- cross-posted to:
- shitposting@lemmygrad.ml
Damn, that sucks. The French should have taken up Louverture on his offer instead of backstabbing him, then.
As it turns out, the Wikipedia page is shockingly wrong/misleading. The new Haitian government specifically carried out a vengeful campaign against the French whites including the poor “Petit-Blancs” who didn’t own slaves but largely supported slavery and white supremacy throughout the colony’s history, at some points even more fanatically than their rich counterparts (there was genuine threat of a mass revolt from them when the colonial government wanted to grant more rights to free mixed-race Haitians). Polish soldiers who assisted the revolution and German farmers on the island were spared, as well as non-French nationals (a common if unverified story is a white Frenchman who survived by pretending to be American).
This isn’t to say genocide under any circumstance is “okay” but I’m don’t think anyone is under any position to lecture people who were put under the sheer inhumanity of Caribbean sugar cane plantation system in particular or Transatlantic slavery in general. To say nothing of the depraved lengths the French, slave-owning or not, went to to preserve slavery in the revolutionary war (such as, as some in the comments point out, reprisal massacres, mass rapes, feeding prisoners to dogs, etc). It’s also inaccurate to say this was done only out of revenge when the fear of white French petitionining to have France reinvade was very real (as had happened). Even then, Dessalines’ mandate was far from uncontroversial or even universally-enforced. As with other things, this falls solely on France which has not even pretended to pay back the damage it has done to Haiti before, during and after the revolution.
Also, though rightoids and fashies like this guy are expected, it’s funny to see more liberal whites pearl-clutch over the 1804 massacres but somehow handwave the rest of the period as “simply another time”. You’re sure to find them under any post about the Haitian revolution bringing it up but if you bring up the fact that the American Founding Fathers were slave-owning, genocidal hypocrites on any post commemorating the 4th of July, you’re suddenly a party-pooper who doesn’t understand history.
It’s not even true lol. The Haitians didn’t kill the Poles or Germans because they were not slavers, and in fact protected them during the retaliation against the French colonizers.
One of the good things in my people's history. Some of them recognized the similarity between the Haitian people's struggle for independence and our own at that time, and joined them to fight against the french. There's even a village of a "Polish minority", that being Cazale.
EDIT: I remember during history lessons in high school, the Haitians were praised and spoken well of by our teacher and even the textbooks. But I don't know how it is now, seeing how the textbooks have gotten more and more unhinged and rightwing in their contents.
Plus to do this, they abolished the concept of whiteness that was part of the oppressive colonial heiarchy by declaring the new Polish citizens of Haiti to be black.