AHC: Mackandal's Rebellion

Jonathan Edelstein · Aug 28, 2012

All right, Haiti again. François Mackandal [1], the leader of the first big slave rebellion (1751-58): rumored at various times to be a houngan, an herbalist and a Muslim. His tactics were more or less the ones Toussaint and Dessalines used forty years later: unite the marron colonies, recruit slaves from the plantations, stage hit-and-run raids from the mountains and retreat to where the colonial garrisons couldn't find him. Eventually, however, an associate was tortured into betraying his location, the French caught and executed him, and without a leader, the rebellion petered out.

POD: He isn't caught, and continues to build his strength until his army is able to take and hold the coastal cities. Let's say this happens around 1760. France was distracted by the Seven Years' War at the time: if the local garrisons can't handle the rebellion, would the French army have the spare resources to retake the island? If not, would either Britain or France try its hand, possibly at the planters' invitation? And would General Yellow Fever fight hard enough against the invasion to let the Haitians win a war of attrition?

Just for fun, let's say they do win. This would make Haiti the first New World state rather than the second, and would also mean that the new state wouldn't be informed by the American or French revolutions. My guess is that there would be no pretense at constitutional government: instead, Mackandal would simply make himself king and rule as a warlord. Haiti would be, in broad outline, a marron colony made good. What next?

Alternatively, would a partial victory be possible - something like what happened in Jamaica and Surinam, where the Maroons forced the colonial governments to concede them land and autonomy in return for good behavior? Would the Haitian planters tolerate a semi-independent mountain colony on that scale? My gut tells me no, but stranger things have happened.

Thoughts?

_____

[1] See also this account from 1788, published in a British gentleman's magazine (starting at page 170).

wolf_brother · Aug 29, 2012

I don't really have much to contribute here other than Mann spends quite a bit of time discussing where such things did happen IOTL in his 1493; maroon tribes that set up their own separate polities apart from both the natives and the European colonizers, that were genetically mostly African in stock, but culturally claimed to be indian, all the while adopting Western customs.

Jonathan Edelstein · Aug 29, 2012

wolf_brother said:
I don't really have much to contribute here other than Mann spends quite a bit of time discussing where such things did happen IOTL in his 1493; maroon tribes that set up their own separate polities apart from both the natives and the European colonizers, that were genetically mostly African in stock, but culturally claimed to be indian, all the while adopting Western customs.

There were maroon colonies in Haiti too, as early as the 1600s; the mountain regions are virtually ideal for them. Mackandal got started by uniting several of the maroon tribes, and the name "Haiti" itself (which is of Taino origin) probably came through them. What I'm positing here, though, is for the Haitian maroon colonies to develop into something bigger, like the Palmares "republic" (actually a warlord state) of 17th-century Brazil or like the maroon nations in Jamaica and Surinam that forced the Europeans to come to terms. More than that, even - what would a maroon colony that actually kicked out the Europeans, and gained unchallenged control of a nation, look like?

A few other seeds:

1. Does a successful Haitian revolution in the 1760s accelerate the French revolution and abort the American one - i.e., if France spends itself into bankruptcy with an extended war of attrition, does it (a) lack the funds to support the North American rebels, and (b) experience an earlier financial crisis which requires the king to convoke the Estates-General?

2. What happens to the gens du couleur libres in Mackandal's state? They'd be a generation closer to France in this scenario, without as much built-up resentment of the white aristocracy; would the planters still alienate them enough to drive them to the rebel side as in OTL, or would they stick with the whites and be exiled with them? If the latter, then the new Haiti would start off with virtually no educated elite: what if anything would (or could) it do to remedy that?

3. Would Mackandal go the Toussaint/Dessalines/Christophe route and try to keep a cash-crop economy going, or would he go the Pétion route, break up the plantations and create a nation of subsistence farmers?

4. The Kreyol language: earlier and sharper differentiation from French without the educated gens du couleur, development of a West African-style oral griot literature?

Roberto · Sep 1, 2012

I like this idea. We can fairly assume that the sugar crop coming out of Haiti will diminish for some years, both during the takeover and the subsequent years of chaos as the power vacuum left by the French governors is filled. This would give a bit of an edge to the other sugar-producing colonies, especially Portugal, which needs all the help it can get in the aftermath of their earthquake.

Piracy was making a slight resurgence in the second half of the 18th century, due to jobs lost during the industrialization of manufacture. If they have a safe port of call in an independent Haiti, there could be significantly more disruption of the sea lanes, which the European powers would be hard-pressed to prevent while the Seven Years' War is raging.

Jonathan Edelstein · Sep 2, 2012

Roberto said:
I like this idea. We can fairly assume that the sugar crop coming out of Haiti will diminish for some years, both during the takeover and the subsequent years of chaos as the power vacuum left by the French governors is filled. This would give a bit of an edge to the other sugar-producing colonies, especially Portugal, which needs all the help it can get in the aftermath of their earthquake.

Not to mention Jamaica and the other British sugar islands, which had a powerful lobby in Parliament. If Haiti stops producing sugar for a while, then their share of the world market will increase. This would give them an incentive to deny Haiti to France and not to take it themselves (if they did, they'd face competition from Haitian sugar for the domestic market, which is why they opposed annexation of Martinique and Guadeloupe in OTL). So there would be a powerful interest that would want to make sure Haiti got left alone, at least for the time being.

In the medium term, though, would Haitian sugar production rise again? In OTL, several early leaders tried to keep a cash-crop economy going by subjecting peasants to labor conscription and even binding them to the plantations. The peasants, nearly all of whom were former slaves, liked this about as much as you might expect, and after Henri Christophe was overthrown, the governments stopped trying. Would Mackandal try to continue a plantation economy, or would he break up the plantations into subsistence-farming smallholdings? It's obvious which alternative the British and Portuguese sugar planters would prefer; would they have any means of persuasion?

Roberto said:
Piracy was making a slight resurgence in the second half of the 18th century, due to jobs lost during the industrialization of manufacture. If they have a safe port of call in an independent Haiti, there could be significantly more disruption of the sea lanes, which the European powers would be hard-pressed to prevent while the Seven Years' War is raging.

On the other hand, Haiti becoming a pirate base would be the one thing guaranteed to bring the powers' wrath down on them once the war is over. Mackandal would do better to keep the pirates at arm's length, although he might not be able to stop them.

Roberto · Sep 3, 2012

Based on what I've read so far, Mackandal's power principally came from an appeal to traditional values and the melting pot of African cultures that Haiti is and was. Add to that the negative experience virtually every black person in Haiti would have had with the plantations, and there's a pretty powerful impetus to adopt a subsistence way of life. Whether or not this is sustainable in the long-term is another question, but I'm sure the Haitian "magocracy" could play the European powers in the Caribbean off against each other for at least a generation, which is more than long enough to start a ripple effect across the Caribbean and other slave societies in the New World. For one, how much of the revolutionary sentiment would spread to Santo Domingo, and from there to Cuba and Puerto Rico? And would it take hold?

Another interesting option is for a religious phenomenon to be spurred by Mackandal's successes. The event has many traits that could sprout an African culture-based, anti-colonialist movement, especially Mackandal's purported Muslim background. Could a Caribbean interpretation of Islam spread as an "African" alternative option to Christianity?

Jonathan Edelstein · Sep 4, 2012

Roberto said:
Based on what I've read so far, Mackandal's power principally came from an appeal to traditional values and the melting pot of African cultures that Haiti is and was. Add to that the negative experience virtually every black person in Haiti would have had with the plantations, and there's a pretty powerful impetus to adopt a subsistence way of life. Whether or not this is sustainable in the long-term is another question

That's what eventually happened in OTL - Petion divided the southern plantations into subsistence farms in 1807, and the northern ones were broken up after Henri-Christophe was overthrown in 1820. Boyer also tried to tie peasants to their farms and force them to grow cash crops, but they responded by moving up to the mountains where they'd be left alone. The early governments' attempts to maintain a plantation economy cut very much against the grain, and eventually the peasants' resistance won out.

I suspect that, while Mackandal might try to keep some cash-crop production during the war in order to get some foreign exchange to buy weapons, his heart wouldn't really be in it, and he'd let the plantations break up after the fighting was done. This wouldn't necessarily lead to European reconquest, though, any more than it did in OTL: Haiti is fever country and the terrain is ideal for guerrilla warfare, and once independence is a done deal, the Europeans would be reluctant to waste large amounts of money and tens of thousands of men trying to reverse it. But it would lead, as in OTL, to weak governments with little source of revenue and tenuous control outside the cities, which a strong warlord could keep together but weaker successors might not.

Roberto said:
I'm sure the Haitian "magocracy" could play the European powers in the Caribbean off against each other for at least a generation, which is more than long enough to start a ripple effect across the Caribbean and other slave societies in the New World. For one, how much of the revolutionary sentiment would spread to Santo Domingo, and from there to Cuba and Puerto Rico? And would it take hold?

It's quite possible for the revolution to spread to eastern Hispaniola. The Spanish colonial presence there was small, and there was a substantial slave and free-colored population that favored Haiti in OTL (at least until the Haitians completely botched their occupation of that region). They might rise up and join Haiti, assuming that the Haitian army is in any shape to help them after a twenty years' war.

Cuba and Puerto Rico, I'm not so sure - there were slave revolts on those islands, certainly, but the Spanish colonial authorities would do their best to keep Haitians out, and Mackandal (or his successors) might be wary of doing anything that would provoke them.

Roberto said:
Another interesting option is for a religious phenomenon to be spurred by Mackandal's successes. The event has many traits that could sprout an African culture-based, anti-colonialist movement, especially Mackandal's purported Muslim background. Could a Caribbean interpretation of Islam spread as an "African" alternative option to Christianity?

That could happen. The Wikipedia article on Mackandal argues that he was most probably a houngan (Vodou priest) rather than a Muslim, but in fact there's no reason why he couldn't have been both. There were many Muslim slaves in the Americas, and some of them syncretized their religion much as the animists did (e.g., the Muslim-derived branch of Brazilian candomble, which is the focus of my main timeline). It's entirely possible that Mackandal was both a marabout and a houngan, and that his faith was a sort of syncretized Vodou Islam. If he were victorious, that might lead to Vodou developing in a different direction, with Islam rather than Christianity as a primary substrate (although some Christian survivals would remain) and with freedom from slavery as one of its key principles. This in turn would be very appealing to slaves elsewhere in the Caribbean, especially African-born slaves with Muslim backgrounds, although again the colonial authorities would do their best to keep it out.

Roberto · Sep 4, 2012

This would all be fascinating later on after the POD, but the most immediate divergence I can see is that France would not keep Haiti instead of Louisiana and Quebec. My guess would be that Quebec would become a British territory, as that's where British troops were most on the ground after the 7yW in OTL. Considering that the British let Spain get Louisiana in OTL, it can be fairly assumed that control of the Mississippi basin wasn't valued at that point, and indeed wasn't until the US gained control of it. I wonder what a bankrupted France would do with Louisana at this point in time.

Jonathan Edelstein · Sep 5, 2012

Roberto said:
This would all be fascinating later on after the POD, but the most immediate divergence I can see is that France would not keep Haiti instead of Louisiana and Quebec. My guess would be that Quebec would become a British territory, as that's where British troops were most on the ground after the 7yW in OTL. Considering that the British let Spain get Louisiana in OTL, it can be fairly assumed that control of the Mississippi basin wasn't valued at that point, and indeed wasn't until the US gained control of it. I wonder what a bankrupted France would do with Louisana at this point in time.

It's been pointed out to me off-list that the duc de Choiseul, who was chief minister of France at the time, was very keen on re-establishing and strengthening the French colonial empire after the Seven Years' War. Among other things, he poured money into a failed attempt to colonize French Guiana, in which most of the colonists died from fever. He did cede Louisiana to Spain, but he considered the Caribbean possessions much more valuable than the North American mainland.

Assuming he's still in charge, he'd probably still let Louisiana go - he was trying to flog it off even before the war ended - but on the other hand, he'd probably spend a lot of blood and treasure trying to take Haiti back. I expect this would ultimately be futile, as it was in OTL, but it would also advance France's financial troubles to the point where there could be a revolution of some kind in the early 1770s rather than the late 1780s. In that scenario, Spain could conceivably keep Louisiana: assuming that Napoleon's rise is derailed, there would be no deal for France to take the colony back. So there may ultimately be a much larger Mexico.

Hmmm, I wonder if a Haitian quagmire in the 1760s would distract France enough to save the Republic of Corsica. It's a longshot, but it would be nice.

Roberto · Sep 5, 2012

Yeah, a more aggressive France with regards to overseas affairs is an interesting premise. Could something big happen with this?

I don't really see Corsica getting off easy though, which is unfortunate.

When exactly would it make sense for a French counter-invasion of Haiti to take place? I'd think that it'd be a few years after the 7 Years' War is over, but it may very well become a matter of national pride and happen immediately afterwards.

Where else in the Caribbean could France expand, assuming that de Choiseul pushes for even more aggressive expansion than OTL?

Jonathan Edelstein · Sep 7, 2012

Roberto said:
Yeah, a more aggressive France with regards to overseas affairs is an interesting premise. Could something big happen with this?

Hmmm, not sure. Choiseul seems to have been hot for war, but was overruled by the king. I suspect the king would still veto any war plans in TTL, given the Falklands' lack of strategic importance to France. In fact, if France is involved in a costly land war in Haiti at the time, Louis XV's appetite for another major-power conflict might be even less.

Roberto said:
When exactly would it make sense for a French counter-invasion of Haiti to take place? I'd think that it'd be a few years after the 7 Years' War is over, but it may very well become a matter of national pride and happen immediately afterwards.

France would also want to give the Haitians as little time as possible to rearm and entrench themselves. My guess would be an initial rebellion from 1751 to about 1760, a respite only until 1763 or 64, and then a French invasion, seizure of the coastal cities, and a war of attrition in the mountains lasting until the early 1770s. At that point, Haiti would have endured more than 20 years of war with only brief remission, as opposed to the 13 years that the independence struggle took in OTL. It would be a very devastated country at that point, and probably one that (as we've discussed earlier) would want to retreat into subsistence farming, but it would also be an armed camp and would need some way to buy weapons. Maybe low-level coastal trade would be enough to get it what it needs, but I have my doubts.

Roberto said:
Where else in the Caribbean could France expand, assuming that de Choiseul pushes for even more aggressive expansion than OTL?

Pretty much every desirable location was taken at that point, so military expansion would be very difficult; purchase might be possible, but France might not have the money to spare. Maybe an earlier focus on Africa, although at the time, France already had all it wanted there, so maybe not.

Kaiphranos · Sep 7, 2012

Jonathan Edelstein said:
Pretty much every desirable location was taken at that point, so military expansion would be very difficult; purchase might be possible, but France might not have the money to spare. Maybe an earlier focus on Africa, although at the time, France already had all it wanted there, so maybe not.

Any chance they end up looking as far afield as China or Japan?

Roberto · Sep 8, 2012

Jonathan Edelstein said:
Hmmm, not sure. Choiseul seems to have been hot for war, but was overruled by the king. I suspect the king would still veto any war plans in TTL, given the Falklands' lack of strategic importance to France. In fact, if France is involved in a costly land war in Haiti at the time, Louis XV's appetite for another major-power conflict might be even less.

This is assuming that Choiseul doesn't have the king's permission to do his best to trump Britain at every turn. Remember, with Haiti in revolt, France has lost the biggest and most important parts of her empire (including Quebec, Lousiana, and the major holdings in India) after their last war with Perfidious Albion.

France would also want to give the Haitians as little time as possible to rearm and entrench themselves. My guess would be an initial rebellion from 1751 to about 1760, a respite only until 1763 or 64, and then a French invasion, seizure of the coastal cities, and a war of attrition in the mountains lasting until the early 1770s. At that point, Haiti would have endured more than 20 years of war with only brief remission, as opposed to the 13 years that the independence struggle took in OTL. It would be a very devastated country at that point, and probably one that (as we've discussed earlier) would want to retreat into subsistence farming, but it would also be an armed camp and would need some way to buy weapons. Maybe low-level coastal trade would be enough to get it what it needs, but I have my doubts.

How much trade can go through the Spanish side of the island? For that matter, how many Haitians would flee the generation-long conflict? Spain may be facing Mackandal (or his successor), or at least the movement he started.