Toussaint L Ouverture Related To The Haitian Revolution

The Haitian Revolution was the only successful slave revolt recorded in human history (Rose, 2013) .Haiti, prior to the Haitian Revolution was a French colony and by all means the richest colony on the western hemisphere. (Solderlund & Briggs, 2008, p. 123) The revolution resulted in the liberation of the slave population and the creation of a black republic under the sole leadership of Jean Jacques Dessalines. The slaves were by no means united as a single army, that being so, they counted on the command of Toussaint L’Ouverture.

Toussaint, also known as Toussaint Breda and to his contemporaries as,” black Napoleon.” Toussaint was of African heritage. He gained his freedom after thirty-three years of slavery in 1776 (Bell, 2007, p. 71), by
L'Ouverture joined the insurgency equipped with the necessary knowledge required to lead the radical emancipation movement. L'Ouverture had much success as a general fighting the French and building up the new nation of Haiti. He asserts in his autobiography that," The island had attained a degree of splendor which it had never before seen. And all this – I dare to say it – was my work.” (L'Ouverture, n.d.) It is evident that Toussaint’s leadership established a functioning society out of a slave-based colonial state. Under his leadership, Haiti had a functioning economy as he focused on the agricultural production (Sublette, 2008, p. 192) which had been the state of affairs during French colonial rule when the island produced the highest amounts of sugar for Europe. Although many Haitians were angry with the unchanged economy, it worked to stabilize Haiti. (Gaffield, 2015, p. 22).General L'Ouverture was quite successful at commanding the slave armies. He was able to pressure all British forces to depart the island. L'Ouverture was able to calmly respond by arranging a diplomatic meeting and creating a resolution on the territorial boundaries, which proves his advanced diplomatic ability. He also proved advanced military ability by defending areas against opposition armies. L'Ouverture's leadership empowered the slave armies and
In 1802 L'Ouverture was imprisoned by France until his death on April 7th 1803 (Lugo-Ortiz & Rosenthal, 2013, p. 345). Thus, he was absent during the last days of the revolution. After his imprisonment, Christophe and Dessalines continued the fight and forced out the French armies of Rochambeau and Leclerc. It was Dessalines, in fact, who officially declared Haiti's independence and named the nation. L'Ouverture put in place an authoritarian government with the goal of protecting the freedom of the black population, with himself as the sole leader (Popkin, 2011, p. 90).The new government had to be able to protect the people from other revolts within the nation, as well as from invasion from other nations (Popkin, 2011, p. 91) . The fact that there were other revolts within Haiti itself clearly shows that L'Ouverture was not completely successful at achieving his goal of unity. Furthermore, In an address to the citizens of Haiti, Toussaint says, “I have learned that there are malicious ones in your midst – among whom one was just arrested – who, loving only disorder, provoke the disunity of citizens and the disorganization of the current state of affairs; who, jealous of all I’ve done for the prosperity of this colony seem to desire nothing else than seeing French blood flow.," (Louverture, 1801).This shows that the country was not unified. L'Ouverture implemented increasingly violent means to