Reading Notes W7: Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Part A

Dessalines: Liberty or Death (36-39)

  • Saint-Dominge was the western portion of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola
  • It was the jewel of the French empire in the 18th century
  • sugar, coffee, tobacco, and cotton were fertile sources because of the 500,000 slaves that produced these wealth for France (36)
  • the people of Saint-Dominge debated topics like natural rights, freedom, and equality 
  • the colony's freed blacks, white plantation owners, and the poorer white pop. began to fight among themselves over poverty and privilege
  • the slaves rised against oppression, causing a rebellion
  • the slaves launched a war that would last up to more than a decade under the leader , Toussaint L'Ouverture
  • Toussaint L'Ouverture joined the French Republic and defeated the British and the Spanish (36)
  • second-in-command, Jean-Jaques Dessalines, took charge of the revolution
  • He successfully defeated troops in 1803 and "proclaimed a new nation, which he called Haiti" and had himself crowned emperor(36)
  • He published "Liberty or Death" in June 1804
  • he had his secretary send letters about his proclamation to American newspaper publishers, urging them to publish them - it appearedin 50 diff. U.S. newspapers (36)
  • he was assassinated in 1806. but left a legacy: "on the one hand, horror at his autocratic rule and willingness to be brutal in battle, and on the other hand, admiration at his power to fight back against strong oppressors with both words and weapons" (36)
  • The Haitian national anthem is called the Desalinienne (36)
Proclamation

  • rights of man have suffered the punishment due to their crimes

Comments

  1. UnknownMarch 19, 2018 at 2:43 AM

    Hi Alissa
    I really like the format of how you take your notes you first write the quote that stood out to you then you went into a list with bullet points about the things that stood out to you in the story. This gave a good over of the main idea of the story even if you did not read the story.

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