Haitian slaves matched Europe’s revolutionary wars in capacity and heroism

Evidence

No one could have guessed the power that was born in them when Boukman gave the signal for revolt on that stormy August night in 1791. Rebellion, war, peace, economic organization, international diplomacy, administration, they had shown their capacity… . The national struggle against Bonaparte in Spain, the burning of Moscow by the Russians that fills the histories of the period, were anticipated and excelled by the blacks and Mulattoes of the island of San Domingo. The records are there. For self-sacrifice and heroism, the men, women and children who drove out the French stand second to no fighters for independence in any place or time. And the reason was simple. They had seen at last that without independence they could not maintain their liberty. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 738

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Robinson locates the Black radical tradition’s true political consciousness as emergent from the slaves’ own experience of the Haitian revolution — the realization that without independence there can be no liberty.