6 ms·

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.
- Scarbutt 5y ago
  Mix corruption and France teaching them about how to profit from slavery and it's no surprise they might have continued with slavery.
- sangnoir 5y ago
  Slavery and forced labor are not necessarily the same thing; thought the former usually implies the latter. Being forced to work 8-12 hours a day, but free to go about your business the rest of the time is a very different scenario to being owned and having your offspring becoming another persons property. Chattel slavery goes way beyond forced labor - both are terrible, but not equally so.
  - rory 5y ago
    Yeah, the "worker" conditions that followed were more like serfdom than chattel slavery. A serf's offspring is still tied to the land like their parents, so the practical difference probably wasn't that great, but it's still an important distinction.
tenpies 5y ago
I always wonder, if there had never been a trans-Atlantic slave trade, would modern opinion in the West be that slavery is perfectly fine? After all, the West still doesn't really care about slavery - there's more slaves today than ever in history. They also do not care about benefitting from slave labour or they would boycott the top countries in the Global Slavery Index: https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/data/maps/#prevalence https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/data/maps/#prevalenc... Slavery continues to be a thriving industry in Africa and the Middle East for example, and for the most part concern about this only comes from a few Western NGOs. It largely seems to be a matter that at some point became politically useful in the US and elsewhere, rather than an actual concern. I wonder if it will ever stop being in political vogue.
- x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
  What does any of this have to do with the subject at hand?
  - DiggyJohnson 5y ago
    Not OP, but the transatlantic slave trade is materially related to the history of Haiti, which is the topic at hand.
    - x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
      But he's not talking about the Transatlantic Slave Trade, he's talking about the bad-faith right-wing talking point of "There are slaves all around the world today!!!" None of the groups that OP professes to care about are part of the transatlantic slave trade.
- wyager 5y ago
  The global elimination of slavery, to whatever incomplete extent that happened, was primarily a British and Christian moral crusade. Christian morality plus the feasibility of replacing slavery with industrialization is what made the global reduction of slavery possible. I say this as a non-Christian. I don’t think it’s reasonable to say the West “doesn’t really care” about slavery.
rory 5y ago
It was less an assassination and more the beginning of a full genocide (a specifically French genocide, not against whites in general) around the country. Dessalines went around the county killing all (fully white) French males. A lot of powerful Haitians opposed this, especially those of mixed racial background who had white family. The crimes that followed were really pushed forward by Dessalines the man, not the Haitian people in general. Transatlantic slavery was incredibly cruel, but persecution by "the French" doesn't excuse a genocide of all French people on the island. Ironically, the people most responsible for the crimes against enslaved Africans (the "grand blanc") were largely back in France and so escaped personal harm.

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.
Scarbutt 5y ago
Mix corruption and France teaching them about how to profit from slavery and it's no surprise they might have continued with slavery.
sangnoir 5y ago
Slavery and forced labor are not necessarily the same thing; thought the former usually implies the latter. Being forced to work 8-12 hours a day, but free to go about your business the rest of the time is a very different scenario to being owned and having your offspring becoming another persons property. Chattel slavery goes way beyond forced labor - both are terrible, but not equally so.
- rory 5y ago
  Yeah, the "worker" conditions that followed were more like serfdom than chattel slavery. A serf's offspring is still tied to the land like their parents, so the practical difference probably wasn't that great, but it's still an important distinction.

tenpies 5y ago

I always wonder, if there had never been a trans-Atlantic slave trade, would modern opinion in the West be that slavery is perfectly fine? After all, the West still doesn't really care about slavery - there's more slaves today than ever in history. They also do not care about benefitting from slave labour or they would boycott the top countries in the Global Slavery Index: https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/data/maps/#prevalence https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/data/maps/#prevalenc... Slavery continues to be a thriving industry in Africa and the Middle East for example, and for the most part concern about this only comes from a few Western NGOs. It largely seems to be a matter that at some point became politically useful in the US and elsewhere, rather than an actual concern. I wonder if it will ever stop being in political vogue.

x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
What does any of this have to do with the subject at hand?
- DiggyJohnson 5y ago
  Not OP, but the transatlantic slave trade is materially related to the history of Haiti, which is the topic at hand.
  - x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
    But he's not talking about the Transatlantic Slave Trade, he's talking about the bad-faith right-wing talking point of "There are slaves all around the world today!!!" None of the groups that OP professes to care about are part of the transatlantic slave trade.
wyager 5y ago
The global elimination of slavery, to whatever incomplete extent that happened, was primarily a British and Christian moral crusade. Christian morality plus the feasibility of replacing slavery with industrialization is what made the global reduction of slavery possible. I say this as a non-Christian. I don’t think it’s reasonable to say the West “doesn’t really care” about slavery.

rory 5y ago

It was less an assassination and more the beginning of a full genocide (a specifically French genocide, not against whites in general) around the country. Dessalines went around the county killing all (fully white) French males. A lot of powerful Haitians opposed this, especially those of mixed racial background who had white family. The crimes that followed were really pushed forward by Dessalines the man, not the Haitian people in general. Transatlantic slavery was incredibly cruel, but persecution by "the French" doesn't excuse a genocide of all French people on the island. Ironically, the people most responsible for the crimes against enslaved Africans (the "grand blanc") were largely back in France and so escaped personal harm.