Slave societies across the Americas watched the 13-year Haitian Revolution with opposite emotions.

Evidence

For 13 years they were all—the masters fearfully, the slaves expectantly—witnesses to the struggles between slave armies and the forces of France, Britain, Spain, and then France again. They heard some version of the gigantic Boukman, the Papaloi, whose plan for a massive revolt had been constructed in the early months of 1791 and revealed to the authorities by the abortive uprising of the slaves in Limbe in early August. They understood how the racial arrogance of the colonials had deceived them into delay, deflecting their attention to the petite blancs rabble of Le Cap François whose greed masked as revolutionary ideals had to be behind any slave insurrection with this reported scale. They were fascinated by the details of the night of lightning, wind, and rain, 22 August, when Boukman called together the slaves of the Turpin, Flaville, Clement, Tremes, and Noe plantations of the northern plain and they began the mass destruction of the objects of their oppression. They heard how quickly the rebellion had spread. Suddenly, it seemed, 100,000 angry Blacks in the North Province alone had swept the plain clean of its century-old vestiges of slavery. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 736

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader interest in the Black radical tradition’s origin and global reach.