The celebrated French Revolution and the American Revolution were parochial and hypocritical in allowing for the abridgement of liberty through the institution of slavery. But The Haitian Revolution made it clear to the world that the enslaved or the colonized had the capacity to forge the path to freedom through their collective effort against seemingly insurmountable odds. On the conclusion of the 1831-1832 Emancipation Rebellion in Jamaica, the British authority was so spooked by the possibility of another Haiti with its freedom-from-below that it passed an abolition law in 1833, which took effect in 1834; emancipation-from-above.
Haiti’s role in Simon Bolivar’s wars of independence in Latin America is not widely known. In the spirit of principled international solidarity, Haiti provided a place of refugee to Bolivar and his comrade Francisco de Miranda in 1815 and gave them material aid in the form of schooners, printing presses, fighters and as well as guns for several thousand troops.15 Haiti’s only condition for its contribution was Bolivar’s commitment to abolishing slavery, which he didn’t vigorously and speedily implement. Haiti was still living up to the ideal of universal freedom from slavery and colonial domination. This country was there, materially and morally, during a crucial movement in Latin America’s struggle for self-determination. It is rather instructive and ironic today to see Latin American military forces serving in Haiti as an occupation army under the United Nations’ banner.
Haiti’s legacy of defying and exposing the farcical nature of the racist characterization of Africans as sub-humans by defeating the best European armies of the period, taking its freedom in its own hands, contributing to the liberation of Latin America and threatening the continued viability of slavery has probably earned the country the unenviable economic and political status it currently holds in the region.16
“The British authority was so spooked by the possibility of another Haiti with its freedom-from-below that it passed an abolition law in 1833.”
Wordsworth was right in declaring to the deceived and fallen Toussaint (and by extension Haiti), “thou hast great allies / Thy friends are exultations, agonies, / And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.” Our anti-imperialist obligation to Haiti and its people for their contribution to universal freedom entails the provision of political, moral, and material support in fighting our common enemies of social emancipation and justice. Our internationalist sensibilities and politics ought to be informed by Martin Luther King’s claim, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”17