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AMERICAN AND HAITIAN REVOLUTIONS The Haiti revolution is one of the important milestones in black history in which the Caribbean island became the first Black Republic in the world when African slaves defeated their French masters and gained independence in January 1, 1804. Since the world recognized other revolutions such as the American and French revolutions, it was also critical that in the spirit of the African rebirth, the Haiti revolution was highlighted and given its place in history despite the present civil strife in that Caribbean island. There is history from the underside, which was suppressed completely and after the Haiti revolution it was isolated... the freeing of slaves had not even come. So Haiti was an aberration to the world of its time and that why that history was suppressed. 1 The actual process of independence and autonomy contradicts Lezama's idealizations.
We can look to the Indian uprisings in Mexico, the Pardo uprisings of Venezuela, and the slave revolts in Haiti as prime examples for a claim that a diverse ethnic make-up was essential to the realization of Spanish American independence. And to a limited extent, that claim holds true. Yet, with the exception of Haiti, revolution was controlled and carried out by the Creole elites across Latin America, those of pure Spanish blood born in the Americas, because the Creoles wanted to solidify their already quite significant power base as well as reinforce the racial, economic, and political hierarchies already in place. Civil and egalitarian reform may have been a primary motivation for independence - Lezama constructs his notion of the baroque around it - yet those who ultimately cut Latin America's ties to Spain were to undermine all "radical" reworkings of the colonial social order. The Argentine government promoted European immigration to combat the "barbaric" mestizo threat of the interior.
A truce between the Chilean government and the Auracanian Indians created a separate Indian nation in the south of Chile that was designed to prevent racial mixing. The truce lasted until a desire for expansion led to a campaign of containment and extermination of the Indians. Haiti was to remain the sole exception in a continent where local ruling classes worked to insure their continued hegemony as well as racial purity. 2 Far to many African people are unfamiliar with the significance of the Haitian Revolution and its impact on the world. "The Irritated Genie: An Essay on the Haitian Revolution, " by Dr. Jacob H.
Carruthers, has made a profound contribution to the significance and implications of this event in the history of African people in the world. At this time, Dr. Carruthers is being challenged by health issues that require us all to lift up our spirits and continue, with a vengeance, the great work in which he has provided leadership in the African-centered education movement worldwide. 3 Since the 19 th century, both Black and white scholars have written extensively about the Haitian Revolution that began in the summer of 1791 and ended in the fall of 1803. However, most white scholars have relegated the Haitian Revolution as an "isolated event" and have interpreted its meaning in the framework of white supremacy of the western world order. (1). In this same context, the Black scholars who have written on this subject have suffered from the same problem -- the problem of accepting a European framework in their efforts of describing the essence and meaning of this great African Revolution that took place in Haiti. (3). Haiti is an island in the Caribbean where millions of imported kidnapped Africans were used by the European slave trading nations to supply their labor needs in the 15 th, 16 th, and 17 th centuries.
As Dr. Carruthers writes, "On August 22, 1791, thousands of slaves crudely armed with stolen weapons, various tools and torches, overran and destroyed most of the plantations and besieged the towns of Northern Saint Dominique, the most prosperous European colony in the world at that time. " (1). Americans rightly believe that last week's horrors in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania were terrorist attacks on "American values" - freedom, liberty, democracy, civil and human rights. The United States is an ideological nation, not in the doctrinaire sense of the word, but in the belief that this most disparate of countries was founded on, and remains unified by, a common set of ideas. The roots of this self-conception lie in the tangled story of the American Revolution and the whole-cloth formation of the American Constitution. 4 American colonies were a heterogeneous society in the contrast to Caribbean Islands.
The origins of the American society come from the combination of many nations. While Haitians struggles for their independence and survival, Americans struggled for creating a new society. For most Americans, the period from 1775 to 1787 is a misty dawn glowing on a pantheon of heroes: George Washington crossing the ice-packed Delaware; Paul Revere riding through the night to warn that the British were coming; Thomas Jefferson scribbling away by candlelight at the Declaration of Independence; Founding Fathers founding a brand-new nation. 5 Robert Harvey sympathetically calls these "creation myths" retrospective exaggerations by a fractious nation looking for unifying symbols. And by extension, Harvey suggests, the Revolution is today seen by Americans in terms of liberty versus tyranny, fair versus unfair, good versus bad (not so very different from the reaction to the recent catastrophes).
But the justifications for the Revolution - including the rallying cry of "no taxation without representation" - were, he says, often specious, while in truth the "quasi-independent" colonials rebelled not against the British Crown but against the local Tory order. (5). Moreover, the leaders of the Revolution were not quite what they have been cracked up to be (Sam Adams was the "American Lenin"; George Washington was ambitious and calculating; John Adams was "devious" and "Machiavellian"), and together they later managed a counter- revolution in the form of the Constitution. The author has no wish to denigrate these revolutionary figures; he is trying to set the record straight. And he is in no doubt that the American Revolution was "the defining act in modern world history." 6 The initial statements of political union among the colonies deserve careful attention.
Americans had by no means simply returned, after a ten-year hiatus, to the weak self-defense understanding prevalent before the 1760 s. Now the word was used to denote the whole American people, in affective ways formerly reserved for religious relations. "Union" had powerful political connotations from 1775 - 76 on, erupting from a mixture of anti-British and religious sentiment. The resulting conceptual conflict -- Americans' blatantly reasserting the term Britons had employed to insist on continued interrelations -- was a key register of defiance. Union talk also helped the former colonists alleviate the anxieties of change, as countless Revolution-era statements attest. The new union was praised as perfect or sacred in one sentence, then in danger of imminent disintegration the next. "The management of so complicated and mighty a machine as the United Colonies requires the meekness of Moses, the patience of Job, and the wisdom of Solomon, added to the valor of David, " sighed John Adams in April 1776. (6). Such passing references to religious and philosophical eminences were as abstract as most early invocations of union ever got.
The revolutionary elite rarely engaged in ruminations, of civic-republican, liberal, or other vintage, on unionist themes. This was partly because the problem of joining different states had been little addressed by British empire-builders, as seen above. Only the bare outlines of a conception of American union had emerged by the time war with England was joined, describing "the Union" and the means by which unity could be strengthened. The purposes of promoting national union were straightforward: to oppose British retaliation; to aid in differentiating Americans from their cultural and, in many cases, biological forebears; and to glorify the God whose "Agency" secured, as Samuel Adams had it, "this Union among the colonies and warmth of Affection. " 7 Members of the union included virtually anyone willing to help the revolutionary effort. For the most part, thorny issues of membership in other communities, whether a home state or a group based on shared interests, ethnicity, occupation, or gender, were muted. 'Loyalists vs. patriots' was the salient distinction.
Political leaders advertised common standing as Americans, in attempts to foster direct social and political ties among the people. To be sure, few non-white males held full civic membership, and the darker sides of colonial communities -- social exclusivity, intolerance, and the like -- remained in abundant display. But women, resident aliens, American Indians and free blacks all made welcome contributions to the new republic, especially its war effort. New Yorkers sought "peace and amity" with all "Indians... willing to unite their efforts" with the revolutionaries, language replicated in federal treaties such as that the Continental Congress concluded with the Iroquois in 1775. White women's efforts were extensive: they participated in consumer boycotts; raised funds for the army and quartered its men in their homes; spied on British troops and cared for American soldiers. 8 Finally, it can be inferred that a revolution arises when the right for liberty is depressed.
In "The Irritated Genie, " Dr. Carruthers points out that the Haitian Revolution "is perhaps the most underemphasize d wars in what is called modern history. " The fact that many African people are inspired "by the Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cuban revolutions than the one truly Black revolution in modern history." At the same time when American revolution can be cold multinational as free blacks also joined the war effort, and while revolutionaries' talk of universal liberty and equality seems hypocritical given the continued presence of slavery. Bibliography: Adams, S. "To a Southern Friend, " Mar. 12, 1775, in Writings of Samuel Adams, 3: 199. Colin G. Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
Goodell v. Jackson, 20 Johns. R. 693 (N. Y. C.
C. , 1823), at 712; Journals of the Continental Congress, 14: 104. Keats, J. "Haitian Revolution. " (London: Heinemann, 1978), ll. 79 - 80, 1 - 2. Kellner, H. Historical Representation: Getting the Story Crooked (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1989). Kernel, L. "'History Can Do It No Justice': the American Revolution. " (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989). Lovebird, T.
The Coming of the American Revolution, trans. R. R. Palmer (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1947), 205. web
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Research essay sample on American And Haitian Revolutions
