How Did Trouillot Remember The Haitian Revolution

Trouillot’s argument is that the Haitian revolution is ignored for a significant portion of history because it was a slave revolution. During this time, France was undergoing its revolution and enlightenment ideas were becoming central to the French assembly’s philosophical positions. The Declaration of Rights of Man did not apply to the slaves because they were black and a civilized man could never be black. Even though the Enlightenment was occurring at this time neither in America nor France was there any support for black slaves seeking self-determination. According to Trouillot, within the framework of western thought at the time a slave revolution was impossible. Trouillot defines unthinkable as “that which one cannot conceive within
They could anticipate some violence, escapes, or small revolts, but never a revolution that ended in their defeat and expulsion from the island. Such an unthinkable revolution would lead to the reexamination of “race, colonialism, and slavery in the Americas” something the French and Europeans would not allow. This was Trouillot’s thesis, that the West made the world forget the Haitian revolution because it not only questioned their ideas on race and colonialism, but it did so in an immediate way. There was nothing gradual about how slaves gained their freedom in Haiti. For a period of time the French suspected that the slaves were receiving assistance from either the Spanish or English because they could not conceive that the slaves planned and executed a revolution of this magnitude. Trouillot points out that the French believed that the black slaves were incapable of the desire of freedom. The “Haitian independence was even more difficult to gain than military victory over the forces of Napoleon” this shows that even after the revolution was won, the battle to be recognized as a state was only
This shows the importance Haiti held for the French Empire and its loss was not talked about and simply laid to rest as if it never occurred. We can see this in French literature where many of France’s great writers simply skip over or lightly mention the Haitian revolution. The Haitian revolution should have opened up the Western thought in terms of racism and colonialism, but instead its significance was too great of a deviation from their framework that they preferred to erase it from their history. Trouillot’s argument is that the Haitian revolution was significant because it went against colonialism. Those involved in the revolution were not European settlers but those the Europeans oppressed and it went against what happened in the world before and after the revolution. This can be held true as the revolutions in Spanish America all came to be from the creole class who feared a revolution like that of Haiti where those they believed to be inferior to them would come up in arms to fight for their freedom. The silencing of the revolution was the work of European imperialism and the unequal society in the