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Defiant Haiti: Free-Soil Runaways, Ship Seizures and the Politics of Diplomatic Non-Recognition in the Early Nineteenth Century

2014; Frank Cass & Co.; Volume: 36; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0144039x.2014.895508

1743-9523

Johnhenry Gonzalez,

Cuban History and Society

AbstractUncomfortable with the potential influence of the Haitian Revolution on their slave populations and unwilling to deal on equal terms with non-white ambassadors or heads of state, the European colonial powers and the USA refused to formally recognize Haitian governments following the country's declaration of independence in 1804. For some British slave owners and US merchants, this policy of diplomatic non-recognition came at a cost. When slaves from surrounding British colonies escaped to Haiti, and when American merchants demanded restitution for ships and cargos seized by Haitian rulers, early Haitian regimes were free to rebuff and ignore the claims of unrecognized governments. Uneasy relations between British and US governments and the early Haitian Republic offer evidence of both the relative strength and autonomy of President Jean-Pierre Boyer's régime and the nature of the emancipationist policies that made Republican Haiti an attractive destination for hundreds of fugitive slaves from surrounding islands. AcknowledgementsThe author wishes to thank Professors Julie Saville, Paul Cheney and Sam Mitrani for their feedback, as well as Cynthia Greenlee-Donnell and the Duke University AAAS Graduate Working Group.Notes[1] Thomas Geo. Swain, US Acting Commercial Agent, Prison of the City of Port-au-Prince, 14 November 1837, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Conditions in Haiti: Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Seventieth Congress (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1928) Document No. 36, 53.[2] Thos. Geo. Swain, Vice Commercial Agent, Prison, Port-au-Prince, February, 1838, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Conditions in Haiti, Doc. No. 36, 89–90.[3] Greffier Charles Garidol, Port-au-Prince 3 October 1837, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Conditions in Haiti, Doc. No. 36, 65.[4] Thomas George Swain, New York, 7 May 1838, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Conditions in Haiti, Doc. No. 36, 101.[5] General Christophe to illegible recipient 3 July 1805, Copie des lettres aux deuxieme et troisieme ans de l'independence, Mangonès Papers Microfilm Collection, Reels 69–70, University of Florida, George A. Smathers Libraries, Latin American Collection.[6] For a fine-grained analysis of the effects of warfare on the plantation economies of the early modern Atlantic see Paul Cheney, ‘A Colonial Cul de Sac: Plantation Life in Wartime Saint-Domingue, 1775–1782’, Radical History Review 115 (Winter 2013): 45–64.[7] See Linda Rupert, Creolization and Contraband: Curaçao in the Early Modern Atlantic World (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2012) and Julia Gaffield, ‘“So Many Schemes in Agitation”: The Haitian State and the Atlantic World’ (PhD diss., Duke University, 2012).[8] David Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour and National Independence in Haiti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 89–90.[9] Henry Davies by his attornies John Brice, Howel Price, To the Honorable Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress Assembled, 2 April 1830, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Conditions in Haiti, Doc. No. 36, 19.[10] Larkin Smith, Schooner Dash, Collector's Office, Norfolk, 12 September 1810, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Conditions in Haiti, Doc. No. 36, 17.[11] John Quincy Adams, ‘Government of St. Domingo, Communicated from the Secretary of State to the House of Representatives, 27 March 1820, 16th Congress 1st Session, Senate Foreign Relations Committee’, Conditions in Haiti, Doc. No. 316, 634.[12] John Dodge's Claim, Boston, 7 September 1831, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Conditions in Haiti, Doc. No. 36, 23–4.[13] Henry Davies by his attorneys John Brice, Howel Price, To the Honorable Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress Assembled, 2 April 1830, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Conditions in Haiti, Doc. No. 36, 19.[14] For more discussion of ‘masterless’ networks of communication in the early modern Atlantic see: Julius Sherrard Scott, ‘The Common Wind: Currents of Afro-American Communication in the Era of the Haitian Revolution’ (PhD diss., Duke University, 1986).[15] See Ada Ferrer, ‘Haiti, Free Soil, and Antislavery in the Revolutionary Atlantic’, American Historical Review 117 (2012): 40–66. And Richard B. Sheridan, ‘From Jamaican Slavery to Haitian Freedom: The Case of the Black Crew of the Pilot Boat, Deep Nine’, The Journal of Negro History 67, no. 4 (Winter 1982): 328–39.[16] Daniel Bascome, Acting Agent and Commander, Turks Islands, to his Excellency Sir C. Rowley Admiral and Commander in Chief of His Majesty's Fleet at Jamaica, 22 February 1821, Haiti Miscellaneous Collection, SCM 88-77, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York.[17] Edward Stevens, Massachusetts Spy, 5 March, 1800.[18] Nigel Sadler, ‘Slavery’, in A History of the Turks and Caicos Islands, ed. Dr. Carlton Mills (Oxford: Macmillan, 2009), 118–9.[19] Theodoor de Booy ‘The Turks and Caicos Islands, British West Indies’, Geographical Review 6, no. 1 (July 1918): 37–51.[20] The Turks and Caicos were and remain a tiny society. With less than a thousand square kilometres of territory, these roughly 40 islands are characterized by scarce water resources and little arable land. Today the Turks and Caicos have a population of less than 50,000 of whom lesser than a third are considered ‘Belongers’, descendants of the islands’ colonial-era residents. The majority of the residents are now ‘non-Belongers’, immigrants who have moved to the Turks and Caicos. In a historic reversal of clandestine migration in the era of slavery, a large proportion of the present day ‘non-Belongers’ who have moved to the Turks and Caicos since the recent advent of tourism are undocumented migrants from Haiti.[21] Ferrer, ‘Haiti, Free Soil’, 44.[22] Born into slavery in Bermuda in 1788, Mary Prince was brought to Turks Island in 1802 where for 10 years she toiled in the salt ponds. Prince's autobiography is notable for its convincing level of detail and for the light it sheds on many aspects of the slave experience. In her autobiography, she recounted the experience of being forcibly sold away from her mother and sisters in childhood. In one case, she obliquely referred to the indignity of being subjected to the ‘indecent’ demands of a male owner. Her work also belongs to the province of black-Atlantic political and intellectual history since she dictated her 1831 autobiography out of a personal desire to make known the sufferings of slaves and contribute to the British abolitionist movement. Perhaps the fact that Prince lived as a slave in the tiny colonies of Bermuda, Turks Island and Antigua has delayed the prominent inclusion of her autobiography alongside the more canonical slave narratives of her contemporaries Frederick Douglass and Olaudah Equiano. Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince (London: F. Westley and A.H. Davis, 1831), http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/prince/.[23] Idem.[24] Daniel Bascome, His Majesty's Acting Agent and Commander, Turks Islands, to the President and Commander in Chief of Hayti, 20 January 1821, Haiti Miscellaneous Collection, SCM 88-77, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York.[25] Joseph N. Frith, George Gibbs, James P. Cather, Turks Island, Sworn before us this 29th day of January 1821, Haiti Miscellaneous Collection, SCM 88-77, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York.[26] Daniel Bascome, His Majesty's Acting Agent and Commander, Turks Islands, to the President and Commander in Chief of Hayti, 20 January 1821, Haiti Miscellaneous Collection, SCM 88-77, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York.[27] Daniel Bascome, Acting Agent and Commander, Turks Islands, to the Commander in Chief of His Majesty's Fleet at Jamaica, 20 January 1821, Haiti Miscellaneous Collection, SCM 88-77, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York.[28] Daniel Bascome, His Majesty's Acting Agent and Commander, Turks Islands, to the President and Commander in Chief of Hayti, 20 January 1821, Haiti Miscellaneous Collection, SCM 88-77, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York.[29] Jean Pierre Boyer, Presidente d'Haiti a l'agent Commandant pour le Roi d'Angleterre aux Isles Turques, Port au Prince, le 3 Fevrier 1821, an 18, Haiti Miscellaneous Collection, SCM 88-77, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York.[30] Daniel Bascome, Acting Agent and Commander, Turks Islands, to his Excellency Sir C. Rowley Admiral and Commander in Chief of His Majesty's Fleet at Jamaica, 22 February 1821, Haiti Miscellaneous Collection, SCM 88-77, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York.[31] Rear Admiral, Commander in Chief Sir Charles Rowley, ‘Instructions for Captain Sir William S. Wiseman Bart in execution of the orders of 19th May 1821’, Haiti Miscellaneous Collection, SCM 88-77, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York. This language mirrors the rhetoric of M'Kewan who plead that Pétion return his slaves on the grounds that they were ‘marauders’ who had committed acts of piracy. Sheridan, ‘From Jamaican Slavery to Haitian Freedom’, 332–3.[32] Daniel Bascome, His Majesty's Acting Agent and Commander, Turks Islands, to the President and Commander in Chief of Hayti, 20 January 1821, Haiti Miscellaneous Collection, SCM 88-77, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York.[33] Sheridan, ‘From Jamaican Slavery to Haitian Freedom’, 337. Presumably unsatisfied with the fruits of Haitian freedom Jem, one of the fugitives from the Jamaican pilot boat Deep Nine chose to return to Jamaica after being impressed into service on a Haitian Man-of-War.[34] For the authoritative study of clandestine networks of communication during the era of the Haitian Revolution see Julius Sherrard Scott, ‘The Common Wind: Currents of Afro-American Communication in the Era of the Haitian Revolution’ (PhD diss., Duke University, 1986).[35] Sheridan, ‘From Jamaican Slavery to Haitian Freedom’, 337. After deciding to return to Jamaica, the Jamaican fugitive Jem reported to his master that before his decision to flee to Haiti, he had been in communication with Haitian mariners who informed him that if Jamaican slave pilots escaped to Haitithey would there be made officers, and each get a coffee-plantation or sugar-work, with negroes to work for them, and that there was no danger of their being brought back, as they would not be given up when once they got there.Additional informationFundingResearch at the Schomburg Library was funded by the University of Chicago History Department's Gurly Lorraine Sinkler Research Fellowship.