over us ceremonially reaffirmed in elections.  What came to be known as the  ‘Tennis Court Oath’ – when the ‘Third Estate’ (the commoners) swore an oath not to allow themselves to be dissolved until they had forged a free constitution for the French people – shares its world-historical importance with the uprising in Haiti. [1]

The Tennis Court Oath 1789: the assembly of the representatives of the French people refuse to be dissolved by the King.

What was  the true beginning of the French Revolution? for more on the events discussed here, see CLR James The Black Jacobins (the history of the Haitian revolution) and Susan Buck-Morss Hegel, Haiti and Universal History (for the philosophical significance). James’ book was a pioneering work of black history while Buck-Morss’ is a new (2009), erudite yet concise intervention.  It’s a significant book in that it draws together the kinds of ideas in implicit in this post, and takes the discussion onto a whole other level. I don’t agree with everything she says in the book but was very glad I’d read it. I’ll never think about slavery,  or the ‘Age of Revolution’ the same way again.

We must fight the tendency to think of events like the Haitian revolution as ‘off shoots’ or mere side effects of the real action in Europe or North America. The Haitian revolution had a powerful  impact on Europeans of the day (including Hegel: Buck-Morss argues  that he must have been aware of the events across the Atlantic, and that he developed his ‘master -slave’ dialectic  with that revolution in mind).

Haiti is a poor country, and it is one that has lately been pulverised by an earthquake. But it is more than the basket case of the metropolitan imaginary: it stands for something inspiring in the history of the struggle for human emancipation. Where Haiti led, others followed.

The Tennis Court Oath 1789 - (David)

 [1] For more on the contemporary signficance of these issues, see Slavoj Zizek’s First as Tragedy, Then as Farce (2009)

On slavery as a -the?- source of US wealth see here