Slavery in Haiti

In response to the conditions of slavery, the ideals of the French Revolution, and the disproportionate ratio of enslaved to free people, Haiti was the site of a slave revolt that became the Haitian Revolution. Slavery was abolished during the revolution but afterwards forced labor was brought back by some leaders, believing a plantation-style economy was the only way for Haiti to succeed.

Unpaid labor is still widely practiced in Haiti. As many as half a million children are unpaid domestic servants called restavek, who routinely suffer physical and sexual abuse. Additionally, human trafficking, including child trafficking and sex trafficking, are significant problems in Haiti, in particular impacting Haitians migrating to the Dominican Republic. Many of these issues have been exasperated by natural disasters and instability.

Haiti has the second-highest incidence of slavery in the world, behind only Mauritania. The U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons has placed the country in the "Tier 2 Watchlist" since 2017.

History

Spanish Hispaniola (1492–1625)

The Taino natives living on the island that would come to be called Hispaniola welcomed Christopher Columbus and his crew when they landed on the island in October 1492. In the Pre-Columbian era, other Caribbean tribes would attack the island to kidnap people into slavery. The Spanish colonists institutionalized slavery on the island and turned it into a major business.

Over time, the Spanish set up plantations dependent on slave labor that grew sugar and other crops. In addition natives were forced to mine gold and copper, which took a heavy toll in life and health.

In response to the brutality, some the natives fought back and escaped into remote parts of the island's mountains and formed communities in hiding as "maroons". The Spanish responded to the native resistance with severe reprisals, for example destroying crops to starve the natives. In 1495, Spaniards sent 500 captured natives back to Spain as slaves, but 200 did not survive the voyage, and the others died shortly afterwards. In the late 1490s they planned to send 4,000 slaves back to Spain each year, but this expectation failed to take into account the rapid decline the native population would soon suffer and was never achieved.

It is not known how many Taino people were on the island prior to Columbus's arrival – estimates range from several thousand to eight million – but overwork slavery and in particular diseases, inadvertently introduced by the Europeans to which the natives had no resistance, quickly killed a large part of the population. Between 1492 and 1494, one third of the native population on the island had died and by 1514, 92% of the native population of the island had died.

Spanish missionary Bartolomé de las Casas spoke out against enslavement of the natives and the brutality of the Spaniards. Las Casas' campaign led to an official end of the enslavement of Tainos in 1542; however, it was replaced by the African slave trade.

The rapid rate at which the natives died left a labor void which was filled with the import of Africans. African labor was viewed as ideal since Africans and Europeans had been in contact with each other for centuries and had immunity to the same diseases.

Some newly arrived slaves from Africa and neighboring islands were able to escape and join maroon communities in the mountains. In 1519, Africans and Native Americans joined forces to start a slave rebellion that turned into a years-long uprising, which was eventually crushed by the Spanish in the 1530s.

The practice of slavery in the Spanish New World colonies would become so large-scale that imports of African slaves outnumbered Spanish immigration to the New World by the end of the 1500s.

Saint Domingue (1625–1789)

The Spanish ceded control of the western part of the island of Hispaniola to the French in the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697; France named its new colonial possession Saint-Domingue. The colony, based on the export of cash crops, particularly sugar cane, would become the richest in the world. Known as the "Pearl of the Antilles", the colony became the world's foremost producer of coffee and sugar. The French, like the Spanish, imported slaves from Africa. In 1681, there were only 2,000 slaves in Saint Domingue; by 1789, there were almost half a million.

While the French controlled Saint Domingue, they maintained a class system which covered both whites and free people of color. These classes divided up roles on the island and established a hierarchy. The highest class, known as the grands blancs (white noblemen), was composed of rich nobles, including royalty, and mainly lived in France. These individuals held most of the power and controlled much of the property on Saint-Domingue. Although their group was very small and exclusive, they were quite powerful.

Below the grands blancs (white noblemen) were the petits blancs (white commoners) and the gens de couleur libres (free people of color). These classes inhabited Saint Domingue and held a lot of local political power and control of the militia. Petits blancs shared the same societal level as gens de couleur libres.

The gens de couleur libres class was made up of affranchis (ex-slaves), free blacks, and mixed-race people, and they controlled much wealth and land in the same way as petits blancs; they held full citizenship and civil equality with other French subjects. Race was initially tied to culture and class, and some "white" St. Dominicans had non-white ancestry. Although the Creoles of color and affranchis held considerable power, they eventually became the subject of racism and a system of segregation due to the introduction of divisionist policies by the royal government, as the Bourbon regime feared the united power of the St. Dominicans.

Members of the petit blanc class began to distance themselves from gens de couleur libres and denigrate them. Influence by the Bourbon government rendered petits blancs envious of the gens de couleur libres' economical power. As on other Caribbean islands, the majority of the population of Saint-Domingue was people of color, and they far outnumbered whites on the island.

Planters took care to treat slaves well in the beginning of their time on the plantation, and they slowly integrated slaves into the plantation's labor system. On each plantation there was a black commander who supervised the other slaves on behalf of the planter, and the planter made sure not to favor one African ethnic group over others. Most slaves who came to Saint-Domingue worked in fields or shops; younger slaves often became household servants, and old slaves were employed as surveillants. Some slaves became skilled workmen, and they received privileges such as better food, the ability to go into town, and liberté des savanes (savannah liberty), a sort of freedom with certain rules. Slaves were considered to be valuable property, and slaves were attended by doctors who gave medical care when they were sick.

There were numerous kinds of plantations in Saint-Domingue. Some planters produced indigo, cotton, and coffee; these plantations were small in scale, and usually only had 15-30 slaves, creating an intimate work environment. However, the most valuable plantations produced sugar. The average sugar plantation employed 300 slaves, and the largest sugar plantation on record employed 1400 slaves. These plantations took up only 14% of Saint-Domingue's cultivated land; comparatively, coffee was 50% of all cultivated land, indigo was 22%, and cotton only 5%. Because of the comparative investment requirement between sugar plantations and all other plantation types, there was a big economic gap between normal planters and sugar "lords."

While grands blancs owned 800 large scale sugar plantations, the petits blancs and gens de couleur (people of color) owned 11,700 small scale plantations, of which petits blancs owned 5,700 plantations, counting 3,000 indigo, 2,000 coffee, and 700 cotton; the affranchis and Creoles of color owned 6,000 plantations that mainly produced coffee of which they held an economic monopoly.

Some sugar planters, bent on earning high sugar yields, worked their slaves very hard. Costs to start a sugarcane plantation were very high, often causing the proprietor of the plantation to go into deep debt. Many slaves on sugar cane plantations died within a few years; it was cheaper to import new slaves than to improve working conditions. The death rate of slaves on Saint Domingue's sugar cane plantations was higher than anywhere else in the Western hemisphere; indeed, slaves working on sugar plantations in Saint-Domingue came to have a 6-10% annual mortality rate, causing St. Dominican sugar planters to import new slaves frequently.

Over the colony's hundred-year course, about a million slaves succumbed to the conditions of slavery. Some slaves of African ethnicities who believed in metempsychosis, the belief of the soul's migration at death, committed suicide shortly after arriving on the island, as they believed that in death they could return to their home territory where they would regain the rank, wealth, relatives, and friends that they had. Some pregnant slaves living in poor conditions on sugar plantations did not survive long enough or have healthy enough pregnancies to birth live babies, but if they did, the children often died young due to malnourishment. On some sugar plantations, food was insufficient, and slaves were expected to grow and prepare it for themselves on top of their 12-hour workdays.

In 1685, the French king Louis XIV decreed the Code Noir, a regulation of the treatment of slaves. Although the Code Noir was established to protect the rights of St. Dominican slaves and despite the presence of a rural police, due to Saint-Domingue's difficult terrain and the seclusion of various plantations, some slaves were abused. There are extreme cases recorded where slaves were whipped, burned, buried alive, restrained and allowed to be bitten by swarms of insects, mutilated, raped, and had limbs amputated. On some plantations, slaves caught eating the sugar cane crop would be forced to wear tin muzzles in the fields.

About 48,000 slaves in Saint Domingue escaped from their plantation; slaveholders hired bounty hunters to catch these maroons. Those who were not caught and re-enslaved established communities away from settled areas. Maroons would organize raids called mawonag on plantations, stealing supplies that their communities needed to survive, such as food, tools and weapons. One famous maroon, François Mackandal, escaped into the mountains in the middle of the 18th century and went on to plan attacks on plantation owners. Mackandal was caught and burned at the stake in 1758, but his legend lived on to inspire rebellion among slaves — and fear among slaveholders.

Enslaved Africans who fled to remote mountainous areas were called marron (French) or mawon (Haitian Creole), meaning 'escaped slave'. The maroons formed close-knit communities that practised small-scale agriculture and hunting. They were known to return to plantations to free family members and friends. On a few occasions, they also joined the Taíno settlements, who had escaped the Spanish in the 17th century. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, there were a large number of maroons living in the Bahoruco mountains. In 1702, a French expedition against them killed three maroons and captured 11, but over 30 evaded capture, and retreated further into the mountainous forests. Further expeditions were carried out against them with limited success, though they did succeed in capturing one of their leaders, Michel, in 1719. In subsequent expeditions, in 1728 and 1733, French forces captured 46 and 32 maroons respectively. No matter how many detachments were sent against these maroons, they continued to attract runaways. Expeditions in 1740, 1742, 1746, 1757 and 1761 had minor successes against these maroons, but failed to destroy their hideaways.

In 1776-7, a joint French-Spanish expedition ventured into the border regions of the Bahoruco mountains, with the intention of destroying the maroon settlements there. However, the maroons had been alerted of their coming, and had abandoned their villages and caves, retreating further into the mountainous forests where they could not be found. The detachment eventually returned, unsuccessful, and having lost many soldiers to illness and desertion. In the years that followed, the maroons attacked a number of settlements, including Fond-Parisien, for food, weapons, gunpowder and women. It was on one of these excursions that one of the maroon leaders, Kebinda, who had been born in freedom in the mountains, was captured. He later died in captivity.

In 1782, de Saint-Larry decided to offer peace terms to one of the maroon leaders, Santiago, granted them freedom in return for which they would hunt all further runaways and return them to their owners. Eventually, at the end of 1785, terms were agreed, and the more than 100 maroons under Santiago's command stopped making incursions into French colonial territory.

In addition to escaping, slaves resisted by poisoning slaveholders, their families, their livestock, and other slaves — this was a common and feared enough occurrence that in, December 1746, the French king banned poisoning in particular. Arson was another form of slave resistance.

In 1791, St. Dominican Creoles began the French Revolution in Saint-Domingue; Republican revolutionaries incited a slave rebellion aimed at overthrowing the Bourbon Regime. Their main goal was to establish Republican control of Saint-Domingue and enforce the social & political equality for St. Dominican Creoles. These St. Dominican Republicans soon lost control of the slave rebellion.

Many of the slaves who fought during the Haitian Revolution were warriors who had been captured in war and enslaved by an opposing African ethnic group. Before the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789, there were eight times as many slaves in the colony as there were whites and free people of color people combined. In 1789, the French were importing 30,000 slaves a year and there were half a million slaves in the French part of the island alone, compared to about 40-45,000 whites and 32,000 free people of color.

Revolutionary period (1789–1804)

The French Revolution in 1789 presented an opportunity for Saint-Domingue's middle class to organize a revolt, which was followed shortly thereafter by them inciting a general slave revolt. In 1791, Vincent Ogé led an uprising. However, this uprising failed and French authorities imprisoned him then eventually publicly executed him by snapping his back then beheading him. After this, Vodun priest Dutty Boukman met with other enslaved religious leaders and planned an insurrection. The insurrection began on August 21, 1791. Boukman, along with the other slaves, captured most of Plaine-du-Nord then tortured and murdered their slaveowners and their families then destroyed the plantations that they were forced to work on. By the end of the year, the slaves held control of two-thirds of the island while the majority of the slaveowners were either dead or trying to leave.

Two civil commissioners, Sonthonax and Polverel, were sent to the colony to implement the decree of April 4, 1792, which gave to free people of color and free Blacks the same rights as for the Whites. Their goal was also to maintain slavery and fight the slaves who revolted. Faced with the impossibility of suppressing the revolt, and confronted with the Spanish and the English, they were forced, in order to keep the hope of conserving Saint-Domingue to France, to give freedom to the slaves who would agree to fight alongside them, and then to extend this freedom to all the slaves of the colony. By February 1794, when the French government abolished slavery throughout its empire, all the slaves of Saint-Domingue had already been freed.

Although slavery was outlawed, Louverture, believing that the plantation economy was necessary, forced laborers back to work on the plantations using military might. By 1801, the revolt had succeeded, and Toussaint Louverture, having fetched control of the revolt and eliminated all opposition on the island, declared himself Governor-General-for-life of Saint-Domingue.

With a view toward re-establishing slavery, Napoleon Bonaparte sent his brother-in-law, Charles Leclerc, to regain control of Haiti, along with a fleet of 86 ships and 22,000 soldiers. The Haitians resisted the soldiers, but the French were more numerous and better positioned, until the rainy season brought yellow fever. As French soldiers and officers died, black Haitian soldiers who had allied themselves with the French began to defect to the other side.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines

In 1802, Louverture was arrested and deported to France, where he later died in prison, leaving leadership of the military to Jean-Jacques Dessalines. In 1804, the French were defeated. France officially gave up control of Haiti, making it the second independent country in the Americas (after the U.S.) and the first successful slave revolt in the world. Dessalines was the country's leader, first naming himself Governor-General-for-life, then Emperor of Haiti.

After the revolution, newly freed slaves were violently opposed to remaining on plantations, but Dessalines, like Louverture, used military might to keep them there, thinking that plantation labor was the only way to make the economy function. Most ex-slaves viewed Dessalines' rule as more of the same oppression they had known during de jure slavery. Dessalines was killed by a mob of his own officers in 1806.

Henri Christophe

Dessalines' successor was King Henry Christophe, another general in the revolution. Christophe, fearing another French invasion, continued in Dessalines' footsteps fortifying the country. For the construction of one citadel, La Citadelle Laferrière, Christophe is thought to have forced hundreds of thousands of people into laboring on it, killing an estimated 20,000 of them.

Also like his predecessors Louverture and Dessalines, Christophe used military might to force former slaves to stay on the plantations. Plantation workers under Louverture and Christophe were not unpaid — they received one quarter of what they produced, paying the rest to plantation owners and the government. Under Christophe's rule it was also possible for black people to rent their own land or work in government, and agricultural workers on plantations could make complaints to the royal administration about working conditions. These ex-slaves might have also sometimes had a choice about what plantation they would work on — but they could not choose not to work, and they could not legally leave a plantation they were "attached" to. Many ex-slaves were probably forced to work on the same plantations they had worked on as slaves.

The population's staunch resistance to working on plantations — owned by whites or otherwise — made it too difficult to perpetuate the system, despite its profitability. Christophe and other leaders enacted policies allowing state land to be broken up and sold to citizens, and the plantation system largely gave way to one in which Haitians owned and farmed smaller lots.

Jean-Pierre Boyer

In 1817, a Haitian ship seized a Spanish slave ship bound for Cuba which had entered Haiti's waters, and, acting on standing government orders, brought it ashore. All 171 captive Africans were liberated and joyfully accepted into Haitian society, and President Jean-Pierre Boyer himself served as their godfather. The ship's captain, and later Cuban officials, protested to Boyer that his trade was legal, but Boyer maintained that the 1816 constitution decreed there could be no slaves in Haitian territory, and no reimbursement could be given for their value. Slave ships had also been seized and their human cargo freed under previous leaders Christophe and Alexandre Pétion, and slaves who managed to take control of ships and arrive in Haiti were given asylum. Slavers quickly learned to avoid Haiti's waters.

In 1825, France sent an armada to Haiti and threatened to blockade the country, preventing trade unless Boyer agreed to pay France 150,000,000 francs to reimburse it for losses of "property" — mostly its slaves. In exchange, France would recognize Haiti as an independent nation, which it had thus far refused to do. Boyer agreed without making the decision public beforehand, a move which met with widespread outrage in Haiti. The amount was reduced to 90,000,000 francs in 1838, equivalent to USD $19 billion in 2015. Haiti was saddled with this debt until 1947, and forced to forgo spending on humanitarian programs such as sanitation. In 1838, an estimated 30% of the country's yearly budget went to debt, and, in 1900, the amount had risen to 80%. Haiti took out loans from Germany, the U.S., and France itself to come up with this money, further increasing its debt burden and those countries' centrality in the Haitian economy.

Under pressure to produce money to pay the debt, in 1826 Boyer enacted a new set of laws called the Code Rural that restricted agricultural workers' autonomy, required them to work, and prohibited their travel without permission. It also reenacted the system of Corvée, by which police and government authorities could force residents to work temporarily without pay on roads. These laws met with widespread resistance and were difficult to enforce since the workers' access to land provided them autonomy and they were able to hide from the government.

The United States passed laws to keep Haitian merchants away from U.S. soil because slaveholders there did not want their slaves getting ideas about revolt from the Haitians. However, the two countries continued trade, with Haiti purchasing the weapons it needed, albeit at disadvantageous prices. The U.S. embargo of Haiti lasted 60 years, but Lincoln declared it unnecessary to deny the country's independence once the institution in the United States began to be ended. He encouraged newly freed slaves to emigrate there to attain a freedom he did not deem possible in the United States.

Unfree labor during US occupation

In July 1915, after political unrest and the mob murder of Haiti's president Vilbrun Guillaume Sam, the United States Marine Corps invaded Haiti. Prior to the occupation peasants had staged uprisings to resist moves by US investors to appropriate their land and convert the style of agriculture in the area from subsistence back to a plantation-like system—the idea of going back to anything like the plantation system faced fierce resistance. Haitians had been afraid that U.S. investors were trying to convert the economy back into a plantation-based one, since U.S. businesses had been amassing land and evicting rural peasants from their family land. Rural Haitians formed armies that roamed around the countryside, stealing from farmers and raping women. The motivation of the US occupation of Haiti was partly to protect investments and to prevent European countries from gaining too much power in the area. One stated justification for the occupation had been ending the practice of enslaving children as domestic servants in Haiti; however, the United States also then reinstituted the practice of forced labor under the corvée system.

As had occurred under the regimes of Dessalines and Christophe, unfree labor was again employed in a public works program, this time ordered by the U.S. Admiral William Banks Caperton. In 1916, the U.S. occupiers employed the corvée system of forced labor allowed by Haiti's 1864 Code Rural until 1918. Since the Haitian resistance fighters, or Cacos, hid out in remote, mountainous areas and waged guerrilla-style warfare against the Marines, the military needed roads built to find and fight them. To build the roads, laborers were forcibly taken from their homes, bound together with rope into chain gangs and sometimes beaten and abused, or even killed if they resisted. Peasants were told they would be paid for their labor and given food, working near their homes — but sometimes the promised food and wages were meager or altogether absent. Corvée was highly unpopular; Haitians widely believed that whites had returned to Haiti to force them back into slavery. The brutality of the forced labor system strengthened the Cacos; many Haitians escaped to the mountains to join them, and many more lent their help and support. Reports of the abuses led the commander of the Marines to order an end to the practice in 1918; however, it continued illegally in the north until it was discovered — no one faced punishment for the infraction. With corvée no longer available, the U.S. turned to prison labor, with men sometimes being arrested for this purpose when there were too few laborers available in prison. The occupation lasted until 1934.