Jean Jacques Dessalines was a Haitian nationalist and the first ruler of a free Haiti.
Background
Dessalines was born in 1758 in Cormier, a plantation near Grande Riviere du Nord, Haiti, as a slave. Dessalines was a slave on a plantation in the Plaine-du-Nord in Cormiers (now known as Cormier), near the town of Grande-Rivière-du-Nord, where he was born as Jean-Jacques Duclos, the name of his father, who adopted it from his owner. Dessalines had two brothers, Louis and Joseph Duclos, who also took the name Dessalines.
There is little detailed information on the exact origins of Jean Jacques Dessalines.
Career
In the turbulent decade between the great slave revolt of 1791 and final independence on Jan. 1, 1804, Dessalines was one of Pierre Dominique Toussaint's (the first great Haitian leader) principal lieutenants. During the period when Toussaint was operating against the mulattoes in southern Saint Domingue (later Haiti), Dessalines captured Jacmel, one of their main strongpoints, and followed up his campaign by exterminating the survivors. This ferociousness marked Dessalines throughout his career.
When Napoleon sent his brother-in-law, Captain General Charles Leclerc, to return the colony to slavery, Dessalines was the commander of the important port city of Saint-Marc. Many generals defected but not Dessalines. He and Toussaint retreated into the interior, where in March 1802 Dessalines was finally overwhelmed in the battle of Crête-à-Pierrot.
After Toussaint was captured and spirited away to France, Dessalines emerged as the principal figure of the Haitian war of independence. General Leclerc's forces had taken heavy casualties in the campaigns against the armies of ex-slaves and were now trying to cope with guerrilla tactics and, at the same time, with yellow fever. Leclerc died of the disease in November 1802. А year later Dessalines defeated Leclerc's successor, Governor General Rochambeau, in the battle of Vertieres, near the present city of Cap-Haitien.
On Jan. 1, 1804, Dessalines proclaimed Haitian independence at Gonaïves. His hatred of whites continued after Haitian independence, and he methodically butchered any white Frenchman he could find. Obsessed with fear of French reconquest, he drained off great amounts of energy and money to maintain a large standing army and to build a series of forts. Jean Jacques I was assassinated in an ambush near Port-au-Prince on Oct. 17, 1806.
Achievements
Jean-Jacques Dessalines is known for the ordering of the execution of all French people on the island. This systematic genocide is known as the 1804 Haiti massacre.
Although reviled by generations of Haitians for his autocratic ways, by the beginning of the 20th century, Dessalines began to be reassessed as an icon of Haitian nationalism. Shortly after his death, many men on the island changed their last names from their slave names to "Jean-Jacques" in honor of Dessalines. This was the subtle start to the immortalising of him. The national anthem of Haiti, La Dessalinienne, is named in his honor, as is the city of Dessalines.
Politics
He enforced a harsh regimen of plantation labor, described by the historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot as caporalisme agraire (agrarian militarism). As had Toussaint Louverture, Dessalines demanded that all blacks work either as soldiers to protect the nation or as laborers on the plantations to generate crops and income to keep the nation going. His forces were strict in enforcing this, to the extent that some blacks felt as if they were again enslaved.
Dessalines believed in the tight regulation of foreign trade, which was essential for Haiti's sugar and coffee based export economy.
Personality
Unfortunately for Haiti, Dessalines's qualities of personal courage were not matched by desperately needed tolerance, statesmanship, and magnanimity. He had himself named governor general for life, with the right to choose a successor, following this by crowning himself Emperor Jean Jacques I, but without creating a nobility. In his own words: "Moi seul, je suis noble" (Only I am noble).
Connections
His spouse was Marie-Claire Heureuse Félicité (1758–1858).
