Background
Jean-Jacques Dessalines was born in Guinea on 20 September 1758.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines was born in Guinea on 20 September 1758.
From an early age as fieldhand slave. Dessalines displayed a rebellious character. In 1792, with the colony wracked by internecine conflict—among the whites between royalists and supporters of the French Revolution, and between the whites and mulattoes demanding equal political rights—Dessalines joined a slave uprising led by a Jamaican, Boukman. Soon, the rebellious slaves controlled the North, pushing the French to the coastal towns.
Dessalines was noticed by Toussaint L’Ouverture. There began what was to prove an extremely loyal attachment of Dessalines to L’Ouverture during a period when the changing of allegiances was commonplace. Dessalines played a crucial role in Toussaint’s victories over the British, Spanish, and mulatto forces which resulted in eventual unification of the island.
Dessalines was most instrumental in defeating the mulatto general, André Rigaud, who had established an autonomous regime in the South. For this, he was made governor of the South and promoted to general. He reportedly slaughtered between 5,000 and 10,000 mulatto supporters of Rigaud. After Toussaint captured Santo Domingo, Dessalines was posted to the West and South with responsibility for defense, internal security, and restoration of the economy based on cane, coffee, cotton, and indigo production.
In 1802 Napoleon Bonaparte dispatched a military force under his brother-in-law, General Leclerc, to restore French dominion over the colony. Toussaint and his generals, Dessalines and Henri Christophe, were defeated, and Toussaint surrendered his forces and was taken to France where he died a year later. In the wake of the defeat, Dessalines joined the French forces, along with Henri Christophe.
Meanwhile the United States, in an effort to prevent restoration of French control of St. Domingue, allowed American merchants to send arms and supplies to the ex-slaves. A declaration of war against France by Great Britain prevented Bonaparte from resupplying his troops, among whom illness was taking an extremely large toll. Dessalines and mulatto commander Alexandre Petion decided on a united front against the French, launching the War of Independence. After initial successes, the combined forces, now joined by Henri Christophe, declared Dessalines the commander-in-chief. He captured Port-au-Prince on October 3, 1803, after which the French forces were quickly defeated.
Dessalines assumed the title of governor general. He rounded up and slaughtered all but a few of the whites who remained on the island, thus losing most of the country’s skilled manpower and isolating Haiti internationally.
Dessalines proclaimed himself emperor on October 8, 1804. In 1805 he invaded Santo Domingo, defeating French and Spanish troops and imposing a cruel regime which many consider the root of the cycle of hatred and hostility that has characterized the two nations of Hispaniola. Alienated from both blacks and mulattoes, isolated and shunned internationally, Dessalines was finally assassinated after an insurrection.