Positively Good Productions

A magnitude-7.0 earthquake forcibly hit southern Haiti, 

on the afternoon of January 12, 2010. 

Cars came to a screeching halt, while in the streets 

buildings were crumbling, collapsing, and

flattening, power lines were everywhere, and pedestrians 

were left running for their lives. 

The 7.0 magnitude earthquake

was reported to be the equivalent to the energy

of several nuclear bombs.  

Haitians were reported to have been 

clawing at chunks of concrete

with bare hands and sledgehammers,

trying to free those buried alive. 

Years after the 7.3 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti,

an unsound relief effort has meant ...

the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere 

still has not fully recovered 

from the disastrous earthquake of 2010.

The Slave Rebellion of 1791

The Haitian Revolution (1791–1803) is

the period of violent conflict

in the French colony of Saint-Domingue,

leading to the elimination of slavery and the establishment

of Haiti as the first republic ruled by

people of African ancestry.

Although hundreds of rebellions occurred

in the New World during the centuries of slavery,

only the revolt on Saint-Domingue, which began in 1791,

was successful in achieving permanent freedom.

The Haitian Revolution is regarded as

a defining moment

in the history of Africans 

in the new world.

Although an independent government was created in Haiti,

its society continued to be deeply affected by the patterns

established under French colonial rule.

The French established a system of minority rule

over the illiterate poor by using violence and threats.

The racial prejudice created by colonialism and slavery

outlived them both.

The post-rebellion racial elite (referred to as mulattoes)

were descended from both Africans and white planters.

Some had received an education, served in the French

military, and even acquired land and wealth. 

Violent conflicts between white colonists and black slaves

were common in Saint-Domingue.

Bands of runaway slaves, known as maroons (marrons),

entrenched themselves in bastions in the colony's

mountains and forests, from which they harried

white-owned plantations both to secure provisions

and weaponry and to avenge themselves

against the inhabitants.

As their numbers grew, these bands,

sometimes consisting of thousands of people,

began to carry out hit-and-run attacks

throughout the colony.

This guerrilla warfare, however,

left an estimated 6,000 dead.

Many Haitians point to the maroons' attacks

as the first manifestation of a revolt against

French rule and the slaveholding system.

The attacks certainly presaged the 1791 slave rebellion,

which evolved into the Haitian Revolution.

They also marked the beginning

of a martial tradition for blacks,

just as service in the colonial militia had done

for the gens de couleur.

The arrangement that enabled the whites

and the landed gens de couleur to preserve the stability

of the slaveholding system was unstable.

In an economic sense, the system worked for both groups.

The gens de couleur, however, had aspirations beyond the

accumulation of goods.

They desired equality with white colonists,

and many of them desired power.

The events set in motion in 1789 by the French Revolution

shook up, and eventually shattered, the arrangement.

The National Assembly in Paris

required the white Colonial Assembly to grant suffrage

to the landed and tax-paying gens de couleur.

(The white colonists had had a history

of ignoring French efforts to improve the lot of the black

and the mulatto populations.)

A slave rebellion of 1791 finally toppled the colony. 

Launched in August of that year, the revolt represented 

the culmination of a protracted conspiracy among black

 leaders.  Accounts of the rebellion describe widespread

torching of property, fields, factories, and anything else

that belonged to, or served, slaveholders. The inferno is

said to have burned almost continuously for months.

 Reprisals against nonwhites were swift and every bit as

brutal as the atrocities committed by the slaves. Although 

outnumbered, the inhabitants of Le Cap (the local 

diminutive for Cap Français) were well-armed and 

prepared to defend themselves against the tens of 

thousands of blacks who descended upon the port 

city. The rebellion left an estimated 10,000 blacks and 

2,000 whites dead and more than 1,000 plantations sacked 

and razed.

Even though it failed, the slave rebellion at Cap Français

 set in motion events that culminated in the Haitian

 Revolution.  Sentiment in the National Assembly

 vacillated, but it finally favored the enfranchisement of

gens de couleur and the enforcement of equal rights.

Whites, who had had little respect for royal governance in 

the past, now rallied behind the Bourbons and rejected the 

radical egalitarian notions of the French revolutionaries. 

Commissioners from the French Republic, dispatched in 

1792 to Saint-Domingue, pledged their limited support to 

the gens de couleur in the midst of an increasingly 

anarchic situation. In various regions of the colony, black 

slaves rebelled against white colonists, mulattoes battled 

white levies, and black royalists opposed both whites and 

mulattoes. Foreign interventionists found these unstable 

conditions irresistible; Spanish and British involvement in 

the unrest in Saint-Domingue opened yet another chapter 

in the revolution.

On January 1, 1804, Haiti proclaimed its independence. 

Through this action, it became the second independent 

state in the Western Hemisphere and the first free black 

republic in the world. Haiti's uniqueness attracted much 

attention and symbolized the aspirations of enslaved and 

exploited peoples around the globe. Nonetheless, Haitians 

made no overt effort to inspire, to support, or to aid slave 

rebellions similar to their own because they feared that the 

great powers would take renewed action against them. For 

the sake of national survival, nonintervention became a 

Haitian credo..

 Haiti, is the poorest country

in the Western Hemisphere with 80% of the people

below the UN poverty line

(for singles: less than $1/day income).

• 
  
  • The unemployment rate is hard to measure,                      
  •  but it is at least 66%.
  •  
  • The highest source sets the median income at                    
  • $160/year, i.e. less than 50 cents a day. The average          
  • income is at most around $480/year.
  •  
  • There are many sources putting these numbers at              
  • about half these values.
  • 
    
  • There is a highly inadequate supply of potable water.
  • 
    
  • Their language is (Haitian) Creole; more educated            
  • people know French.
  • 
    
  • Haiti gained independence from France on Jan 1,             
  • 1804.
  • 
    
  • The population is 8.9 million people. 
  • 
    
  • The median age is 18.5 years, that means half the              
  • people are adults and the other half are children. 
  • 
    
  • Life expectancy is 57.5 years.