Haitian Revolutions: Crash Course World History #30

Hi, I’m John Green. This is Crash Course World History. And apparently it’s Revolutions

Month here at Crash Course, because today we are going to discuss the often-neglected

Haitian Revolutions. The Haitian Revolutions are totally fascinating and they involve two

of my very favorite things: 1. Ending slavery, and

2. Napoleon getting his feelings hurt. I can’t help myself, Napoleon. I like to see you suffer.

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So, the French colony in Saint-Domingue began in the 17th century as a pirate outpost. And

its original French inhabitants made their living selling leather and a kind of smoked

beef called boucan. All that beef actually came from cattle left behind by the Spanish,

who were the first Europeans to settle the island.

But anyway, after 1640, the boucan-sellers started to run low on beef. And they were

like, “You know what would pay better than selling beef jerky? Robbing Spanish galleons,”

which as you’ll recall were loaded with silver mined from South America. So, by the

middle of the 17th century, the French had convinced many of those buccaneering captains

to give up their pirating and settle on the island.

Many of them invested some of their pirate treasure in sugar plantations, which, by 1700

were thriving at both producing sugar and working people to death. And soon, this island

was the most valuable colony in the West Indies, and possibly in the world. It produced 40%

of Europe’s sugar, 60% of its coffee, and it was home to more slaves than any place except Brazil.

And as you’ll recall from our discussion of Atlantic slavery, being a slave in a sugar-production

colony was exceptionally brutal. In fact, by the late 18th century, more slaves were

imported to Saint-Domingue EVERY YEAR— more than 40,000— than the entire white population

of the island. By the 19th century, slaves made up about 90% of the population.

And most of those slaves were African born, because the brutal living and working conditions

prevented natural population growth. Like, remember Alfred Crosby’s fantastic line,

“it is crudely true that if man’s caloric intake is sufficient, he will somehow stagger

to maturity, and he will reproduce?” Yeah, well, not in 18th century Haiti, thanks to

Yellow Fever and smallpox and just miserable working conditions. So, most of these plantations

were pretty large, they often had more than 200 slaves, and many of the field workers—

in some cases, a majority— were women.

Colonial society in Saint-Domingue was divided into four groups, which had important consequences

for the revolution. At the top, were the Big White planters who owned the plantations and

all the slaves. Often these Grand Blancs were absentee landlords who would just rather stay

in France and let their agents do, you know, the actual brutality.

Below them were the wealthy free people of color. Most of the Frenchmen who came to the

island were, you know, men, and they frequently fathered children with slave women. These