Background
Alexandre Pétion was born on 2 April 1770 in Port-au-prince. He was the son of a wealthy French colonist and a mulatto woman.
Alexandre Pétion was born on 2 April 1770 in Port-au-prince. He was the son of a wealthy French colonist and a mulatto woman.
Like other gens de couleur libres (free people of color) with wealthy fathers, Pétion was sent to France in 1788 to be educated and study at the Military Academy in Paris.
As a youth, he worked as a blacksmith and silversmith. He enlisted in the colonial militia at the age of 18, and three years later, he joined the cause of the mulattoes against the French colonists, who were refusing to grant political equality to the mulattoes.
Under the black general Toussaint L’Ouverture, Pétion was instrumental in routing British forces from the island. Later, he joined mulatto General André Rigaud, who held the South, in an attempt to establish mulatto dominance, but after defeat by Toussaint, Pétion fled into exile in 1800.
Pétion returned to St. Domingue with French forces under General Charles Leclerc, sent in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte, in an attempt to dislodge Toussaint. Toussaint’s forces were routed, and Toussaint’s generals joined the French forces.
Soon, however, French atrocities and fear of reestablishing slavery sparked new rebellion. Pétion joined the rebel forces in October 1802. He agreed to a united front with the black general, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, against the French. The United States allowed arms and supplies to be shipped to them, while war with Great Britain prevented the French from resupplying their forces.
The colony was declared independent on January 1, 1804, under Dessalines, as governor general. The country was divided into four administrative districts, and Pétion was given jurisdiction over the west. Dessalines proclaimed himself emperor in October 1804. Problems between them stemmed partly from racial tensions between blacks and mulattoes (of whom Pétion was the acknowledged leader) and partly from Pétion’s unhappiness wiith the atrocities of the regime. The relationship further cooled with Pétion’s refusal to marry Dessalines’ daughter at the emperor’s request.
There was an uprising against Dessalines by mulatto generals in the south, including Pétion. The emperor was ambushed and assassinated on his way to quell the uprising.
The black general, Henri Christophe, was considered the acknowledged successor to Dessalines. There was strong mulatto resistance to him, however. Pétion, while immediately proclaiming Christophe provisional chief of state, devised a republican constitution that gave real power to the elected Senate, of which the mulattoes had absolute control.
Christophe gathered his army from the north and attempted to capture Port- au-Prince. Pétion’s forces managed to repulse Christophe just outside Port-au- Prince. Forced to retreat North, Christophe set up an independent regime. The assembly in Port-au-Prince then elected Pétion in Christophe’s places, as president of Haiti. This division remained until 1820, two years after Pétion’s death.
Pétion’s first allegiance was to the mulatto population. The initial two or three years of his regime were spent reversing the land policy of Toussaint and Dessalines. Lands appropriated by the state were returned to their former owners, the majority of whom were wealthy mulatto aristocrats. Moreover, a law granted payment to the original owners equal to the total value of the crops lost to them under Dessalines.
Pétion subsidized the cultivators, with the state purchasing crops to maintain acceptable price levels. Moreover, he abolished the land tax and moved to fix security of tenure through government registration of ownership and sale ot property.
Pétion also organized massive land redistribution where state land was given away: 15 acres of cultivable soil to every soldier and larger grants to officers in accordance with rank. This policy was most probably instituted because the regime was becoming increasingly hard-pressed to meet its wage commitment to the army, and the soldiers were paid off with the only thing of value available, the land seized from the old planter class.
The end result was serious decline in large-scale agriculture and tremendous drop in production of money crops as small-scale producers shifted to subsistence farming. Pétion’s efforts to encourage sugar production tailed, as cultivators refused to invest in the costly imputs needed for sugar production.
Politically, Pétion's rule was characterized by moderation and reliance on persuasion. He maintained some pretense of representative government, allowing the Senate to reelect him in 1811 and 1815. but in 1816 he was declared President for Life, the first of many to hold that title.
Despite the profound negative consequences of his policies for the economy, Pétion’s tolerant and understanding nature, his willingness to attempt to please every sector of society, his success in moderating tensions between mulattoes and blacks, and his genuine commitment to freedom all endeared him to the people. There was a genuine outpouring of sadness when he died.
