“Unworthy of Liberty?” Slavery, Terror, and Revolution in Haiti

Abstract

The Haitian Revolution is still too often portrayed as a whirlwind of unending violence, a chaotic series of bloody massacres driven by racial hatred, with little larger political meaning. From the moment when tens of thousands of enslaved men and women on plantations in Saint-Domingue rose up in 1791, the response among elites throughout the Atlantic World was—predictably—one of shock and horror. For the many who were heavily invested in protecting and buttressing the system of slavery, the revolt was an enormous threat, and they largely responded by portraying it as little more than an unruly, chaotic, barbaric, and bloody affront to the hierarchies they considered essential and justifiable. Of course, there were also commentators who saw something very different, arguing that the enslaved, who were oppressed by a brutal system, had as much right to rise up against their oppressors as the revolutionaries who fought Britain in North America or those who attacked the aristocracy in France. Still, the powerfully negative images generated during the late eighteenth century about the revolution continue to circulate and shape contemporary perspectives to a surprising degree.