In the fracas that is Christmas, the anniversary of one of the Caribbean's most important historical events often goes widely unreported and unnoticed. 200 years ago, Haitian slaves rose up, and in one of the bloodiest coups in Caribbean history, wrested control of Haiti from the white oligarchy that the French Revolution supposedly equalised with the ordinary man.

Despite the penchant for the average young person to not care about political events, (particularly in the Caribbean where it often boils down to puffed up chests and overblown egos arguing about nothing in particular) this is one that should stick in your brain.

The Haitian Revolution created, for the first time, a voice for African peoples living enslaved across the planet, shouting: "It's time to reckon with us!"  and "Enough is enough!" Not only did they succeed in overthrowing the white planter oligarchy, where virtually no other slave rebellion/revolution had before, but it very quickly became plainly obvious not only to France, but to England and America that the African Haitians fully intended to set up shop, run the country, produce sugar etc.  

Revolution has a tendency to spawn revolution. The powers that were in 1804 absolutely blanched at the thought of having to deal with these "slaves" as both a political and economic force. Of course, no one is having it. Haiti was far too valuable to France economically to give it up so easily. "These "slaves" have to be taught a lesson, and while we're at it, let's make sure that all the other "slaves" get the picture." they must have muttered over dinners and in dark corners.

A plot hatched and executed. For sixty-two years, the United States--probably terrified with dissent right on it's shores as it were--enforced a trade embargo, much like the one they currently stick to like glue with Cuba. France, goaded on by the U.S. and other European interests, demand millions of dollars in reparation for the loss of land and slave property. Combined, this double-blow against the young republic kept it in quasi-slavery as the rebels were now at the mercy of the 'kindness' of their former oppressors simply for food.

It is very simplistic to assume that the Haitian Africans, right in their cause, and rising up to free themselves from the 'shackles of slavery' (a phrase I myself am tiring of, but is quite appropriate) would have 1) shamed the whites into giving them their freedom with no strings attached 2) have garnered for themselves some respect for their audacity and the cleverness  and compassion of Toussaint's guidance to the Afro-Haitian army, and thus protected themselves from the onslaught of demoralising strictures on what their independence should have been. However, as history records, that was not the way it worked out.

Instead Haiti was held up by the opponents to the abolition of slavery as every reason why freedom could not be granted to the slaves.

The U.S. finally invaded Haiti in 1915 and occupied it for twenty years. It was more than enough time to sow the seeds of dictatorship and to play on the Haitian society's free-coloureds dislike and distrust of the Negro population. The US-backed, Duvalier 'Papa and Baby Doc' regimes took over and with it came a US-trained, brutal military and security forces as well as the Ton Ton Macoute, the secret police.