France's responsibility to Haiti?

These words ought to be as familiar to students of modern history as the opening lines of the American Declaration of Independence (1776) or the Declaration of the Rights of Man from the French Revolution of 1789. After all, they embody the spirit of the world's first successful slave revolution which created the state of Haiti 200 years ago. Of course, these words - and the story of which they speak - are anything but familiar to most people. The reason for this is remarkably simple: to this day there remains something deeply threatening to the powers-that-be about the story of the enslaved blacks who rose up, laid waste to the soldiers sent by three empires, and succeeded in abolishing slavery.

In a very real sense Haiti was the world's first Vietnam, the place where imperial war machines were vanquished by an army of the oppressed. In 1796, Great Britain, the world's premier colonial power, sent its largest-ever expeditionary force - 30,000 men on nearly 100 ships - to crush the insurgent armies of ex-slaves before their example spread. Instead, Saint Domingue, as it was then usually known (although the Spanish name San Domingo was also used), became "the burial ground of Great Britain." At least 40,000 British soldiers and sailors perished in the campaign against Toussaint L'Ouverture and his forces. Reflecting on this crushing defeat, the British commander of the time observed that "men after having been told they were free, and after carrying arms, did not easily return to slavery." It was a lesson the empires refused to heed.