Alex Dupuy - Rethinking the Haitian Revolution: Slavery, Independence, and the Struggle for Recognition

Alex Dupuy

Wesleyan University

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

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Printed in the United States of America

To Wanda

Robert Fatton Jr.

I am honored to write the foreword for this new book by my dearest colleague and friend, Alex Dupuy. Dupuy is one of those rare social scientists whose work consistently speaks the truth to power uncovering and demystifying the ugly structures of oppression. In his analysis of Haitian history, he has no patience with those forms of nationalism that hide the domestic sources of exploitation while exclusively blaming external causes for the countrys past and current predicament. This is not to say that Alex ignores the negative role played by imperial interferences in Haitis economy and politics, but rather that he underscores the ways in which such intrusions were welcomed by Haitian rulers in defense of their own corporate interests. In short, Haitian history has always been marked by an opportunistic convergence of interests between privileged domestic actors and powerful external agents.

Rethinking the Haitian Revolution: Slavery, Independence, and the Struggle for Recognition, like much of Alexs work, is grounded in a spirit of opposition and critique rather than accommodation. It represents an inspiration to those of us who believe that the challenge of the intellectual life is to be found in dissent against the status quo at a time when social science is increasingly becoming an apology for the dominant order. His study is informed by a profound humanism and empathy for those who suffer the ravages of exploitation.

Rethinking the Haitian Revolution offers a succinct and sophisticated analysis of the roles played by slavery, race, and class in the history of Haiti. Dupuy examines their complicated interconnections to explain the triumphs and failures of both the Haitian Revolution and the vicissitudes of the countrys political economy. He renews an old debate about the slave mode of production and its integration into the world capitalist economy. While he shows that slaverya most cruel and brutal form of unpaid laborgenerated an extremely productive sugar economy in Haiti during the early phases of world capitalist expansion, he argues convincingly that as capitalism matured, slavery and its legacy became obstacles to technological innovation and eventually curbed the development of an independent Haiti, and the Caribbean more broadly. Moreover, Dupuy critically examines how the Western Enlightenment, quintessentially distilled in the writings of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, secreted a racist ideology that legitimated the exploitative slave plantation system. Contrary to certain contemporary interpretations of Hegels views, Dupuy argues forcefully that the master-slave relationship in Saint-Domingue was never one of mutual recognition. It was in fact a life-and-death struggle between two antagonistic actors that ended in a bloody slave revolution and the creation of an independent Haiti.

Haitis Revolution of 1804 represented a radical rupture with the white supremacist order of the time. It carried the egalitarian hopes of abolishing race as a marker of oppression and thus embodied a profoundly significant moment in world history. The revolution was, however, inhibited by both that very global order, and the intense processes of domestic class formation. In spite of these international constraints, Haitian rulers enjoyed a relative degree of autonomy in molding their patterns of governance; like all their counterparts in the world, they sought to advance their own class interests. Dupuy challenges the conventional wisdom that attributes many of Haitis early political and economic problems to the so-called indemnity debt forced on Haiti by the French government in 1825. In the face of French military threats, the Haitian regime of Jean-Pierre Boyer agreed to pay an indemnity of 150 million francs to France in return for its recognition of Haitis independence. Dupuy does not downplay the raw power of French imperialism in Haitis decision to pay the indemnity, nor does he suggest that the debt had no negative effects on the future development of the country, but he does insist convincingly that Boyers decision was largely determined by the class interests he represented. As Dupuy puts it, Boyer and the members of the ruling class believed that the property questioni.e., the properties of the former colonial owners that the revolutionary governments from Toussaint Louverture to Jean-Pierre Boyer confiscated and redistributed to create a new landed bourgeoisie in Haiticould be resolved. In short, Haitian rulers were determined to secure their newly acquired ownership of the land against any potential imperial encroachments by ensuring that France would recognize Haitis national sovereignty and thus respect its property laws. In addition, they assumedand rightly sothat once France had recognized Haitis independence, other major powers would follow.

Finally, Dupuy contends that what really prevented the economic development of Haiti was the incapacity of the Haitian ruling class to impose its hegemony over society in any systematic way. In other words, this classs continuing fragility and internecine conflicts blocked whatever meaningful economic and political projects it might have wanted to enact. It is true that such intraclass wranglings were, and still are, nurtured by imperial interventions in the domestic affairs of the country. Yet the reality is that Haitis ruling class has always lacked the material, ideological, and political attributes that have characterized classical bourgeoisies. It is unproductive, dependent, parasitic, and opportunistic.