A People's History Of Haiti w/ Pascal Robert

It is difficult to understand what is currently happening in Haiti, without knowing its full history. Pascal Roberts gives us an overview of how Haiti went from the most valuable of French colonies to the second republic in the western hemisphere.

We stream our live show every day at 12 PM ET.

We need your help to keep providing free videos! Support the Majority Report's video content by going to

Watch the Majority Report live MF at 12 p.m. EST at youtube.com/samseder or listen via daily podcast at

Download our FREE app

SUPPORT the show by becoming a member

We Have Merch!!!

LIKE us on Facebook

FOLLOW us on Twitter

SUBSCRIBE to us on YouTube

Pascal Roberts: Basically do you understand the situation relative to Haiti is to put Haiti's revolutionary independence struggle that started in 1791 in the context of its proximity to the US history. When the Haitian revolution started in 1791 George Washington was president of the United States. So we have to understand in relative relativity to these two factors that the importance of Haiti to the development of the United States in the 19th century and even after its initial founding was very very important. Because prior to Haiti's independence the republic was called Saint-Domingue, under the auspices of control of the French. Haiti was the colony was actually more valuable to the French than all 13 colonies were that were of value to the British because the trade-in sugar particularly sugar coffee tobacco but particularly sugar and rum made it one of if not the most valuable colonies in the slave plantation system that existed in the western hemisphere. So one of the things you have to understand as well is that contrary to this in the consciousness of a lot of people who look at slavery in the American context as being so brutal so horrible, the French plantation system in Haiti was absolutely egregious. If any of you I'm sure you guys have read Black Jacobins, which is a book I have some issues with for various problems, they would do things like bury slaves and sand and put molasses on their heads and have maggots and ants eat at their face they will put the gun powder in the anal orifices of Africans who were rebellious that literally had them explode. The type of tortures that the French would engage in with the African plantations Africans, on the plantation, was absolutely brutal beyond words. So much so that the average life expectancy of an African slave who was brought to the island as a young adult or an adult would be no more than five to seven years. So, in other words, you bring an 18-year-old African slave to Haiti at best he's going to live to maybe what 25 26 and he's going to die. And one of the reasons why the French did not care about that is if you read actually french writings they would say things like "the shores of Africa are always generous". they basically believed that they could just keep coming in and importing and importing and importing more and more Africans and if they died like flies it didn't make a difference that was fine. so much so that in several of the other colonies because of the rebellious nature of these Africans on these plantations were a little bit leery of ex importing such large numbers which did affect some of the American united states at a certain point in terms of its attitude towards importing Africans. so what basically happens is that in 1791 a group of mostly African slaves have a ceremony that is known as Haitian ceremonies where they basically created a united front religiously some of them were animists or Buddhists some of them were Muslim and they basically came together and decided to unify the various religious diversity that they would have had on the African continent in a kind of spiritual pact to join together to fight the French plantation owners. So they started after they had that ceremony a week later they met they started savagely just burning and killing European plantation or French plantation owners by the hundreds it kills like a couple of thousands within a week. So this this violence starts to expand and expand and expand and it's basically just guerrilla warfare. And what happens is that because the island was so valuable the French have competitors in this exploit. Don't forget the other half of the island which is now the Dominican Republic is controlled by the Spanish.