Saint Domingue's Legacy

Many historians had Haiti--or, as it was called in the colonial period, Saint Domingue--on their minds long before the massive earthquake there this past Tuesday. It has become the accepted wisdom in the field that the Haitian Revolution in the late 1790s was one of the most important events in the history of the Atlantic World. There's been a lot of research recently about slavery and rebellion in Saint Domingue (including by some of my friends), but historians rarely refer to that island nation as "Haiti." It's as if there's a total disconnect between the heroic, revolutionary Saint Domingue and present-day Haiti.

This week, an unlikely source brought past together with present. Televangelist Pat Robertson made the link rather grotesquely in his much-criticized remark on Wednesday:

"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about. They were under the heel of the French, you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said 'We will serve you if you will get us free from the prince.' True story. And so the devil said, 'Ok it's a deal.' And they kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got something themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another."

Well, maybe not such a true story. I'd defy him to find that conversation in the archives. Oh, and he's got the wrong Napoleon.

Haiti's ambassador to America, Raymond Joseph had the perfect response:

"The independence of Haiti...[enabled] the US to gain the Louisiana Territory...that's 13 states west of the Mississippi that the Haitian slaves' revolt...provided America....So, [the] pact the Haitians made with the devil has helped the United States become what it is."

Ambassador Joseph is right--the loss of French money and lives during the Haitian Revolution compelled Napoleon to give up his presence in the New World and sell the Louisiana Territory to the US at an outrageously low price. But I don't think this is a fight about the past.

Robertson is using history to make claims of religious and racial superiority at the most tasteless time possible. What troubles me is that those who actually do know about Haiti's past seem to have so little interest in its present. Let's hope this catastrophe changes that.

image: Toussaint L'Ouverture receiving a Proclamation. (1821), NYPL Digital Gallery.