9 ms·

It’s described in that quote and in the article as if the Haitians defeated the French on their own. The Haitian revolution was essentially part of a fight betw

by wyager 5y ago

It’s described in that quote and in the article as if the Haitians defeated the French on their own. The Haitian revolution was essentially part of a fight between the French and the British, and internecine conflict between various French factions. 45,000 British soldiers died vs 75,000 french soldiers, so presumably the British involvement was also as significant as the French one. Also, of the first leader of “liberated” Haiti, Dessalines: “Dessalines marched into Port-au-Prince, where he was welcomed as a hero by the 100 whites who had chosen to stay behind. Dessalines thanked them all for their kindness and belief in racial equality, but then he said that the French had treated him as less than human when he was a slave, and so to avenge his mistreatment, he promptly had the 100 whites all hanged.” Off to a great start…

mytailorisrich 5y ago
All the white population was massacred, actually [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haiti_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haiti_massacre Edit: Thank you for being so mature and for going through my comment history to downvote all the comments you can. Way to go, really. Probably why the previous thread was flagged...
- runako 5y ago
  That's not what the article you linked says, actually: "A contingent of Polish defectors were given amnesty and granted Haitian citizenship for their renouncement of French allegiance and support of Haitian independence." Update: I generally agree with your revised point, but for the sake of history I believe it's important not to needlessly exaggerate historical events. Let the events themselves stand on their own. My country has an ongoing problem with propagating accurate history, so I am aware of the need to get things correct.
  - mytailorisrich 5y ago
    I'm not here to nitpick or defend genocide. A few white people might not have been killed, and some foreign troops, like those defectors, spared. Read the whole page where you found this quote to single out. Considering how the slaves had been treated it is perhaps understandable that the backlash was brutal, but that was a genocide nonetheless, with the white population massacred, not just a few people in an unique event. I certainly don't think that I have exaggerated anything.
    - ant6n 5y ago
      You literally wrote "All the white population was massacred" 10 minutes before this second message.
    - Spooky23 5y ago
      That type of behavior is a consequence of war. It happens, and the victors define who is worthy of punishment or praise. Using World War 2 as an example, the Army Air Forces immolated Japanese cities with white phosphorus and napalm before the atomic bomb was available. In Tokyo alone, hundreds of thousands of people were reduced to ash, and the glow of the firestorm was visible from hundreds of miles away. Those actions, followed by the atomic bombing, are marginally controversial today but largely accepted as “ok”. Because the allies won, those actions are rationalized, and those rationalizations have merit. Had Japan won, events like the rape of Nanking would have been rationalized by their standards, and actions of the US Army Air Forces would have been viewed very differently. With respect to Haiti, the colonialist mindset focuses on the individual tragedy of slaughtered Europeans living their life in the colony. But from the perspective of the rebel slaves, those individuals were complicit in systematic barbarous conditions in the cane fields that killed thousands of slaves horribly, every month for a century or more. The wife of the banker who financed or leased slaves is the same as the overseer. Those rebels won the battle, but ultimately did not win the war nor write the history.
      - soperj 5y ago
        No one really accepts them as ok except the country that did them.
      - mytailorisrich 5y ago
        Acts of war, like military bombings during a conflict, are obviously not on the same level as genocide. There's a very crucial difference and I invite readers to look up what 'genocide' means. This is an off-topic diversion in this discussion, though. I think it's important to call things out and to see history for the complex mess it is instead of trying to divide everything and everyone between heroes beyond reproach and unredeemable villains. Yes, the black slaves were treated barbarously, and yes they committed genocide against the white population after they gained their freedom. That's what happened. We can look for explanations but I think we should avoid trying to look for excuses because once we start to label some genocides less wrong than others, or even acceptable to the point of defending them then we've crossed a major red line. Shockingly it looks like that red line has been crossed in this thread.
  - alexgmcm 5y ago
    Also from the article: >Philippe Girard writes "when the genocide was over, Haiti's white population was virtually non-existent." That seems pretty in-line with what OP stated, I'm not familiar enough to know if Philippe Girard is a reliable source but the reference seems legitimate.[1] [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00313220500106196 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0031322050010619...
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      "Non-existent" encompasses both "killed" and "left the country as refugees".
      - rory 5y ago
        Well sure, but they left to escape being murdered. Their main beef was with specifically French white people though. They spared a group of Poles and worked with many white German and USA American traders in the following years.
- brightball 5y ago
  That is a fascinating read. The aftermath section especially.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
andremendes 5y ago
Not saying assassination by revenge was correct but one could argue that an even greater start would be the avoidance of transatlantic slave trade.
- wyager 5y ago
  Haitians also continued using slavery - ah, excuse me, forced labor according to academic sources - after their revolution. They don’t really have the moral high-ground there either.
  - ChainOfFools 5y ago
    wouldn't mind a citation of those academic sources which use this term in this context.
    - wyager 5y ago
      https://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/exhibitions/haitian/pages/part7.html https://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/e... “The revolution ended slavery in Saint-Domingue but not forced labor. Louverture and several of the early governments of independent Haiti used the army to impose forced work on the plantations”
      - ChainOfFools 5y ago
        Thanks, the citation I was hoping for would be a published, peer reviewed paper with listed authors rather than a summary from what looks to be a departmental public outreach project, the grunt work of which are typically farmed out to grad students or RAs. nonetheless I'm disappointed; the assertion looked so juicy and worthy of a deep dive. you made it sound like "academia" was conspiring to demote slavery to forced labor under specific conditions. yet no evidence of this is to be found in the linked text. rather, the summary makes a point of distinguishing slavery from forced labor. granted, it doesn't define either term (as a proper paper would) but it doesn't pretend they are interchangeable either.
  - 5y ago
wesleywt 5y ago
I wonder who is the 'source' of this 'information'. Could it be a European?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
sangnoir 5y ago
"It’s described in that quote and in the article as if the Americans defeated the British on their own. The American revolution was essentially part of a fight between the French and the British..." How does that sound to you?
- soperj 5y ago
  As a non-american, sounds accurate to me.
- dahfizz 5y ago
  That sounds correct. That's what I was taught in school as an American. What is your point?
  - sangnoir 5y ago
    The second sentence is incorrect, according to the American founding myth. It was a fight between the revolutionaries and the British, with assistance of the French. It turns out, when it comes to the founding of countries, the parties you give agency to matters a lot
    - wutbrodo 5y ago
      What a bizarre comment. Someone describes Haiti's revolution accurately (presumably), and your claim is "how dare you prioritize reality over mythology", using the (also-incorrect) American founding myth to somehow support your point?
      - solipsism 5y ago
        What's incorrect about the American "founding myth"? Please explain what role France played in the disagreement about taxes between the colonists and the crown?
        wutbrodo 5y ago
        Mentally insert "under the assumption that these are myths", if that makes you feel better. I have no interest in getting derailed into an essentially irrelevant conversation.
BoiledCabbage 5y ago
And 200,000 Hatians. Kinda odd you left that part out...
dang 5y ago
Please don't take HN threads into race flamewar hell or any other flamewar hell. With this glib and snarky provocation of atrocity grievance, you turned what was already a wretched subthread into a tire fire. I assume you didn't intend that, but if it wasn't arson it was criminal negligence. We want the exact opposite of this on HN. You also have a history of posting flamebait to HN. Please review the site guidelines and take a lot more care with this place. The ecosystem here is fragile. I'm sure you wouldn't drop lit matches in a dry forest or at a gas station, or toss Molotov cocktails into crowds at parks. So please don't do the equivalent here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

by wyager 5y ago

mytailorisrich 5y ago

All the white population was massacred, actually [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haiti_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haiti_massacre Edit: Thank you for being so mature and for going through my comment history to downvote all the comments you can. Way to go, really. Probably why the previous thread was flagged...

runako 5y ago
That's not what the article you linked says, actually: "A contingent of Polish defectors were given amnesty and granted Haitian citizenship for their renouncement of French allegiance and support of Haitian independence." Update: I generally agree with your revised point, but for the sake of history I believe it's important not to needlessly exaggerate historical events. Let the events themselves stand on their own. My country has an ongoing problem with propagating accurate history, so I am aware of the need to get things correct.
- mytailorisrich 5y ago
  I'm not here to nitpick or defend genocide. A few white people might not have been killed, and some foreign troops, like those defectors, spared. Read the whole page where you found this quote to single out. Considering how the slaves had been treated it is perhaps understandable that the backlash was brutal, but that was a genocide nonetheless, with the white population massacred, not just a few people in an unique event. I certainly don't think that I have exaggerated anything.
  - ant6n 5y ago
    You literally wrote "All the white population was massacred" 10 minutes before this second message.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    That type of behavior is a consequence of war. It happens, and the victors define who is worthy of punishment or praise. Using World War 2 as an example, the Army Air Forces immolated Japanese cities with white phosphorus and napalm before the atomic bomb was available. In Tokyo alone, hundreds of thousands of people were reduced to ash, and the glow of the firestorm was visible from hundreds of miles away. Those actions, followed by the atomic bombing, are marginally controversial today but largely accepted as “ok”. Because the allies won, those actions are rationalized, and those rationalizations have merit. Had Japan won, events like the rape of Nanking would have been rationalized by their standards, and actions of the US Army Air Forces would have been viewed very differently. With respect to Haiti, the colonialist mindset focuses on the individual tragedy of slaughtered Europeans living their life in the colony. But from the perspective of the rebel slaves, those individuals were complicit in systematic barbarous conditions in the cane fields that killed thousands of slaves horribly, every month for a century or more. The wife of the banker who financed or leased slaves is the same as the overseer. Those rebels won the battle, but ultimately did not win the war nor write the history.
    - soperj 5y ago
      No one really accepts them as ok except the country that did them.
    - mytailorisrich 5y ago
      Acts of war, like military bombings during a conflict, are obviously not on the same level as genocide. There's a very crucial difference and I invite readers to look up what 'genocide' means. This is an off-topic diversion in this discussion, though. I think it's important to call things out and to see history for the complex mess it is instead of trying to divide everything and everyone between heroes beyond reproach and unredeemable villains. Yes, the black slaves were treated barbarously, and yes they committed genocide against the white population after they gained their freedom. That's what happened. We can look for explanations but I think we should avoid trying to look for excuses because once we start to label some genocides less wrong than others, or even acceptable to the point of defending them then we've crossed a major red line. Shockingly it looks like that red line has been crossed in this thread.
- alexgmcm 5y ago
  Also from the article: >Philippe Girard writes "when the genocide was over, Haiti's white population was virtually non-existent." That seems pretty in-line with what OP stated, I'm not familiar enough to know if Philippe Girard is a reliable source but the reference seems legitimate.[1] [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00313220500106196 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0031322050010619...
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    "Non-existent" encompasses both "killed" and "left the country as refugees".
    - rory 5y ago
      Well sure, but they left to escape being murdered. Their main beef was with specifically French white people though. They spared a group of Poles and worked with many white German and USA American traders in the following years.
brightball 5y ago
That is a fascinating read. The aftermath section especially.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

andremendes 5y ago

Not saying assassination by revenge was correct but one could argue that an even greater start would be the avoidance of transatlantic slave trade.

wyager 5y ago
Haitians also continued using slavery - ah, excuse me, forced labor according to academic sources - after their revolution. They don’t really have the moral high-ground there either.
- ChainOfFools 5y ago
  wouldn't mind a citation of those academic sources which use this term in this context.
  - wyager 5y ago
    https://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/exhibitions/haitian/pages/part7.html https://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/e... “The revolution ended slavery in Saint-Domingue but not forced labor. Louverture and several of the early governments of independent Haiti used the army to impose forced work on the plantations”
    - ChainOfFools 5y ago
      Thanks, the citation I was hoping for would be a published, peer reviewed paper with listed authors rather than a summary from what looks to be a departmental public outreach project, the grunt work of which are typically farmed out to grad students or RAs. nonetheless I'm disappointed; the assertion looked so juicy and worthy of a deep dive. you made it sound like "academia" was conspiring to demote slavery to forced labor under specific conditions. yet no evidence of this is to be found in the linked text. rather, the summary makes a point of distinguishing slavery from forced labor. granted, it doesn't define either term (as a proper paper would) but it doesn't pretend they are interchangeable either.
- 5y ago

wesleywt 5y ago

I wonder who is the 'source' of this 'information'. Could it be a European?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

sangnoir 5y ago

"It’s described in that quote and in the article as if the Americans defeated the British on their own. The American revolution was essentially part of a fight between the French and the British..." How does that sound to you?

soperj 5y ago
As a non-american, sounds accurate to me.
dahfizz 5y ago
That sounds correct. That's what I was taught in school as an American. What is your point?
- sangnoir 5y ago
  The second sentence is incorrect, according to the American founding myth. It was a fight between the revolutionaries and the British, with assistance of the French. It turns out, when it comes to the founding of countries, the parties you give agency to matters a lot
  - wutbrodo 5y ago
    What a bizarre comment. Someone describes Haiti's revolution accurately (presumably), and your claim is "how dare you prioritize reality over mythology", using the (also-incorrect) American founding myth to somehow support your point?
    - solipsism 5y ago
      What's incorrect about the American "founding myth"? Please explain what role France played in the disagreement about taxes between the colonists and the crown?
      - wutbrodo 5y ago
        Mentally insert "under the assumption that these are myths", if that makes you feel better. I have no interest in getting derailed into an essentially irrelevant conversation.

BoiledCabbage 5y ago

And 200,000 Hatians. Kinda odd you left that part out...

dang 5y ago

Please don't take HN threads into race flamewar hell or any other flamewar hell. With this glib and snarky provocation of atrocity grievance, you turned what was already a wretched subthread into a tire fire. I assume you didn't intend that, but if it wasn't arson it was criminal negligence. We want the exact opposite of this on HN. You also have a history of posting flamebait to HN. Please review the site guidelines and take a lot more care with this place. The ecosystem here is fragile. I'm sure you wouldn't drop lit matches in a dry forest or at a gas station, or toss Molotov cocktails into crowds at parks. So please don't do the equivalent here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html