1804 Haitian massacre

September 2026 September 2026 citations1804 massacre of French people in Haiti March 2024 1804 Haiti massacre the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution Manuel Lopez Lopez Iodibo - Desalines - Huyes del valor frances, pero matando blancos.jpg 1806 Spanish poster depicting General Jean-Jacques Dessalines holding a white woman's severed head First Empire of Haiti 1804 02 – 1804 04 22 yes 3,000–7,000 White Haitians (Mainly French people) Massacre, PogromGirard 2011 324-25 Army of Jean-Jacques Dessalines Anti-French sentimentRevenge for slavery The 1804 Haiti massacre was carried out by Afro-Haitian soldiers, mostly former slaves, under orders from Jean-Jacques DessalinesGirard 2005a 158–159Gaffield Julia 2016-01-26 Dessalines Reader, 29 February 1804 https://haitidoi.com/2016/01/26/dessalines-reader-1-april-1804-2/ 2024-09-15 Haiti and the Atlantic World enMoses Stone 2013 63Forde 2020 40 against much of the remaining European population in Haiti, which mainly included French people.Rogers 2010 353Orizio 2001 149, 157–159 The Haitian Revolution defeated the French army in November 1803 and the Haitian Declaration of Independence happened on 1 January 1804.Sutherland Claudia https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/haitian-revolution-1791-1804/ Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) 16 July 2007 Blackpast.org 17 June 2022 From February 1804Girard 2011 319–322 until 22 April 1804, between 3,000 and 7,000 people were killed.Girard 2011 319–322 The massacre excluded surviving Polish Legionnaires, who had defected from the French legion to become allied with the enslaved Africans, as well as the Germans who did not take part in the slave trade, and some other select whites. They were instead granted full citizenship under the constitution, even though Dessalines had declared that all Haitians would be considered "black".Girard 2011 325 Nicholas Robins, Adam Jones, and Dirk Moses theorize that the executions were a "subaltern genocide", in which an oppressed group uses genocidal means to destroy its oppressors.Robins & JonesKlävers 2019 110 Philippe Girard has suggested the threat of reinvasion and reinstatement of slavery as some of the motives for the massacre.Girard 2005a 152 Throughout the early-to-mid nineteenth century, the events of the massacre were well known in the United States. Additionally, many Saint Domingue refugees moved from Saint-Domingue to the U.S., settling in New Orleans, Charleston, New York, Baltimore, and other coastal cities. These events spurred fears of potential uprisings in the Southern U.S. and they also polarized public opinion on the question of the abolition of slavery.Julius Kevin C. The abolitionist decade, 1829–1838 : a year-by-year history of early events in the antislavery movement 2004 McFarland & Co Jefferson, N.C. 0-7864-1946-6 14Marcotte Frank B. Six days in April : Lincoln and the Union in peril 2005 Algora Publishing New York 0-8758-6313-2 171 Background Slavery Slavery in Haiti Henri Christophe's personal secretary,http://www.travelinghaiti.com/christophes-kingdom-petions-republic/ Christophe's Kingdom and Pétion's Republic Travelinghaiti.com 12 January 2016 17 June 2022Henley Jon 2010-01-14 Haiti: a long descent to hell en-GB The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jan/14/haiti-history-earthquake-disaster 2023-07-08 0261-3077 who was enslaved for much of his life, attempted to explain the incident by referencing the cruel treatment of black slaves by white slaveholders in Saint-Domingue:Written in Blood: The Story of the Haitian People, 1492–1995 Heinl Michael Heinl Robert Debs Heinl Nancy Gordon 2005 Revised Univ. Press of America, p. 23 Lanham, Md; London 0-7618-3177-0 registration https://archive.org/details/writteninbloodst00hein/page/n2/mode/1up?view=theater Have they not hung up men with heads downward, drowned them in sacks, crucified them on planks, buried them alive, crushed them in mortars? Have they not forced them to consume faeces? And, having flayed them with the lash, have they not cast them alive to be devoured by worms, or onto anthills, or lashed them to stakes in the swamp to be devoured by mosquitoes? Have they not thrown them into boiling cauldrons of cane syrup? Have they not put men and women inside barrels studded with spikes and rolled them down mountainsides into the abyss? Have they not consigned these miserable blacks to man-eating dogs until the latter, sated by human flesh, left the mangled victims to be finished off with bayonet and poniard? Haitian Revolution Haitian Revolution thumb|250px|"Burning of the Plaine du Cap – Massacre of whites by the blacks." On August 22, 1791, slaves destroyed plantations in Le Cap, and killed all the French population in the region. In 1791, a man of Jamaican origin named Dutty Boukman became the leader of the enslaved Africans held on a large plantation in Cap-Français.Cheuse Alan Alan Cheuse Listening to the Page: Adventures in Reading and Writing https://archive.org/details/listeningtopagea00cheu/page/58/mode/1up?view=theater registration 2002 Columbia University Press 978-0-231-12271-9 58–59 In the wake of the French Revolution, he planned to massacre all the French living in Cap-Français. On 22 August 1791, the enslaved Africans descended on Le Cap, where they destroyed the plantations and executed all the French who lived in the region. King Louis XVI was accused of indifference to the massacre, while the slaves seemed to think the king was on their side.Julia V. Douthwaite The Frankenstein of 1790 and Other Lost Chapters from Revolutionary France 2012 University of Chicago Press 978-0-226-16058-0 110 In July 1793, the French in Les Cayes were massacred.Geggus David Franklin W. Knight Colin A. Palmer The Modern Caribbean 1989 University of North Carolina Press 978-0-8078-4240-9 32 The Haitian Revolution https://archive.org/details/moderncaribbean0000unse/page/32/mode/1up?view=theater registration Despite the French proclamation of emancipation, the blacks sided with the Spanish who came to occupy the region.Jeremy D. Popkin Facing Racial Revolution: Eyewitness Accounts of the Haitian Insurrection 2007 University of Chicago Press 978-0-226-67582-4 252 In July 1794, Spanish forces stood by while the black troops of Jean-François massacred the French whites in Fort-Dauphin. Philippe Girard writes that genocide was openly considered as a strategy by both sides in the conflict.Girard 2005a abstract White forces sent by Napoleon Bonaparte committed massacres but were defeated before they could accomplish genocide, while an army under Jean-Jacques Dessalines, composed mainly of former slaves, was able to wipe out the white Haitian population.Girard 2005a abstract Girard describes five main factors leading to the massacre, which he describes as a genocide: (1) Haitian soldiers were influenced by the French Revolution to justify murder and large-scale massacres on ideological grounds; (2) economic interests motivated French planters to want to quell the uprising, as well as influencing former slaves to want to kill the planters and take ownership of the plantations; (3) a slave revolt had been ongoing for more than a decade, and was itself a reaction to a century of brutal colonial rule, making violent death commonplace and therefore easier to accept; (4) the massacre was a form of class warfare in which former slaves were able to take revenge against their former masters; and (5) the last stages of the war became a racial conflict pitting whites against blacks and mulattoes, in which racial hatred, dehumanization, and conspiracy theories all facilitated genocide.Girard 2005a abstract Dessalines came to power after France's defeat and subsequent evacuation from what was previously known as Saint-Domingue. In November 1803, three days after Rochambeau's forces surrendered, Dessalines ordered the execution of 800 French soldiers who had been left behind due to illness during the evacuation.Popkin 2012 137Girard 2011 319 He did guarantee the safety of the remaining white civilian population.Dayan 1998 4Shen 2008 However, Jeremy Popkin writes that statements by Dessalines such as "There are still French on the island, and still you considered yourselves free," spoke of a hostile attitude toward the remaining white minority.Popkin 2012 137 Rumors about the white population suggested that they would try to leave the country to convince foreign powers to invade and reintroduce slavery. Discussions between Dessalines and his advisers openly suggested that the white population should be put to death for the sake of national security. Whites trying to leave Haiti were prevented from doing so.Girard 2011 319 On 1 January 1804, Dessalines proclaimed Haiti an independent nation as the first modern independent Black republic.Dayan 1998 3–4 In mid-February, Dessalines told some cities (Léogâne, Jacmel, Les Cayes) to prepare for mass massacres.Girard 2011 319 On 22 February 1804, he signed a decree ordering that all whites in all cities should be put to death.Blancpain 2001, p. 7. The weapons used should be silent weapons such as knives and bayonets rather than gunfire, so that the killing could be done more quietly, and avoid warning intended victims by the sound of gunfire and thereby giving them the opportunity to escape.Dayan 1998 4 Massacre thumb|Woman killed and mutilated in the massacre with her child perishing from starvation During February and March, Dessalines traveled among the cities of Haiti to assure himself that his orders were carried out. Despite his orders, the massacres were often not carried out until he visited the cities in person.Popkin 2012 137 The course of the massacre showed an almost identical pattern in every city he visited. Before his arrival, there were only a few killings, despite his orders.Girard 2011 321–322 When Dessalines arrived, he first spoke about the atrocities committed by former white authorities, such as Rochambeau and Leclerc, after which he demanded that his orders about mass killings of the area's white population should be put into effect. Reportedly, he ordered the unwilling to take part in the killings, especially men of mixed race, so that the blame should not be placed solely on the black population.Dayan 1998 February 2012Girard 2011 321 Mass killings took place on the streets and on places outside the cities. In Port-au-Prince, only a few killings had occurred in the city despite the orders. After Dessalines arrived on 18 March, the number of killings escalated. According to a merchant captain, about 800 people were killed in the city, while about 50 survived.Girard 2011 321 On 18 April 1804, Dessalines arrived at Cap-Haïtien. Only a handful of killings had taken place there before his arrival, but the killings escalated to a massacre on the streets and outside the city after his arrival. Sources created at the time stated that 3,000 people were killed in Cap-Haïtien; Philippe Girard writes that this figure was unrealistic as in the post-evacuation of the French people the settlement had only 1,700 white people.Girard 2011 321 Before his departure from a city, Dessalines would proclaim an amnesty for all the whites who had survived in hiding during the massacre. When these people left their hiding place however, most (French) were killed as well.Girard 2011 321 ManyFebruary 2018 whites were, however, hidden and smuggled out to sea by foreigners.Girard 2011 321 However, there were notable exceptions to the ordered killings. A contingent of Polish defectors were given amnesty and granted Haitian citizenship for their renouncement of French allegiance and support of Haitian independence. Dessalines referred to the Poles as "the White Negroes of Europe", as an expression of his solidarity and gratitude.Susan Buck-Morss Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History 2009 University of Pittsburgh Press 978-0-8229-7334-8 75 ff According to historian Julia Gaffield, most of those killed were former members of the National Guard, a pro-French militia.Gaffield Julia Five myths about the Haitian Revolution https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/five-myths-about-the-haitian-revolution/2021/08/04/1cf7be4e-f3c1-11eb-a49b-d96f2dac0942_story.html The Washington Post 5 October 2024 6 August 2021 The French, who were one of the two main targets of the 1804 Haiti Massacre that Dessalines and his company specifically declared a massacre on,Girard 2005aOctober 2026 made up the overwhelming majority of the white population. Dessalines' secretary Louis Boisrond-Tonnerre complained that the declaration of independence was not aggressive enough, saying that "...we should use the skin of a white man as a parchment, his skull as an inkwell, his blood for ink, and a bayonet for a pen.",Girard 2005a 139 Dessalines later himself specifically pledged to "kill every Frenchman who soils the land of freedom with his sacrilegious presence."Girard 2005a 139 The people chosen to be killed were targeted primarily based on three criteria: "skin color, citizenship and vocation." While some whites, such as Poles and Germans who were granted citizenship and "a few non-French veterans and American merchants, along with some useful professionals such as priests and doctors" were spared, political affiliation was not considered.Girard 2005a 140 The white victims were almost entirely French, commensurate with their share in the white population of Haiti. About his targets of the massacre, Dessalines' slogan exemplified his mission to eradicate the white population with the saying "Break the eggs, take out the [sic] yolk [a pun on the word 'yellow' which means both yolk and mulatto] and eat the white."Girard 2005a 156 Upper class whites were not the only target; any white of any socioeconomic status was also to be killed, including the urban poor known as petits blancs.Girard 2005a 139 During the massacre, stabbing, beheading, and disemboweling were common.Pezzullo Ralph https://books.google.com/books?id=ex-McfiTKWgC Plunging Into Haiti: Clinton, Aristide, and the Defeat of Diplomacy 2006 Univ. Press of Mississippi 978-1-60473-534-5 en 53 In parallel to the killings, plundering and rape also occurred. As elsewhere, the majority of the women were initially not killed, and the soldiers were reportedly somewhat hesitant to do so. Dessalines's advisers, however, pointed out that the white Haitians would not disappear if the women were left to give birth to white men, and after this, Dessalines ordered that the women should be killed as well, with the exception of those who agreed to marry non-white men.Girard 2011 321–322 One of the most notorious of the massacre participants was Jean Zombi, a mulatto resident of Port-au-Prince who was known for his brutality. One account describes how Zombi stopped a white man on the street, stripped him naked, and took him to the stair of the Presidential Palace, where he killed him with a dagger. Dessalines was reportedly among the spectators; he was said to be "horrified" by the episode.Dayan 1998 36 In Haitian Vodou tradition, the figure of Jean Zombi has become a prototype for the zombie.Dayan 1998 35–38Zombie February 2023 At the conclusion of the slaughter, Dessalines reportedly stated: "I will go to my grave happy. We have avenged our brothers. Haiti has become a blood-red spot on the face of the globe!" Aftermath Effects in Haiti By the end of April 1804, some 3,000 to 5,000 people had been killedGirard 2011 322 and the white Haitians were practically eradicated, excluding a select group of whites who were given amnesty. Those spared consisted of the Polish ex-soldiers who were given Haitian citizenship for helping black Haitians in fights against white colonialists; a small group of German colonists invited to the north-west region before the revolution; and a group of medical doctors and professionals.Popkin 2012 137 Reportedly, also people with connections to officers in the Haitian army were spared, as well as the women who agreed to marry non-white men.Girard 2011 322 Dessalines did not try to hide the massacre from the world.Girard 2005b 56 In an official proclamation of 8 April 1804, he stated, "We have given these true cannibals war for war, crime for crime, outrage for outrage. Yes, I have saved my country, I have avenged America."Popkin 2012 137 He referred to the massacre as an act of national authority. Dessalines regarded the elimination of the white Haitians an act of political necessity, as they were regarded as a threat to the peace between the black and the free people of color. It was also regarded as a necessary act of vengeance.Girard 2011 322 Dessalines' secretary Boisrond-Tonnerre stated, "For our declaration of independence, we should have the skin of a white man for parchment, his skull for an inkwell, his blood for ink, and a bayonet for a pen!"Independent Haiti, Library of Congress Country Studies. Dessalines was eager to assure that Haiti was not a threat to other nations. He directed efforts to establish friendly relations also to nations where slavery was still allowed.Girard 2011 326 In the 1805 constitution, all citizens were defined as "black".Girard 2011 325 The constitution also banned white men from owning land, except for people already born or born in the future to white women who were naturalized as Haitian citizens and the Germans and Poles who got Haitian citizenship.Girard 2011 3221805 Constitution of Haiti The massacre had a long-lasting effect on the view of the Haitian Revolution. It contributed to a legacy of racial hostility in Haitian society.Girard 2011 325 Girard writes in his book Paradise Lost: "Despite all of Dessalines' efforts at rationalization, the massacres were as inexcusable as they were foolish."Girard 2005b 56 Trinidadian historian C. L. R. James concurred with this view in his breakthrough work The Black Jacobins, writing that "the unfortunate country... was ruined economically, its population lacking in social culture, [and] had its difficulties doubled by this massacre". James wrote that the massacre was "not policy but revenge, and revenge has no place in politics".James C. L. R. The Black Jacobins; Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution 1989 1938 Vintage Books New York 373–374 0-679-72467-2 2nd https://archive.org/details/blackjacobinstou00jame/page/373/mode/1up?view=theater registration Philippe Girard wrote that "when the genocide was over, Haiti's white population was virtually non-existent."Girard 2005a 140 Citing Girard, Nicholas Robins and Adam Jones describe the massacre as a "subaltern genocide" in which a previously disadvantaged group used a genocide to destroy their previous oppressors.Robins Nicholas A. Adam Jones Genocides by the Oppressed: Subaltern Genocide in Theory and Practice Indiana University Press 2009 978-0-2532-2077-6 3 The Great Rebellion and the Haitian slave uprising are two examples of what we refer to as 'subaltern genocide': cases in which subaltern actors—those objectively oppressed and disempowered—adopt genocidal strategies to vanquish their oppressors. 1 See also: Jones Adam Subaltern genocide: Genocides by the oppressed The Scourge of Genocide: Essays and Reflections Routledge 2013 978-1-1350-4715-3 169 With Nicholas Robins Effect on American society Abolitionism in the United States At the time of the American Civil War, a major pretext for Southern whites, most of whom did not own slaves, to support slave owners (and ultimately fight for the Confederacy) was fear of a genocide similar to the Haitian massacre of 1804.Summers Mark Wahlgren The Ordeal of the Reunion: A New History of Reconstruction University of North Carolina Press 2014 978-1-4696-1758-9 Littlefield History of the Civil War Era 12 en-us The perceived failure of abolition in Haiti and Jamaica were explicitly referred to in Confederate discourse as a reason for secession.McCurry Stephanie Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South 2010 Harvard University Press Cambridge, Mass. 978-0-6740-4589-7 12–13 The slave revolt was a prominent theme in the discourse of Southern political leaders and had influenced U.S. public opinion since the events took place. Historian Kevin Julius writes: As abolitionists loudly proclaimed that "All men are created equal", echoes of armed slave insurrections and racial genocide sounded in Southern ears. Much of their resentment towards the abolitionists can be seen as a reaction to the events in Haiti. In the run-up to the 1860 United States presidential election, the Chief Justice of the United States Roger B. Taney wrote "I remember the horrors of St. Domingo" and said that the election "will determine whether anything like this is to be visited upon our own southern countrymen." Abolitionists recognized the strength of this argument on public opinion in both the North and South. In correspondence to the New York Times in September 1861 (during the war), an abolitionist named J. B. Lyon addressed this as a prominent argument of his opponents: We don't know any better than to imagine that emancipation would result in the utter extinction of civilization in the South, because the slave-holders, and those in their interest, have persistently told us ... and they always instance the 'horrors of St. Domingo.'Lyon J. B. What Shall be Done with the Slaves? https://www.nytimes.com/1861/09/06/archives/what-shall-be-done-with-the-slaves.html The New York Times 6 September 1861 0362-4331 2 limited Lyon argued, however, that the abolition of slavery in the various Caribbean colonies of the European empires before the 1860s showed that an end to slavery could be achieved peacefully.Shen Kona 2008-12-09 Haitian Independence, 1804–1805 https://library.brown.edu/haitihistory/11.html dead https://web.archive.org/web/20110503072149/http://library.brown.edu/haitihistory/11.html 2011-05-03 2012-02-01 History of Haiti, 1492–1805 Brown University, Department of Africana Studies en-US Academic study Girard writes that the 1804 massacres must be understood in their specific, Haitian context. He classifies the massacres as a genocide, and contrasts them with their historical counterparts. The Haitian massacres "lack the moral clarity typically associated with genocide," he says, because the French colonists had abused Black Haitians and would have carried out their own genocide had they won the conflict. Girard contrasts this with the Holocaust and other genocides perpetrated by the dominant group in a society:Haitian genocide, in contrast, was a form of revenge exacted by an oppressed group against those who dominated it, much like the Rwandan and Cambodian genocides. Girard also contrasts the overt nature of the Haitian massacres and the willingness of leadership to take responsibility for and justify the massacres with the diffusion and obfuscation of responsibility by both rank and file participants and leaders in other genocides.Girard 2005a 158-159 See also History of Haiti Parsley massacre Beheadings of Moca Anti-French sentiment Anti-white racism List of massacres in Haiti References lower-alpha 30em Sources Blancpain François https://books.google.com/books?id=tfcpLPaHRgIC Un siècle de relations financières entre Haïti et la France : 1825-1922 L'Harmattan 2001 978-2-7475-0852-0 fr Danner Mark Mark Danner Stripping Bare the Body: Politics, Violence, War Nation Books New York 2009 978-1-5685-8413-3 Joan Colin Dayan Dayan 1998 Haiti, History, and the Gods University of California Press 978-0-520-21368-5 Forde James https://books.google.com/books?id=YfgEEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA40 The Early Haitian State and the Question of Political Legitimacy: American and British Representations of Haiti, 1804—1824 2020 Springer Nature 978-3-030-52608-5 en Girard Philippe Caribbean genocide: racial war in Haiti, 1802–4 Patterns of Prejudice 2005a 39 2: Colonial Genocide 138–161 10.1080/00313220500106196 145204936 0031-322X Girard Philippe R. Paradise Lost: Haiti's Tumultuous Journey from Pearl of the Caribbean to Third World Hot Spot 2005b Palgrave Macmillan 978-1-4039-8031-1 en 10.1057/9781403980311_4 Missed Opportunities: Haiti after Independence (1804–1915) 55–75 Philippe R. Girard 2011 The Slaves Who Defeated Napoleon: Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian War of Independence 1801–1804 Tuscaloosa, Alabama en The University of Alabama Press 978-0-8173-1732-4 Julius Kevin C. The abolitionist decade, 1829-1838: a year-by-year history of early events in the antislavery movement 2004 McFarland & Co Jefferson, N.C. 0-7864-1946-6 Klävers Steffen Decolonizing Auschwitz?: Komparativ-postkoloniale Ansätze in der Holocaustforschung Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG 2019 978-3-11-060041-4 de Moses A. Dirk A. Dirk Moses https://books.google.com/books?id=pTfdAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA63 Colonialism and Genocide Stone Dan Dan Stone (historian) 2013 Routledge 978-1-317-99753-5 en Orizio Riccardo Lost White Tribes: The End of Privilege and the Last Colonials in Sri Lanka, Jamaica, Brazil, Haiti, Namibia, and Guadeloupe Simon & Schuster 2001 978-0-7432-1197-0 en Perry James Arrogant Armies: Great Military Disasters and the Generals Behind Them 2005 Edison CastleBooks Pezzullo Ralph https://books.google.com/books?id=ex-McfiTKWgC Plunging Into Haiti: Clinton, Aristide, and the Defeat of Diplomacy 2006 Univ. Press of Mississippi 978-1-60473-534-5 en Jeremy D. Popkin 2012 A Concise History of the Haitian Revolution Chicester, West Sussex en-US Wiley-Blackwell 978-1-4051-9820-2 Rogers J. A. Joel Augustus Rogers World's Great Men of Color 2010-07-06 Simon & Schuster 978-1-4516-0307-1 II en Further reading yes Popkin, Jeremy D. 18: A Survivor of Dessalines's Massacres in 1804 Facing Racial Revolution: Eyewitness Accounts of the Haitian Insurrection 2008 10.7208/chicago/9780226675855.001.0001 978-0-226-67583-1 A Brief History of Dessalines from 1825 Missionary Journal http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/haiti/history/earlyhaiti/dessalines.htm faculty.webster.edu http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/history/earlyhaiti/1805-const.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20051228150910/http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/history/earlyhaiti/1805-const.htm 28 December 2005 The 1805 Constitution of Haiti Webster University 10 December 2011 1805 Constitution of Haiti dead (Transcribed by Bob Corbett. This document is an English translation published in the New York Evening Post on July 15, 1805. This version does not include Articles 40–44. Corbett states that Henri Christophe, due to his affinity for English and his involvement with the publication, may have been the translator.) Category:Aftermath of the Haitian Revolution Category:First Empire of Haiti Category:Massacres in 1804 Category:Massacres in Haiti Category:1804 conflicts Category:Anti-French sentiment in North America Category:1804 in Haiti Category:February 1804 Category:March 1804 Category:April 1804 Category:Reprisals Category:Genocides in North America Category:Racially motivated violence against white people Category:Haiti–United States relations