October 17 – Dessalines Day in Haiti

October 17, 2020

Posted October 17, 2020

You might already know that Haiti is the only nation that was created by former slaves who had successfully rebelled against their masters.

You might also know that Toussaint Louverture was the heroic leader of the rebellion – but did you know that French forces captured Louverture before the revolt fully succeeded – and that the hero died in a French jail?

Jean-Jacques Dessalines was a lieutenant under
Louverture, and he ended up taking over when Louverture was captured – AND he ended up beating the French! In November 1803, Dessalines and his troops finally defeated French forces, and the 7,000 (or so) French troops still alive skedaddled off the island.

At that point, Dessalines went from being military leader to governmental leader. He was far from perfect – he ordered the killing of every French person on the island (about 5,000 people!), and although he freed all the slaves, most former slaves didn’t have a ton of freedom. They had only two choices: continuing hard physical labor on the plantations, or joining Dessalines’s army.

Basically, Dessalines became a dictator!

Dessalines became Emperor of Haiti for Life, but he only lived another year before he was killed by his political rivals, on this date in 1806.

Even though Dessalines was a pretty bloodthirsty and tyrannical political leader, he DID lead the revolt to victory over the French. And although he wasn’t very popular among his fellow Haitians during his rule, in the 1900s and 2000s he rebounded in reputation as a patriot and a founding father…