The declaration itself will have humongous immediate effect everywhere. It will affect various different strategies differently for the abolitionists. Some of the more radical abolitionists will be fine with this because they really want to change the system immediately. But we don't want those outside the island. And these would be people like those who would have been part of the societies for the Friends of the Black in France. This is the moment where this not only the actual declaration itself, but just the existence of Haiti will actually say to people that you cannot have slave systems. You can't have a society that imagines that people of a certain group are disenfranchised to a certain extent and actually oppressed as a natural
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Haitian Revolution. In 1791 an uprising began in the French colonial territory of St Domingue. Partly a consequence of the French Revolution and partly a backlash against the brutality of slave owners, it turned into a complex struggle involving not just the residents of the island but French, English and Spanish forces. By 1804 the former slaves had won, establishing the first independent state in Latin America and the first nation to be created as a result of a successful slave rebellion. But the revolution also created one of the world's most impoverished societies, a legacy which Haiti has struggled to escape.
Contributors
Kate Hodgson, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in French at the University of Liverpool
Tim Lockley, Reader in American Studies at the University of Warwick
Karen Salt, Fellow in History in the School of Language and Literature at the University of Aberdeen
Producer: Luke Mulhall.