As leader of the slave revolt in San Domingue that led to the emancipation of the island’s slaves and successfully challenged not only the interests of the three main European empires in the region – the British, French and Spanish – but also consigned the racist trope that justified slavery – that Africans were racially inferior to Europeans – to the dustbin, it’s almost become an act of blasphemy to criticise Toussaint Louverture.
Thus, the French TV mini-series Toussaint Louverture (in French, above) portrays the great man as an almost flawless human being, an intelligent, moral, courageous visionary, whose downfall and demise – which came in a French jail, where he was transported for defying Napoleon Bonaparte’s attempt to reconquer San Domingue and re-establish slavery on the island – was also a result of his superior nature; his humanitarian desire to put an end to war on San Domingue – a war degenerating into massacre and counter-massacre – and his belief that his powers of persuasion, his French patriotism, his moral rectitude, his devotion to the Roman Catholic faith, would bring the French colonists to see reason.
Where there is criticism of Louverture, it comes from those, like CLR James, that blame him for a lack of revolutionary zeal and for not being as willing as his lieutenants – such as Hyacinthe Moise (who Louverture had executed for taking part in massacres of white colonists) and Jean-Jaques Dessalines – to finish with the white presence on San Domingue and to seek complete independence from France: aims Louverture resisted because he thought Napoleon could not seriously believe that slavery could be reintroduced to island; that the white colonists – even if they were supporters of the ancien regime – were the economic backbone of the island, had skills and expertise the country needed; and that the thirst for revenge behind the anti-white massacres committed by his followers was immoral.
As James says: ‘Toussaint could not believe that the French ruling class would be so depraved, so lost to all sense of decency, as to try to restore slavery. His grasp of politics led him to make all preparations, but he could not admit to himself and to his people that it was easier to find decency, gratitude, justice, and humanity in a cage of starving tigers than in the councils of imperialism.’
Rather than trying to convince Bonaparte that slavery on the island could not be reconstituted and that he could be trusted to govern the colony with justice and moderation, James says Louverture should have realised that the French metropolis was never going to accept the rebel leader’s role in running San Domingue or the elevation of the former slave class to rulers or co-rulers of the island. Having revolted a decade earlier asserting ‘liberty or death’, the African former slaves were now in a predicament where this was no longer a slogan but the choice Napoleon’s colonial vision was presenting them with.
Thus, the French TV mini-series Toussaint Louverture (in French, above) portrays the great man as an almost flawless human being, an intelligent, moral, courageous visionary, whose downfall and demise – which came in a French jail, where he was transported for defying Napoleon Bonaparte’s attempt to reconquer San Domingue and re-establish slavery on the island – was also a result of his superior nature; his humanitarian desire to put an end to war on San Domingue – a war degenerating into massacre and counter-massacre – and his belief that his powers of persuasion, his French patriotism, his moral rectitude, his devotion to the Roman Catholic faith, would bring the French colonists to see reason.
Where there is criticism of Louverture, it comes from those, like CLR James, that blame him for a lack of revolutionary zeal and for not being as willing as his lieutenants – such as Hyacinthe Moise (who Louverture had executed for taking part in massacres of white colonists) and Jean-Jaques Dessalines – to finish with the white presence on San Domingue and to seek complete independence from France: aims Louverture resisted because he thought Napoleon could not seriously believe that slavery could be reintroduced to island; that the white colonists – even if they were supporters of the ancien regime – were the economic backbone of the island, had skills and expertise the country needed; and that the thirst for revenge behind the anti-white massacres committed by his followers was immoral.
As James says: ‘Toussaint could not believe that the French ruling class would be so depraved, so lost to all sense of decency, as to try to restore slavery. His grasp of politics led him to make all preparations, but he could not admit to himself and to his people that it was easier to find decency, gratitude, justice, and humanity in a cage of starving tigers than in the councils of imperialism.’
Rather than trying to convince Bonaparte that slavery on the island could not be reconstituted and that he could be trusted to govern the colony with justice and moderation, James says Louverture should have realised that the French metropolis was never going to accept the rebel leader’s role in running San Domingue or the elevation of the former slave class to rulers or co-rulers of the island. Having revolted a decade earlier asserting ‘liberty or death’, the African former slaves were now in a predicament where this was no longer a slogan but the choice Napoleon’s colonial vision was presenting them with.
