![]() All three European nations had colonies in the Caribbean, where their control and revenues were threatened by the Haitian Revolution. During the years of warfare and changing rule, these included French, British, and Spanish forces. Haitian insurgents fought against French colonists and foreign troops in Saint-Domingue. Dessalines received his early military training from a woman whose name was either Victoria Montou or Akbaraya Tòya.ĭessalines became increasingly embittered toward both the whites and gens de couleur libres (the mixed-race residents of Saint-Domingue) in the years of conflict during the revolution. Mortality was so high that French colonial planters continued to import new slaves from Africa during the eighteenth century. This was an area of very large sugar cane plantations, where the mass of enslaved Africans lived and worked. When the slave uprising of 1791 began, it spread across the Plaine du Nord. He worked for that master for about three years. Dessalines kept this name after he gained his freedom. From then on he was called Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Still enslaved, Jean-Jacques was bought by a man with the last name of Dessalines, an affranchi or free man of color, who assigned his own surname to Jean-Jacques. He worked on Duclos's plantation until he was about 30 years old. Working in the sugarcane fields as a laborer, Dessalines rose to the rank of commandeur, or foreman. He later took the surname Dessalines, after a free man of color who had purchased him. Most slaves trafficked to Saint-Domingue were exported from west and central West Africa. The names of Jean-Jacques's parents, as well as their region of origin in Africa, are not known. His enslaved father had adopted the surname from his owner Henri Duclos. Jean-Jacques Duclos was born into slavery on Cormier, a plantation near Grande-Riviere-du-Nord, Saint-Domingue. Tensions remained with the minority of mixed-race or free people of color, who had gained some education and property during the colonial period. He granted them full citizenship under the constitution and classified them as Noir, the new ruling ethnicity. He excluded surviving Polish Legionnaires, who had defected from the French legion to become allied with the enslaved Africans and the Germans who did not take part of the slave trade. He ordered the genocidal 1804 Haiti massacre of remaining Europeans, including former slave owners, in Haiti, many of whom were not willing to live in peace with the new free Haitian state, resulting in the deaths of between 3,000 and 5,000 people. Declaring St-Domingue independent on 29 November 1803 and Haiti an independent nation on 1 January 1804, Dessalines was chosen by a council of generals to assume the office of governor-general. He defeated the French army at the Battle of Vertières on 18 November 1803. As Toussaint Louverture's principal lieutenant, he led many successful engagements, including the Battle of Crête-à-Pierrot.Īfter the capture of Toussaint Louverture in 1802, who died in prison in France, Dessalines became the leader of the revolution and Général-Chef de l' Armée Indigène on. Later he rose to become a commander in the revolt against France. ĭessalines was directly responsible for the country and under his rule, Haiti became the first country in the Americas to permanently abolish slavery.ĭessalines served as an officer in the French army when the colony was fending off Spanish and British incursions. He has been referred to as the father of the nation of Haiti. Initially regarded as governor-general, Dessalines was later named Emperor of Haiti as Jacques I (1804–1806) by generals of the Haitian Revolution Army and ruled in that capacity until being assassinated in 1806. Jean-Jacques Dessalines ( Haitian Creole: Jan-Jak Desalin French pronunciation: 20 September 1758 – 17 October 1806) was a leader of the Haitian Revolution and the first ruler of an independent Haiti under the 1805 constitution.
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