507 - 524 Strayer: Haitian and Spanish/Portugese New World Revolutions

It’s amazing that the French colonists in Haiti only numbered 40,000 compared to 500,000 slaves. It’s a wonder that the slaves didn’t overthrow their French oppressors sooner than they did. Like in the U.S. there were also couleur libres (‘mixed race’) or what we once referred to as mulato. Strayer implies that the timing of the revolution in Haiti coincided with the events of the French Revolution. Perhaps the African slaves felt with all the chaos in France that the French couldn’t send reinforcements to put down the revolt. I knew the revolt happened. I just never made the connection of the Haitian revolution with the events of the French Revolution. The poorer whites weren’t very supportive of the richer white aristocracy in Haiti, who held most of the wealth and the slaves.  But, the richer whites and the poorer whites in Haiti didn’t believe in the freedom of the slaves in Haiti. I recall that the U.S. put trade and travel restrictions on Haiti because they saw the thousands of plantations destroyed and whites massacred in Haiti, and feared the Black Haitians might inspire similar revolts in the United States. The Haitian blacks redistributed what was left of the infrastructure and lands amongst themselves, but in the malee they had destroyed so much of the plantation system, it’s crops such as coffee, sugar etc., that there wasn’t much left for the freed slaves to use to bring themselves up out of poverty..

The Spanish revolutions began in earnest between 1810 – 1825 mostly because there was a lack of fair and equitable land redistribution and inheritance rights amongst the creoles, the Spanish citizens born from  peninsulares heritage. The peninsulares tended to always get the best land rights, always going to them first in legal matters of inheritance. Unfortunately the Spanish inhabitants had little in the way of experience in that of self-government to create democratic institutions. The Creoles didn’t at first strongly desire revolutionary movements. The revolutions were events taken advantage of by Napoleon invading Spain and Portugal in 1808. The Portugese and Spanish monarchies either chose to be collaborators, in the case of the Portugese, they moved their royal court to Brazilia for a time. A lot of the revolutionary zeal amongst the Spanish colonies tended to relate to hunger for more land and high food prices. In other revolutions in history land and food prices often play a strong role in these movements. The Haitian and French Revolutions made the Spanish elites and Portugese elites more wary of it getting out of hand, so they didn’t support the revolutionary movements as emphatically as the poorer classes.