/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>2668326
It was one of the liberal revolutions of the 19th century, yes.

>>2668333
>It was one of the liberal revolutions of the 19th century, yes.
It was the most based of all the liberal revolutions, an anti-colonial revolution, the world's only successful slave rebellion, and an early precursor to the national liberation wars of the 20th century. For this they were brutally punished by the imperialists for over a century, deliberately sabotaged, and slandered as subhuman due to the results of that sabotage.

>>2668326
>as a result of winning your freedom you are forced to pay France reparations for "lost property" for over a century, with huge amounts of interest payments as well
Why didn't they refuse?

>>2668528
Because they couldn't win a 2nd war with France. The initial victory proved Haiti could win once, not that it could afford to fight forever against the world’s powers. In 1804 Haiti beat Napoleon’s army during a moment when France was distracted, weakened by disease, and fighting wars all over Europe. By 1825, Haiti was militarily weaker, internally divided, economically desperate, and alone, while France had a restored monarchy, a navy, and international backing: Britain wouldn’t back Haiti against France, Spain & Portugal were slaveholding empires, hostile to a successful free black republic, and The USA, also a slaveholding empire, refused to recognize Haiti until 1862 and supported its isolation, especially after Dessalines killed most of the French whites. Haiti was isolated, threatened, and broke. In 1825 France sent warships and said "pay a huge indemnity or we invade and re-enslave you." Haiti’s leaders feared renewed war, trade embargoes, and total collapse, so they agreed. So Haiti paid under coercion, not consent, and the debt crippled the country for over a century.

>>2668528
>>2668551
More importantly, France immediately blockaded Haiti's harbor until they agreed to pay and promised they'd return and bombard the shoreline if they skipped out on the agreement.

>>2668326
>is there any country more continually and ruthlessly oppressed than Haiti?
I genuinely don't know… Maybe the Congo but that started later.

>>2668326
they were so fvcking based

As more than likely the only member of the Haitian diaspora on this site I'm of course bound by international law to chime in.

>>2668326
While I appreciate the sentiment of this post, there are a few things that are incorrect or misleading here:
>win your freedom with the only successful slave revolt in history
I don't blame you for saying this since it's a very common framing of our revolution, but this is untrue. Haiti is the only slave revolt to successfully battle for and seize state power. It is not the only successful slave revolt, even in modern history. There are other revolts by enslaved Africans and Africans being sent into enslavement which succeeded in their aims, such as the Little George revolt where Africans successfully overpowered their captors and sailed their ship back to Africa. On a darker level, there is no shortage of instances where Africans successfully committed mass suicide rather than be held as commodities, raped, and worked to death (Dunbar Creek is probably the most well-known). These may not be as historically significant or glorious as the Haitian Revolution, but success in terms of a revolt is whether or not it accomplished its aims. Not many slave revolts sought state power in the first place, and we should not consider the consistent rebellion of trafficked Africans a "failure" just because the majority of historic instances didn't seek a goal we prioritize.
>carry out the only liberal republican revolution that isn't 100% hypocritical on the race/slavery question
Boiling Haiti down to a "liberal republican revolution" isn't really accurate, and hugely flattens the class dynamics at play from 1791 to 1804 by forcing a Eurocentric framework on it. In particular, the armed spearhead of the revolutionary forces were principally former field slaves and Maroons who were neither liberal nor republicans. This was a major point of friction during and immediately after the revolution between the "frenchified" upper class of mulattoes (who did have some infatuation with liberalism) and the predominately African freedmen who operated more as a peasantry (and actively resisted proletarianization). I can't really do justice to this subject while keeping this post to a reasonable length, but I think a better framing of this would be that the Haitian revolution was the first revolution to peek beyond the veil of European liberal republicanism and attempt to move past it. In short: the first modern anti-colonial revolution.
>as a result of winning your freedom you are forced to pay France reparations for "lost property" for over a century, with huge amounts of interest payments as well
>this ends up being a huge percentage of your annual GDP
>you have no industry because you're a sugar colony
This is an incorrect framing of why the indemnity payments were so ruinous for Haiti. Haiti's problem was never that it wasn't industrialized. The Saint Domingue colony by itself produced 2/3rds of France's overall exports at its peak, and its productive capacity was being rebuilt before the revolution was even complete (this was a high priority for Toussaint). As a colony Saint Domingue was called the "Jewel of the Antilles". Being a sugar colony was actually extremely lucrative and the indemnity likely wouldn't have been such a huge deal if that was all that happened. The issue was that Haitian sugar was actively boycotted by all of Europe and the US for the majority of the 19th century, and Haiti faced a Cuba-style blockade by the US and France on top of that for much of that time. So for decades Haiti faced economic crisis as they were unable to utilize their biggest economic strength and couldn't carry out effective trade of any other resources either. The indemnity payments being forced on Haiti, and the blockade being lifted on the condition that Haiti sell to France at below market rate was just the final knife that ensured that Haiti would not be able to develop even along capitalist lines.
>only half the island is yours, the other half being the modern day Dominican republic, who look down on you for being black
The entire island was Haiti, actually. The Eastern half was the last holdout of colonialism and where Black power was weakest, but contrary to the claims of Dominikkkans the whole island was effectively Haiti until 1844, when the last remaining whites and landlords (in league with US capital) took advantage of a political crisis in Port-au-Prince and raised a mercenary army to secede and join the United States (following the example of Texas). The Dominican Republic only exists as an "independent" country (neo-colony) today because even US colonialism (and later imperialism) couldn't stomach openly annexing them. In short, the Dominicans represent something far worse than "looking down" on Haiti: the Dominican Republic was and is a nation of settlers and sellouts in service to Euro-American imperialism and its racist social hierarchy.
>the US backs up France in these reparations payments. they fear the example you set through your successful slave rebellion , even though you indirectly got them territory by bleeding the french dry and forcing them to retreat from the western hemisphere.
>despite decades of these indemnity payments made to France, in 1915 the Americans invade and seize your gold reserves and occupy your country for 19 years in a totally forgotten war of aggression
>they reinstate forced labor while there, execute/torture rebels, and treat the locals like subhumans
>to this day the US continues to destabilize and coup your country repeatedly, and arms and trains the most reactionary and bloodthirsty gangsters in your country to keep it from prospering
What, should the US have been grateful? Haiti as both a Black and anti-colonial revolution represented an existential threat to the United States. Whether or not the Haitian revolution created this or that opportunity for the US was irrelevant when the US bourgeoisie and southern semifeudal aristocracy were faced with the possibility of a Black revolution in the South declaring its independence. Slave codes banning literacy among other things were the legal attempts to curtail the development of an educated and ideologically unified independence movement in the South, with all news of the Haitian Revolution suppressed. Part of why secessionism became such a social movement among Southern whites was the fear that the coming abolition of enslavement was, like in Saint Domingue, would progress into a widespread revolt and takeover by Blacks and another independent Black state. Keep in mind too that many of these southern whites were from families which had fled Saint Domingue. Likewise, there was a significant section of Northern whites who saw the abolition of enslavement as a necessary step to ensure that didn't happen. So significant parts of both abolitionism and secessionism held a fundamentally anti-Haitian, anti-Black orientation. With that in mind, the US' orientation towards Haiti from 1804 to today is completely unsurprising.

>>2668333
Anyone who says this knows nothing of the Haitian revolution and is just straight-up racist 99% of the time.

>>2668551
This is correct in the main, but one aspect of this
>Haiti beat Napoleon’s army during a moment when France was distracted, weakened by disease, and fighting wars all over Europe.
is a bourgeois, white supremacist, and very French explanation of how the revolution was won. France was waging successful military campaigns across the board at this time, despite disease and being spread across multiple fronts, why was Saint Domingue different? Far from being distracted, Napoleon had sent the largest fleet in French naval history up to that point to re-impose slavery in Saint Domingue. Over 60,000 soldiers and one of his best officers were sent to retake the island, but none of that mattered when faced with over 500,000 angry Black men and women who would rather die than be enslaved again. Remember, it's the people who make history, not happenstance, disease, or great men.

Those reparations paid to France were only completed in the 1940s

>>2668600
You think that's bad? Interest payments to the US govt. and Citibank on loans taken out to pay the indemnity (can we please stop calling it "reparations"?) were completed in 2014. Almost exactly 99 years after the US invaded Haiti and gave Citibank ownership of Haiti's national bank and treasury after the Haitian government defaulted on earlier loans.

>>2668590
How big of an impact do you think the desire to be a free peasant rather than a sugar producing prole (even with some government guarantees on conditions) had on both the project of rebuilding the sugar industry and mass support for another fight with France?

>>2668614
In relation to the sugar industry I wouldn't say it seriously prevented it from being rebuilt. Again, the main issue was that the sugar produced couldn't be sold to anyone. Where peasant resistance became problematic was that the freedmen and Maroons were the mass base of the freedom movement led by Toussaint L'Ouverture that had successfully abolished slavery. Toussaint keeping certain "expert" whites in management positions and essentially forcing freed Blacks to continue working in the sugar plantations (rather than devoting themselves to subsistence farming) were incredibly unpopular among his base. This culminated in a large-scale rebellion lead by his favorite nephew Moïse. Moïse would be executed, which also alienated a good deal of Toussaint's other officers and protégés. They would later betray Toussaint and allow the French to kidnap and kill him.

Where all of these forces were completely unified, however, was in their opposition to enslavement and — when it became clear that French = enslavement — opposition to French rule. When Leclerc first tried to land in Saint Domingue in 1801, and General Rochambeau (the same one from the US revolution) fired on Haitian positions, Henri Christophe (one of Toussaint's protégés who would later become King of Haiti) declared: "you will only enter Le Cap after having watched it reduced to ashes. And even upon these ashes, I will fight you." While the French absolutely could have reduced Haiti's capital and economic centers to rubble when they returned, even with Haiti in economic crisis they would not have been able to retake their lost colony without outright exterminating the entire population. Just a year after landing, in 1802, Leclerc makes this exact observation in a letter to Napoleon and recommends such a measure. The Black soldiers he brought with him defected to the revolution en masse to such a degree that he executed the remaining Black soldiers in his army (over 1000 men). I would argue there has not been a more unified mass revolutionary movement before or since this event.

Haiti proved the humanity of the black 'race' through blood and iron

Never forget the role its played in defeating Spanish colonialism and abolishing slavery in the Americas

>>2668590
>Anyone who says this knows nothing of the Haitian revolution and is just straight-up racist 99% of the time.
So you're claiming it was socialist? Calling it liberal doesn't mean it was bad.

>>2668333
>>2668735
It seems you're going for a backhanded insult but the Haitian revolution wasn't only a liberal revolution, it was a slave revolt, national liberation and the third successful republican revolution in modern history, when most of europe was smelly aristocratic shitholes, it is on par with the French revolution in terms of its historically progressive character.

uyghurs larping as french revolutionaries is cultural appropriation
prove me wrong

It is also a 18th century liberal revolution, illiterate retard.

time's running out, they gotta find a way go fix that shithole

>as a result of winning your freedom you are forced to pay France reparations for "lost property" for over a century, with huge amounts of interest payments as well
Do you not see the problem with your libtard understanding?
<we beat Napoleon's ass, got our 'freedom', but we are 'forced' to pay what France demands

>>2668913
Yes deliberate knee-capping of your economy in exchange for recognition is being forced.

>>2668701
>Never forget the role its played in defeating Spanish colonialism and abolishing slavery in the Americas
Yeah Simon Bolivar's 4th or 5th political exile brought him to Haiti where he secured guns and ships from President Alexander Petion on the condition that he become abolitionist, rather than merely in favor of Spanish independence and Criollo supremacy.

>>2668755
who are you responding to

>>2668753
>uyghurs larping as french revolutionaries is cultural appropriation
The French and Haitian revolutions took place at almost the exact same time.

>>2668913
Are you trying to troll or something. OP explicitly acknowledges it is a liberal revolution, complete with the theoretical and practical limitations of such revolutions.

>>2668989
Bolivar was also inspired by Haiti to abolish slavery in Latin America.
>>2668991
The first reply

BBC won

What does "frenchified" mean and why is it important? A black man is still a black man

>>2669027
People who say shit like this think liberalism is le western ideology rather than the ideology historically necessitated by the development of the bourgeoisie in spite and in opposition to the prevailing ideas and culture of the geographic region it happened to originate from.

People who adopt this monolithic classless idealist analysis are either 1. right wing chauvinists (muh western civilization) 2. left wing opportunists like our Maoist friend ITT

>>2669018
>When colonists asserted that abolishing racial hierarchies would ruin France’s colonial system and destroy its economy, Robespierre retorted, “Let the colonies perish” if keeping these restrictions would deprive people of “happiness, glory and freedom.”
Everyday I miss those funky french femboys.

The CIA and the Duvaliers are why I will never taste the flesh of a creole pig, I will never forgive them for this.

>>2668735
>So you're claiming it was socialist?
Of course not. Write a letter of apology to your ISP for wasting bandwidth on this post.

What are the current conditions in Haiti? Last time I remember the country being in the news it was because Colombians claiming to work for the DEA killed the neoliberal, neocolonial president and civil war broke out in the capital, life in the countryside sort of just went on as usual as central government broke down. Are the junta leaders even in the country right now?

>>2668590
thanks very informative post

>>2669046
What is mahdi amel talking about?

>>2669096
Islam fetishist nationalists cosplaying as socialists

>>2669027
It means they were educated in France and socially existed as "French", though they were still second-class citizens. This is distinct from the majority of Black people in Saint Domingue who were born in Africa, kidnapped, and shipped to the colony. Keep in mind the distinct qualities of enslavement in the sugar colonies of the Americas at this time, that being its brutality. The average life expectancy of an enslaved African upon landing was 2 years, so only a small minority of enslaved and free Black people were actually born in Saint Domingue.

That Caribbean-born minority of enslaved (alongside the Afro-Indigenous Maroons) would historically constitute the nucleus of what would become the Haitian nation. I framed the issue of liberalism the way I did because outside of Toussaint L'Ouverture himself, this nucleus didn't concern itself with liberalism-qua-liberalism or care much for it. It was not an ideology interested in liberating them, and so even Toussaint mainly saw fit to take what was useful and leave the rest. On the flip side, the Frenchified mulattoes have consistently displayed a petty bourgeois vacillating nature between supporting the revolution and acting as a comprador class. Many of this group would be very directly and openly liberal, though to be clear their vacillating nature wasn't simply due to liberalism (though oftentimes ideologically expressed in those terms) but due to their class position in relation to French colonialism and later imperialism. As second class citizens they were united with Toussaint, but once promised full citizenship or economic partnership that unity fractured and they split the country in half on several occasions. Liberalism in this way both influenced and severely damaged the Haitian revolution.

>>2669046
>the ideology historically necessitated by the development of the bourgeoisie in spite and in opposition to the prevailing ideas and culture of the geographic region it happened to originate from.
Really funny how you chauvinist "materialists" say this as some gotcha when it really just shows how disconnected you are from a concrete analysis of history. This definition is a fine start, to be clear, but how did this development actually happen in human history? Did capitalism develop evenly around the world simultaneously, with liberalism independently evolving multiple times among rival national bourgeoisies? Or did it have a primary evolutionary event where liberalism-qua-liberalism (liberalism as liberalism) developed as the ideology of the bourgeoisies of a particular part of the world, which was then imposed on the rest of the world through colonialism and imperialism (uneven development)? We know from Marx and Lenin that the latter is the case, and in this way liberalism is a European ideology. However, it would be wrong to leave it at that, and as Mao points out all things divide into two. After the revolution the Haitian bourgeoisie did not develop a fundamentally new and independent liberalism because the liberalism they already had (with some tweaks to particularities) sufficed to express the universal interests of the Haitian bourgeois classes. Some have tried to do this, such as Kwame Nkrumah's "Conscientism", but these ideologies generally end up either eclectic and nonsensical or convergently evolving into bog-standard liberalism. In this way, we can understand liberalism as "the ideology historically necessitated by the development of the bourgeoisie".

That dual nature of liberalism was something Said had a great grasp on, and is something your chauvinism and eurocentrism blinds you to. That Said isn't even quoted in your image is telling as to the honesty of your critique.

>>2669183
You're missing the point. You think I'm arguing that colonialism wasn't responsible for spreading liberalism and it just developed naturally across the world, I never even hinted at that. What I'm arguing for is that some part of Europe became the bedrock of liberalism by circumstance, namely the development of the bourgeoisie as a class due to concrete material factors, it's not a byproduct of 'western' culture, liberalism in fact superseded the then reactionary cultures of Europe by the sword.

Hence the culture European colonialists exported to the rest of the world had a class character, an international class character that supplanted every other culture including European one.

This perfectly fits the Marxist view of national culture as a part of an ever-changing superstructure, rather than the old orientalist (idealist) ontological conception.

>>2669183
Also I read Said and value his intellectual and scientific contributions like I value that of Darwin's. It doesn't mean his worldview is correct.

I doubt you read him since from the very preface he alludes to the rejection of Marx which he later does, in small part by misinterpreting/misrepresenting his work, he was the one to denounce Arab Marxists as idealists and a byproduct of 'western' culture. Mahdi Amel and other Marxists from the region then dismantled his own idealism he was accusing others of.

>>2669292
*in no small part

flood

>>2668590
good constructive criticism of OP; thank you MaoAnon

>>2668590
> France was waging successful military campaigns across the board at this time, despite disease and being spread across multiple fronts, why was Saint Domingue different?
tbf Frenchies dropped dead from Yellow Fever in Haiti in ways they just didn't in their European wars. Europeans dropping dead in the tropics was well known. It's not a racist explanation either, it's just an acknowledgement that their immune systems weren't used to the region. Same with indigenous Americans dropping dead from Smallpox after 1492.

>>2668590
>it's the people who make history, not happenstance, disease, or great men.
even in the most motivated and well organized military campaigns, disease can cause unexpected losses. In fact most military deaths before the 20th century were from camp diseases, starvation, thirst, dropping dead on long marches, etc. rather than on the battlefield. Modern warfare with vaccines and motorized tranportation of troops is the first era of history where this is not the case.

>>2669320
French also dropped dead in Algeria due to fever or somth idk

but why did haiti pay back their "debts" to begin with? thats where things appear to start to go wrong.

>>2669350
Because they were threatened with invasion if they didn't and no other country was willing to back them up and they still had a hostile Dominican republic to deal with so it was either pay the unjust debts or get fucked over even harder by France.

>>2669350
Read the thread mang

>>2669269
>it's not a byproduct of 'western' culture
Ok. When did I claim this? Your responses make it seem like you wanted to argue with positions I don't have, or take a stand against people who aren't present. Please don't waste my and everyone else's time.

>>2669320
>>2669325
Yellow fever was certainly a problem for the French, where I take issue with how that's discussed is the common framing of this as a decisive factor in the Haitians emerging victorious. This framing implicitly downplays the unified might and tactical successes of the Haitian people. It's no better than when liberals claim the Vietnam war was ended by the anti-war protests in the US and fragging by drafted troops. Sure, those things (mainly the fragging) were problematic to the US, but what was decisive was the Vietnamese people themselves waging successful People's War. Next to that, the US left's role was miniscule.
>In fact most military deaths before the 20th century were from camp diseases, starvation, thirst, dropping dead on long marches, etc. rather than on the battlefield.
True! So do you think the French forces, who had been occupying Saint Domingue for over a century at that point, and who were being led by officers who had already fought wars in the Americas (Rochambeau), didn't expect to see losses from an extremely well-known disease in that region? Were they stupid? No they weren't, at least not in that way. They expected and prepared for it, and still lost massively. Where they miscalculated was in thinking that the people they enslaved were incompetent tacticians and easy to mislead, and so at the end of it all the racists faced an even worse defeat than at the Battle of Waterloo.

>>2669451
So they weren't 'Frenchfied', they were bourgeois, as bourgeois culture is international rather than western.

>>2669505
>So they weren't 'Frenchfied', they were bourgeois
No, they were Frenchified, in that they lived significant parts of their lives in France, were actively trying to assimilate into the French nation, and different sections of this grouping revered the cultural practices of the established French feudal aristocracy or developing French bourgeoisie. This attempt at assimilation (not integration, assimilation) continued until it became clear that they could only survive by separating themselves from French colonialism. Remember that the French revolution wouldn't happen until the very late 1780s, while the Mulattoes had been growing roots in France for decades before that. They cannot be characterized as uniformly bourgeois and instead reflected the struggle taking place within the colonizer nation between feudalism and capitalism.
>bourgeois culture is international rather than western.
This is idealism. There is no singular international bourgeois culture they could have adopted any more than there is a singular international proletarian culture, especially in the late 18th century. Then and now there are proletarian and bourgeois expressions of each national culture, a product of each nation containing a full class stratum with a shared economic life. In a world where capitalism independently developed in multiple places at once we could then leave it at that. But like I said earlier, it's all well and good to argue that liberalism and capitalism developed in the west by circumstance, rather than being intrinsically western, that doesn't change the fact that it developed there and was imposed from there. Western European colonialism and imperialism obliterated societies which did not have capitalism and reshaped them as nations to suit their interests. In that process the new national bourgeois/aristocratic classes produced are made in the image of the ruling classes of the particular colonizer nation and are most acutely influenced by their theories and practices, even after nominal independence.

>>2669806
non sequitur: the post

>>2669505
>bourgeois culture is international rather than western.
Wrong. Capitalism is a european system superimposed upon the masses. Bourgeois production and culture cannot exist in the third-world without imperialism. Without imperialism, bourgeois culture and relation crumble quickly in Third-World.

>>2669895
China and Russia exists so.

Though you could argue they're being imperialized as much as they're imperialists because they allow foreign capital to rape their workers.

>>2669895
>Bourgeois production and culture cannot exist in the third-world without imperialism.
<"Bourgeois production"
<"culture"
Not even trying

>>2669912
You are totally wrong. In Communist China, capitalism is abolished and workers exploit foreign capital. Guided by Putin's wisdom, russian workers are at war with monopolist capital, expropriating monopolists and boosting wages hugely for Russian workers.

>>2669930

i did, i wasn't really shocked as i am worried i might be a little bit racist.

>>2669891
Part of why I dread every time the Haitian revolution is brought up on this site is because y'all can't help but immediately get into a contest as to who is the most racist. I applaud that you're at least more honest than everyone else here…

>>2669982
If it's any conciliation I was the one arguing w you about le bourgeois culture and I find Haiti awe inspiring. It's no exaggeration an ever lasting vindication of materialism over ontology. The Haitian revolution demolished centuries of race mythology through its righteous violence. I have convinced numerous people to abandon their prejudices through it alone.

I'm a vehement internationalist, but inside me there is a Haitian nationalist.

Surely all this this outweighs a /pol/ chinlet rage baiting you.

You're still a liberal doe

>>2669994
>Inside me there is a Haitian
Take that BBC sister!

>>2670005
gutterbrain

>>2670005
Burger greased fingers typed this post

>>2670050
>>2670015
Hello /pol/

>>2670019
literally the reaction 99% of leftypol posts deserve at this point

So what does "frenchified" mean and why is it important?

>>2670210
Not sure. On an unrelated note did you know re-litigating old and settled arguments is a common Fed tactic?

>>2669994
>materialism over ontology
materialism is an ontology.

>>2670486
*epistemology

>>2668590
One of your better posts maoanon, good stuff

>>2670489
epistemology is the theory of knowledge, or of how we come to know (e.g. empiricism, rationalism). ontology is the theory of being, or of what things are (e.g. materialism, idealism).

>>2670496
Base-Superstructure is an epistemological formation

>>2668590
There is a movement in Dominica to reunite with Haiti afaik

inculturedco is one org of theirs

>>2671271
Of course 'Dominica' is a separate micro island sigh

I meant Dominican Republic

>>2670481
Good to know.

>>2668326
The french revolution also abolished slavery, you can't really call them hypocritical for that, Napoleon was the one who brought it back, and it was Charles X who made the whole dept situation.
And yes, the French Revolution was based, it changed everything and was one of humanity's greatest successes.

>>2668333
and what did Marx actually say about bourgeois revolutions like the Paris commune etc?

>>2671271
I think calling it a "movement" is being generous, at least as far as Dominican desire to reunify as Haiti. Most coversations in Dominican politics on this subject are around whether they should annex Haiti as part of the Dominican Republic (and in more openly fascist circles, purge the Black population to settle westward).

>>2671526
We can call them hypocrites for that, because that initial abolition had to be forced out of their pasty asses. The French couldn't fight off the Black and Maroon rebels and the British and Spanish. Slavery was abolished to entice the rebels to unite with the French military and fight off the Spanish and British. This worked, but the writing was immediately on the wall that slavery would likely be re-established as soon as the French felt that they could get away with it. Don't forget that these colonies and the laborers in them produced the vast majority of French exports and wealth. Regardless of Napoleon's personal leadership, France was 100% going to try to re-establish slavery in their colonies. This is why Leclerc's expedition was met with immediate and intense hostility upon arrival, despite Toussaint, Dessalines, Christophe, etc. still being pledged as officers in the French military. They weren't stupid and knew why they were there, and only briefly ceased fire when Leclerc lied and denied that he was re-establishing slavery.

>>2671536
The abolition of slavery wasn't forced tho, it was a very clearly established part of Robespierre's politial program, sure, it benefited France on the short term, but Robespierre had called for its abolishment for years, even before the Revolution, and obviously the ideals of the Revolution were very compatible with the abolition of slavery. And while the sugar trade was certanly lucrative, the colonial empire wasn't that important to the French economy after the 7 years war. Beyond that, the elites that profitted from the slave trade were generally opposed to Robespierre, and were strong supporters of Napoleon, Empress Josephine came from one of those families after all.

>>2671536
>purge the Black population
Dominicans are like one shade lighter if that lmao

Viewing the Haitian Revolution as organic is as naive as viewing the American Revolution as organic. I just think it’s weird that no one ever points out that it was Sonthonax and his 7000 troops who liberated the slaves in Haiti and who armed them. Slave revolts outside of freeing one or two plantations have never been a viable path to revolution. Every slave revolt has never attempted to change the system but ultimately to flee from the state as best they could. The view of the conflict as being carried out by blacks alone was something propagated by American slave owners to justify a tighter grip on slavery. Both White and Black nationalists benefit from this narrative. In reality it was the revolutionary French administration and French soldiers who were responsible.

>>2671614
I am Pakistani, what "cope" would I have, I'm just using pointing out that the usual western leftists being naive idealists

>>2671621
Sonthonax exploited an already present radical social force when he saw the writing on the wall. No different than other concessions offered to Haitians by France in order to prolong its rule.

Men make history as they engage with their definite material circumstances, not muh enlightened ideology

You're a retarded idealist

>>2671629
I’m well aware of the larger material factors at play, but a handful of men in the right place at the right time can change the world. There was no writing on the wall in Haiti, slave revolts don’t defeat armies or even local police/

>>2671629
Still, I think it's correct to view the Haiti revolution as an extension of the French Revolution.

>anti-liberal racial revolution
Haiti was fascist? Wow based based based

>>2671632
>slave revolts don’t defeat armies or even local police
When organized and politically unified they absolutely can. Enslaved Africans comprised the majority of the population, that they couldn't possibly defeat the French is just racist cope.

>>2671637
>I think it's correct to view the Haiti revolution as an extension of the French Revolution.
This is racist cope too.

>>2672005
How is it a racist cope ? it's straight up true, the Haitian revolutionnaries were inspired by the French Revolution and sought to recreated in Haiti, ironically in both cases they ended up the same way, with the proclamation of an Empire.

>>2672040
Except Dessalines was cool and Napoleon sucked

>>2672040
>the Haitian revolutionnaries were inspired by the French Revolution and sought to recreated in Haiti
Some of its leaders saw promise in it, but the point of the revolution was not to "recreate" it. Hell, the 1791 revolt took the side of the French monarchy! This framing stems from an overall racist mentality that the Haitians could not have had their own ideals and vision for society independent of the French. I have very little patience for it and authors with more principles than any of you (C. L. R. James, Étienne Charlier, etc.) have written whole books on it. There is no reason for anyone on the so-called "left" to be digging their heels in on this point except chauvinism and racism.

What about the Haitian revolution (1986)?

>>2672050
Also this. I will always fly the Black and red of Dessalines. Genuinely sucks that it was later associated with the Duvaliers.

Haitian Revolution was counter-revolutionary.

>>2672116
You mean the Dechoukaj. The writings of Haitians aligned with the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement on this have long been translated into English.

>>2672005
I’m looking at this conflict as detached as possible. Unorganized and untrained ex-slaves are not a fighting force. A population can be transformed into one, but that requires investment and centralized leadership. If a slave revolt is ever successful, the ex-slaves goal was always to flee, because they knew they would be killed if an actual army approached them. If you believe I’m racist against Haitians, then I’m racist against the European slaves of Rome. Again I ask you to read the military history of these conflicts, they are absolutely necessary

>>2672142
About four pages in there’s a really interesting paragraph detailing how when Haitian peasants were displaced by US aid and agricultural imports but this didn’t erupt right away because migration was used as a social pressure valve, somewhat similar to how the US used migration westward as a social valve for the fully capitalist eastern seaboard.

>>2670077
you're the one bringing up their racist gutterbrained obsessions

>>2671609
Mike Duncan talks at length about Sonthonax, but every time I bring up Mike Duncan on here I get yelled at because he's a liberal, as if that immediately invalidates everything he has to say.

>>2672142
Do these groups still exist and have they published anything since the 2021 crisis?

>>2672176
Zanji slave revolt established a state near the heartland of the largest empire on earth that held for 15 years

They were sophisticated and organized, just like Haiti's, and it was to the grave detriment of their enemies to have underestimated them.

You're moving the goalpost and talking in generalizations since you aren't really educated on Haiti and it shows.

>>2672210
It's impossible to really know. RIM is gone and the Haitian communist movement has been principally underground since before Duvalier. New Communist Party of Haiti (Marxist-Leninist) had a website that's technically still up, but they seem to have lost control of it and a lot of their articles have been replaced by scam gambling bullshit.

My bet is that these groups or successors to them do still exist in Haiti outside of Port-au-Prince. Historically communists have conducted their best work outside the capital. Port-au-Prince's extractive relationship with the rest of the country has historically colored what politics dominate there, and today the vestiges of the old neo-colonial state and the "gangs" (paramilitaries) dominate that niche.

>>2672287
That makes sense, everything I’ve heard about the civil war since the death of Moise (still incomprehensible to me) is basically limited to Port Au Prince and the rest of the country is more or less functioning as usual

>>2672111
It's true that Haiti had a revolutionnary movement that started before the French Revolution, so yes, in that view, saying that it's merely an extension is generally ignorant of historical reality.
But it's also obvious that the form the revolution took was inspired by the French one. For exemple the revolutionnaries argued in favor of equality between all men based on the Declaration of the right of Men and Citizen, that the national assembly has expicitly rejected for Black Haitians.
So, when they rebelled in 1791, the Haitians were not asking for independance, but an end to slavery. They supported Louis XVI, who they viewed a moderating force against the relatively harsher local governor. This believed this because Louis XVI has signed on and accepted many of the revolutionnary demands, including the creation of a constitutional monarchy, he was viewed at the time as a progressive monarch. (He was secrely conspiring to bring back absolutism, but Haitians didn't know this) This meant that they were backing the revolution, not the reaction. While when Louis XVI got his head chopped up, the white owners sided with the British against the Republic. Louverture did help the Spanish at the time tho, as he yet didn't trust the French.
But once the revolution in France radicalised further, with Robespierre and the Jacobins in charge, they abolished slavery and Louveture realigned himself with France and refused to proclaim the independance of Haiti, instead seeing himself as a french citizen. It's only in 1801, so at the start of Napoleon's consulate, that he declared independance.
Even then, he justified himself using the univerallist principles of the French revolution, and he obviously turned against it when it was going back against those ideals.
I don't get why you're quoting CLR James at me, his most famous book is called "The Black Jacobins" And if anything he criticises the race war representation of the conflict, and puts the revolution back in the context of the Atlantic and French revolutions. If anything, he argues that the Haitians better represented those ideals then the French did. Not that these ideals came from Haiti.

>>2672222
How am I moving the goalposts by pointing out the objective fact that if an organic slave revolt ever succeeds, the slaves first priority is to flee? That makes perfect sense from their perspective, you and I would do the exact same thing. The Zanj was a radically different conflict that arose during a period of extreme internal strife in the Abbasid caliphate. The revolt, like Hati was not started by the slaves themselves but by an outsider, in the Zanj's case, a popular religious preacher who took advantage of the anarchy. He and his followers attacked individual slave estates, freed the slaves, and presented themselves as religious liberators, gradually freeing most of the slaves from the marshes and forming an Army. The Zanj revolt was one of many crises the Abbasids were dealing with, including the loss of Egypt to the Tulunids and Kharijite and Shia uprisings. The caliphate was fighting on every front. Only when al-Muwaffaq stabilized the army and re-centralized authority in the 880s did the Abbasids finally crush the rebellion.

>>2672392
And you’re right, I haven’t read much about Haiti. My only frame of reference is this military history book, and I would argue that it’s more relevant than 99% of post-colonial literature.