25. Fighting For the King?
In 1791, Haiti’s sugar country was the world’s most profitable real estate patch. Seemingly overnight, the sugar country was reduced to a smoldering and blood-drenched wilderness. Within weeks, the slaves had killed over 4,000 whites, burned at least 180 sugar plantations, 900 coffee plantations, numerous indigo plantations, and inflicted millions of francs in damages.
Early in the uprising, the rebels did not demand independence from France, but only their freedom from slavery. Many rebels mistakenly believed that King Louis XVI had issued a decree freeing the slaves, but that the island’s governor and whites had wrongfully suppressed the royal proclamation. Thus the slaves initially articulated their uprising as a fight on behalf of the French king, against a corrupt colonial governor and white settlers who refused to implement a royal decree freeing the slaves.