Former slaves in Haiti

1804

Haiti is credited as the only colony where slave rebellion lead to independence. Colonial occupation of the island of Hispaniola began in 1492 when Columbus landed on the island. He, his sailors, and later Spanish colonialists participated in the wholesale enslavement and genocide of the native Arawak Indians. The island was eventually divided between a Spanish colony (the Dominican Republic) and a French colony. Both colonies imported African slaves to the island, some of whom escaped to the mountainous interior of the island and formed communities of "maroons" or escaped slaves. These maroons, along with free blacks and mulattos, conducted a series of uprisings and wars against Napoleon's armies and French colonialists beginning in the 1790's and ending in 1804 with the establishment of the nation of Haiti.

Our Thoughts?
Frederick Douglas wrote, ?I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one.? The most admirable aspect of the Haitian rebellion, and of every slave rebellion successful or not, is that the slaves involved threw off the mental shackles that slave-owners tried to place upon them.