Transcript The Haitian Rebellion and Latin American Wars of Independence

Toussaint L’Overture and El Libertador
 One
of the key moments in the spread of the
Atlantic revolutions to Latin America and the
Caribbean was the Haitian Rebellion (1791-1804)
 It was the only large-scale slave revolt to
succeed in the “New World”
 The Haitian Rebellion was inspired in large part
by the American Revolution and caused directly
by events related to the French Revolution
 The
island of Haiti, known then as Santo
Domingo, had been colonized by the Spanish
and the French
 Each ruled half of the island, whose economy
was based mainly on sugar production
 The French half was populated by a mix of
French colonists, Creoles (those of French
descent, but born in the colonies), free blacks
(known as gens de coleur), and over half a
million black slaves
 When
the French Revolution began in 1789, it
threw French Haiti into chaos, mainly
because the white colonists and freed blacks,
all of whom competed over Haiti’s sugar
economy, quarreled
 In 1791, the slaves of Haiti seized the
opportunity to rebel
 By
1793, the leader of the Haitian
Rebellion was François-Dominique
Toussaint L'Ouverture, often referred
to as the “Black Washington”
 Although a slave, L’Ouverture was
literate and well-read
 He was also a talented military
commander who won victory after
victory
 By 1798, he had not only freed all the
slaves in French Haiti, but he had
crossed into Spanish-controlled Santo
Domingo and liberated the blacks
there as well
 At
this point, L’Ouverture hoped to make Haiti a
country for free blacks
 It would be friendly to France, but also
independent
 Unfortunately for L’Ouverture, the French
government had no intention of allowing Haiti to
go free
 Over the next four years, the French debated the
Haitian question
 Then, in 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte, who had, in
1799, become leader of France, decided to send
troops to Haiti to retake it
 Ironically, while a young officer in France’s
revolutionary army, Napoleon had been admirer
of L’Ouverture, but now the two men were
political enemies
 The
French managed to capture L’Ouverture,
who was put in chains and sent back to
France, where he died in prison
 However, the French failed to conquer Haiti
 Unused to fighting in tropical conditions, the
French could not quell the Haitian rebels
 Moreover, yellow fever killed over 40,000
French troops
 Finally, in 1804, Napoleon decided to give up
the effort to reconquer Haiti
 The French went home in disgrace, and the
independent nation of Haiti was born
 The
Haitian Rebellion had the effect of helping
to inspire rebellion elsewhere in Latin America
 It also had one other far-reaching geopolitical
impact
 Because of his frustration with fighting in Haiti,
Napoleon chose to abandon the effort to
maintain major French colonies in the New
World
 Until
the failed French effort in Haiti, France
had been the master of a vast part of central
North America: the large territory known as
Louisiana, stretching from the Great Lakes to
the Mississippi Delta
 In 1803, Napoleon, seeking to rid himself of
this territory, sold it at a bargain price to the
United States
 President Thomas Jefferson accepted the
offer eagerly
 Unlike Napoleon, he recognized that the
Louisiana Purchase would give the United
States control of the North American
continent, and with it the opportunity to
become a truly powerful nation
 By
helping convince Napoleon to sell
Louisiana, the Haitian Rebellion played a
part in bringing about a major shift in global
power
 Also,
by eliminating France as a major
slaveholding power, Haitian
independence cut the ground from
under a prime argument in parliament
against abolition - that if Britain
abolished the slave trade, its rival,
France, would take it over
 In 1793, at war with France, Britain
tried to capture the island
 The attempt ended in a costly and
humiliating failure
 By forcing British troops to withdraw
in 1798, L'Ouverture showed British
officers what determined military
opponents enslaved people fighting
for their freedom could be
 Of
the more than 20,000 British soldiers sent
to the island during five years of fighting,
over 60 percent died during the conflict
 Some of the surviving officers returned home
as abolitionists
 Haitian independence, in 1804, also showed
enslaved people throughout the Caribbean
that they could fight for freedom and win
 But
the idea of independence seemed less
attractive when the first revolution in Latin
American turned slaves against their masters
 This warned the creoles in the rest of Latin
America that a political revolution might
produce dire unforeseen consequences,
making it a struggle of the poor versus the
rich
 Not
long after the Haitian Rebellion, revolution
spread to virtually all of Latin America
 From 1810 to 1825, Mexico, Central America,
and South America gained their independence
from Spain and Portugal
 As with the American Revolution, reasons for
the Latin American uprisings included a growing
sense of national identity and local resentment
of Spanish and Portuguese economic policies
 Also
important was frustration that the
European-descended, or criollo (“creole”),
upper and middle classes felt toward the
rigid social hierarchy of Latin American
societies, which prevented them from
realizing their goal of upward social and
economic mobility
 Even before the revolutions began, tensions
were brewing
 The
spark that set off the Latin
American revolutions was lit back
in Europe, by Napoleon
 As part of his campaign of
European conquest, Napoleon
invaded Portugal and Spain in 1807
and 1809
 He toppled the royal governments
there and put his own
representatives, including his
brother, in charge
 The Spanish king was place under
house arrest, while the Portuguese
royal family fled to Brazil
 These
sudden blows to the Spanish and
Portuguese monarchies had a swift and
profound impact on Latin American politics
 Brazil’s transition to independence was
relatively smooth
 Spain’s Latin American possessions, however,
rose up in rebellion
 The
most influential revolutionary was Simón
Bolívar (1783-1830), known throughout Latin
America as the “Liberator”
 A member of the Creole upper class in
Venezuela, Bolívar was inspired by the ideals of
the Enlightenment, frustrated by the
inefficiency and injustice of Spanish rule, and
personally ambitious
 In 1810, Bolívar took control of the
independence movement that was sweeping
across the northern provinces of South America:
his own Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, and
Ecuador
 Unlike
many members of the creole elite,
who rebelled against Spain for the sake of
their narrow class interests, Bolívar realized
that no revolt could succeed unless it
attracted all classes
 In a bold stroke, he promised to fight for the
rights of mixed-race Latin Americans, as well
as for the emancipation of slaves
 This pledge turned a small and largely
unsuccessful upper- and middle-class
rebellion into a mass war of independence
 The military turning point of Bolívar’s wars
came from 1819 to 1821, when he managed
to gain control over Venezuela and Colombia
 At
this juncture, Bolívar joined forces
with another nationalist, José de San
Martín, a general turned revolutionary
 San Martín had begun his uprising in 1816
 By 1820, he had freed Argentina, Chile,
Uruguay, and Paraguay
 He then turned to the north, to Bolivia,
Ecuador, and Peru, at the same time that
Bolívar was turning south, into the same
areas
 Despite certain political differences – San
Martín was more conservative than
Bolívar – the two men decided to
cooperate
 Bolívar was made the overall leader of
the movement
 By
1824 to 1825, Bolívar had cleared all Spanish
and loyalist forces out of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru
 Spanish South America was free
 In the meantime, Brazil had also become
independent
 In this case, the decision to free Brazil came from
above, rather than below
 In 1820, the King of Portugal went back to Europe
to reclaim his throne
 He left his son, Prince Pedro, as regent
 However,
the king also gave his son the
following advice: “My son, if Brazil starts to
demand independence, make sure you are
the one to proclaim it. Then make sure to
put the crown on your own head”
 Indeed, in 1822, when Brazilians began to
agitate for their freedom, Pedro declared
independence, created a constitutional
monarchy, and proclaimed himself Pedro I
 Mexico
and Central America waged wars
of independence from 1810 to 1823
 Mexico’s revolution was complicated by
the inability of various social classes to
cooperate
 The Mexican War of Independence was
begun in September 1810 by the priest,
Miguel Hidalgo, who, unfurling the flag
of the Virgin of Guadalupe, called for
revolution against Spain
 Hidalgo was killed in 1811, but his fight
was carried on by another priest, José
María Morelos
 But
Hidalgo and Morelos fought not just for
independence from Spain, but also social
justice
 They wanted equal rights for Indians,
mestizos, and slaves (whom they planned to
set free)
 They wanted constitutional rule
 Hidalgo’s and Morelos’s platform gained mass
support from the lower classes
 Unfortunately, Hidalgo’s and Morelos’s goals
were opposed not just by the Spanish, but
also many upper-class, even those who
wanted independence
 Like Hidalgo, Morelos was killed, by 1815, by
conservative Mexicans, not the Spanish
 This
meant that Mexico’s revolt had
to be carried out by the elite, not the
lower classes
 A conservative colonel, Agustín de
Iturbide, overthrew Spanish rule in
1820 to 1821
 He then tried to establish a
dictatorship, with himself as emperor
 Iturbide was quickly overthrown, and
a Mexican republic was proclaimed in
1823
 That same year, the nations of Central
America, south of Mexico, established
the United Provinces of Central
America
 Only
in the Caribbean did Spain retain any of
its American colonies
 Until its defeat by the United States in the
Spanish-American War of 1898, Spain kept
islands such as Cuba and Puerto Rico
 Shortly
before his death in 1830, Simón
Bolívar commented pessimistically about
the revolutions he had helped to make:
“We have achieved our
independence…at the expense of
everything else”
 In and of itself, freedom did not bring
about good government, social justice,
or healthy economies
 Throughout the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, Latin America
suffered from a number of long-standing
and fundamental problems
 First
and most immediate was political
breakdown
 Bolívar had hoped that Latin America would
be divided into a small number of sizable
states, governed by constitutional rule
 Almost right away, Bolívar’s large
confederations – such as Gran Colombia and
the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata –
split apart into many smaller states
 Second was the failure of constitutional rule
in many of the new states
 Thus, the third problem was the prevalence
of dictatorial rule throughout Latin America
 In addition, the United States often
interfered in the affairs of Latin America
 The
Monroe Doctrine was declared in
a few paragraphs of President James
Monroe's seventh annual message to
Congress on December 2, 1823
 Monroe warned European countries
not to interfere in the Western
Hemisphere, stating "that the
American continents. . .are
henceforth not to be considered as
subjects for future colonization by
any European powers"
 The Monroe Doctrine became a
cornerstone of future U.S. foreign
policy
 The
United States would not interfere in the
internal affairs of or the wars between
European powers
 The United States recognized and would not
interfere with existing colonies and
dependencies in the Western Hemisphere
 The Western Hemisphere was closed to future
colonization
 Any attempt by a European power to oppress
or control any nation in the Western
Hemisphere would be viewed as a hostile act
against the United States