The Fear of French Negroes: Transcolonial Collaboration in the Revolutionary Americas

2. “Une et indivisible?” The Struggle for Freedom in Hispaniola

49 chapter 2 “Une et indivisible?” The Struggle for Freedom in Hispaniola In 1845, a local Dominican artist published one of the first engravings in the Dominican Republic (figure 10).1 General haitiano en marcha (Haitian General on the March) is striking for several reasons. First, the image is a visual representation of what both the creole plantocracy and metropolitan authorities most dreaded during the age of the Haitian Revolution—armed, organized slaves and free people of color ready and able to protect their interests. These are the “French negroes” so feared and vilified throughout the Americas. Significantly, the general is forcibly dragging a dog behind him, dominating the animal in a way that denotes a stark reversal of the power relations in evidence in my discussion of regional canine torture. Competing transcolonial American formulations could not be more starkly drawn between these two chapters, as the project of radical antislavery embodied in Haiti was vying directly with regional proslavery efforts designed to crush it. Rather than tormented victim, the man depicted here is confident and at ease, dressed in military regalia that combine a traditional European -styled uniform with local adaptations—casual rolled-up pants and rustic sandals. He is “on the march,” proactively fighting for his well-being in a world that, until very recently, considered him chattel and accorded him no rights whatsoever. That the earliest published example of Dominican iconography is an image of a Haitian general is also telling. This speaks volumes for the centrality of the Haitian presence in nineteenth-century Dominican 50 | “Une et indivisible?” life. Rich and contradictory, the image can be read in myriad ways that provide insight into relations between the former neighboring colonies of French Saint-Domingue and Spanish Santo Domingo, territories with a complex, antagonistic history.2 This chapter highlights the figure of the Haitian military general, seen as historical personage, iconographic representation, and fictional character. I explore the ideological stakes involved in depictions of the Haitian presence in Santo Domingo—from elite anxieties about black rule to a counterculture where the general symbolized pride, strength, and hope in a new regime. Beyond being associated with military prowess, the figure was coupled with popular religiosity, specifically Vodou. Successive nineteenth-century Haitian constitutions promised the free exercise of religion, and I examine how depictions of spiritual practices have been manipulated in Hispaniola figure 10. Domingo Echavarría, General haitiano en marcha (1845). Engraving. Reproduced in La caricatura y dibujo en Santo Domingo, ed. Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi (Santo Domingo : Editora Taller, 1977). “Une et indivisible?” | 51 to signify difference—of national origin, of presumed civilization—as well as to mark belonging and resistance. As the only land militarily incorporated into the postrevolutionary Haitian state, the eastern territory allows me to show how transcolonial collaborations transformed themselves into intraisland nationalism . This was an anomalous postcolonial project in the region, both because Haiti was only the second independent country in the hemisphere at the time and because it was a black independent state in the midst of slave-holding territories. Promoting a philosophy of an island that was, in the words of Toussaint Louverture, intended to be “one and indivisible,” successive Haitian leaders redefined what had hitherto been foreign into the domestic. This institutionalized integration involved collusion between black populations on both sides of the border separating the French and Spanish colonies. Former slaves and free people of color on the French side employed transcolonial policies in order to protect their tenuous, newly proclaimed personal freedoms and national sovereignty. To the east, many people of African descent likewise embraced the Haitian cause, as the new state was their best chance to gain their freedom and be integrated into a system that recognized and protected them as equal citizens. Abolition predated the formation of the Dominican nation and served as a rallying cry for those who envisioned a new social order predicated on freedom from chattel slavery and its corresponding regulation of labor arrangements, kinship networks, and all aspects of everyday life. Moving in rough chronological order from the 1790s through the 1840s, this chapter thus examines three moments of active mobilization to unite the island and the debates about the meaning of freedom that occurred during each. The first was in 1801, when Saint-Domingue was still a “special” French colony controlled by Toussaint Louverture; the second occurred in 1805 under the leadership of Jean-Jacques Dessalines ; and the...