history essay

2. Explain: “the propagandists of the time claimed that however cruel was the slave traffic, the African slave in America was happier than in his own African civilization. Ours, too, is an age of propaganda. We excel our ancestors only in system and organization: they lied as fluently and as brazenly” (pp. 6-7)

3. What did slave-trade Christianity look like (p. 9)?

4. Explain: “they remained, despite their black skins and curly hair, quite invincibly human beings” (p. 11).

5. Why wasn’t Louis XIV’s ‘Negro Code’ effective in guaranteeing humane treatment of slaves (p. 12)?

6. Why did slave owners ban abortion among enslaved women (p. 13)? Was this successful in terms of keeping up the number of slaves?

7. Why compare the conditions of workers in France to those of slaves in San Domingo (p. 14)?

8. How did European colonists justify their treatment of slaves (p. 17)? Why did they need to?

9. Why deny slaves all forms of education (p. 17)?

10. Explain: “but one does not need education or encouragement to cherish a dream of freedom” (p. 18).

11. Explain: “the leaders of a revolution are usually those who have been able to profit by the cultural advantages of the system they are attacking” (p. 19).

12. Why was the Maroon leader, Mackandal, burned alive (p. 21)?

13. Explain: “an uninstructed mass, feeling its way to revolution, usually begins by terrorism” (p. 21).

14. Explain: “men make their own history, and the black Jacobins of San Domingo were to make history which would alter the fate of millions of men and shift the economic currents of three continents” (p. 25).

15. Explain: “town life is the nurse of civilization” (p. 31).

16. Define: mulatto, big white, small white, poor white (our “white trash”).

17. Explain: “for whatever a man’s origin, record or character, here his white skin made him a person of quality” (p. 33).

18. What did white barbers do in San Domingo (p. 33)?

19. Explain: “this was the type for whom race prejudice was more important than even the possession of slaves, of which they held few. The distinction between a white man and a man of color was for them fundamental. It was their all. In defense of it they would bring down the whole of their world” (p. 34).

20. Explain: “but most of the small whites were a rabble and filled no important function in the economy of the colony” (p. 36).

21. Why did San Domingo legislators start promulgating laws to control mulattoes—up to and including “a free man of color who struck a white man, whatever his station in life, was to have his right arm cut off” (pp. 37-38)?

22. How did mulattoes become an economic problem for the whites of San Domingo (p. 39)?

23. Why would black slaves and mulattoes hate each other (p 43)?

24. Explain: “it all reads like a cross between a nightmare and a bad joke. But these distinctions still exercise their influence in the West Indies today” (p. 43)

25. Explain: “Prosperity is not a moral question and the justification of San Domingo was its prosperity. Never for centuries had the Western world known such economic progress… in no portion of the globe did its surface in proportion to its dimensions yield so much wealth as the colony of San Domingo” (pp. 45-46).

26. Explain: “the history of liberty in France and of slave emancipation in San Domingo is one and indivisible” (p. 61).

27. How were San Domingo slave gangs “closer to a modern proletariat than any group of workers in existence at the time” (p. 86) and why is this important?

28. Explain: “but these whites despised the slave too much to believe them capable of organizing a mass movement on a grand scale” (p. 87).

29. Explain: “like the peasants in the Jacquerie or the Luddite wreckers, they were seeking their salvation in the most obvious way, the destruction of what they knew was the cause of their suffering” (p. 88)

30. Explain: “for two centuries the higher civilization had shown them that power was used for wreaking your will on those whom you controlled. Now that they held power they did as they had been taught” (p. 88).

31. Explain: “men who, by sheer ability and character, finds themselves occupying positions usually reserved for persons of a different upbringing, education, and class, usually perform those duties with exceptional care and devoted labor” (p. 91).

32. Explain: “personal industry, social morality, public education, religious toleration, free trade, civic pride, racial equality… he sought to lift the people to some understanding of the duties and responsibilities of freedom and citizenship” (p. 247).

33. Why would Toussaint often say “that distances of rank had no place outside the public service” (p. 248)?

34. Explain: “but for the revolution, this extraordinary man and his band of gifted associates would have lived their lives as slaves, serving the commonplace creatures who owned them, standing barefooted and in rags to watch inflated little governors and mediocre officials from Europe pass by, as many a talented African stands in Africa to-day [written in 1938]” (p. 265).

35. Explain: “why do you burn everything? asked a French officer of a prisoner. We have a right to burn what we cultivate because a man has a right to dispose of his own labor, was the reply of this unknown anarchist” (p. 361).

36. Explain: “you do not know how sweet it is to die for liberty” (p. 361).

37. What does James’ prologue do, in terms of introducing and framing the rest of the book?

38. What have you heard about Voodoo before? Does it surprise you that one of the basic tenants is to “swear to destroy the whites and all that they possess; let us die rather than fail to keep this vow” (p. 18)?

39. Compare the “slave dream” of self-emancipation via entrepreneurial enterprise to the “American Dream”.

40. Why would Enlightenment thinkers make anti-slavery outbursts which “neither then nor now have carried weight” (p. 24)? How was abolition not a solution to the problems of colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism? How can the bourgeoisie, whose power is based on the capital accumulated through an exploitative colonial economy, really criticize the source of their own power?

41. Why would James want to recenter global history to make Haiti (and black people) a crux of historical change on the world stage?

42. What was life like for white colonials in San Domingo? What did their indulgent lifestyles do to them as human beings (pp. 29-31)?

43. Explain: “shortly before the revolution there was also appointed a council of the richest and most powerful of the whites who were supposed to represent local opinion” (p. 35)—does this sound like boards of directors, trustees, and regents today?

44. Can you imagine dividing “the offspring of white and black and intermediate shades in 128 classes” (p. 38)? How different is this from the One-drop rule (i.e., one drop of “black blood” means you are black by definition)?

45. San Domingo colonial culture recognized such racial terms as quarton, marabou, sacatra, and sang-mêlé (the last meaning 1/128th black). Can you imagine believing that you could look at a human being and see these categories directly with your eyes?

46. Does it surprise you that Revolutionary France itself had relatively little skin tone prejudice (e.g., Alexandre Dumas, of Three Musketeers fame, was a quadroon/quarton with a black Caribbean grandmother)?

47. How did the Mercantile system of “Free Trade” actually work in history and what does this have to do with looking “upon colonies as existing exclusively for the profit of the metropolis” (p. 46)?

48. James argues that the true historical reason for abolition was the British government (after it lost its US colonies) trying to destroy French commerce in the Caribbean—so, really, it was profit motive and trade war and not humanitarian impulses driving the movement (alas, Wilberforce steps down). Comment.

49. Did you already know that San Domingo was “the most profitable colony the world has ever known” (p. 57)? Why or why not?

50. Why did freed San Domingo slaves want education first and foremost (p. 195)?

51. How much did you learn about Toussaint L’Ouverture and the Haitian Revolution in your K-12 education? Why do you think that this was so?