Haitian independence and the Louisiana Purchase
The Haitian Declaration of Independence sent shock waves through the Caribbean world and beyond. In this excerpt from The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History, Alexander Mikaberidze looks at how the French loss of Haiti precipitated the Louisiana Purchase and shifted the power dynamics in the Atlantic world.
More than 50,000 French soldiers, sailors, and civilians and a far greater number of black troops and civilians perished in Bonaparte’s attempt to reclaim Saint-Domingue. This marked one of the worst defeats a French army suffered during the entire revolutionary era and had profound consequences for both the island and the metropole. After their victory over the French, the black military leaders elected Dessalines “governor-general for life” and proclaimed Haitian independence on January 1, 1804. Haiti was the only nation in the world established as a result of a successful slave revolt and the first independent nation of Latin America and the Caribbean. The Haitian Declaration of Independence was only the second such act (after the American Declaration of Independence), but it was the first to assert the right of a nonwhite population to govern itself.
Dessalines’s short tenure as Haiti’s first emperor, a title he took in October 1804, was notable for his attempts to establish the new nation through a combination of revolutionary reforms, virulent xenophobia, and forced plantation labor. The new constitution proclaimed slavery “abolished forever” and asserted that all citizens, regardless of skin color, were equal in their rights. Yet the new regime also ordered the execution of Haiti’s remaining French residents and prohibited whites from owning land. Most controversially, Dessalines sought to create a militarized state, with no provisions for any legislative body to limit the power of the emperor. He retained Toussaint Louverture’s forced-labor system of agriculture, which had caused widespread grievances on the island.
The Haitian Declaration of Independence was only the second such act (after the American Declaration of Independence), but it was the first to assert the right of a nonwhite population to govern itself.
That Haiti succeeded in ending slavery and establishing a struggling but independent state sent shock waves throughout the Caribbean and helped usher in a counterrevolutionary reaction. On the neighboring islands, especially Cuba, planters exploiting the devastation of the once-thriving French colony quickly moved to fill the void left in the world market for sugar. They did so by reinforcing institutions of slavery and colonial rule, so the success of a slave revolt in Haiti meant violent entrenchment of slavery elsewhere in the region.
The failure of the Saint-Domingue expedition had immediate consequences for France, which was now deprived of its most lucrative colony and a commercial hub in the Caribbean. Furthermore, the Saint-Domingue fiasco dashed Bonaparte’s grand vision for a French colonial empire in the Atlantic. With a new war against Britain nearly unavoidable, the French government was concerned about its ability to protect its newly reclaimed Louisiana territory, a vast (and vaguely defined) area stretching from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains.
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Bonaparte realized that given the lack of firm control of Saint-Domingue, the American threats and the prospect of a renewed war with Britain meant that possession of Louisiana could become a huge liability for France. If he could sell Louisiana to the Americans, he could deny the British a potential prize in the Western Hemisphere, and not only avoid conflict with the Americans but, more important, enable the United States to be a future rival power to Britain. Bonaparte was therefore receptive to American inquiries about purchasing New Orleans. In 1803, surprising American negotiators, he instructed his minister of the treasury, François Barbé-Marbois, to offer the entire Louisiana Territory, an area of more than 800,000 square miles, for the price of $15 million ($11.25 million in cash and the cancellation of $3.75 million in debts owed by the French government). Formal negotiations commenced upon Monroe’s arrival on April 12, 1803, and continued until the signing of the agreement on May 2. The final transfer of Louisiana came on December 20, 1803.
The failure of the Saint-Domingue expedition had immediate consequences for France, which was now deprived of its most lucrative colony and a commercial hub in the Caribbean.
The Louisiana Purchase called for the transfer of American bonds to France, but the French government had no desire to hold these securities as an investment, and it could not simply float such a huge bond issue in Europe. Needing cash, Bonaparte therefore decided to exploit the British and Dutch banking systems, even though Britain and France were back at war. The Dutch banking house Hope and Company of Amsterdam and the British banking house Francis Baring and Company of London were approached with an offer to sell the stock in Britain and Holland and then transfer cash to France. These banking houses were among the largest in Europe, had close connections in the British government, and had previous experience handling American securities, all of which allowed them to successfully (and profitably) implement the scheme.
To Bonaparte, it seemed clear that the Louisiana Purchase would turn the United States into a maritime rival of Britain, one that might in time challenge British ascendancy on the seas or at least counterbalance it. That he ceded not a part but the whole of the Louisiana Territory, thereby breaking his promise to Spain, testifies to his determination to prevent British control of the Gulf, as he preferred to see it in American hands during the coming struggle. For the United States, the Louisiana Purchase marked a watershed moment “ranked in historical importance next to the Declaration of Independence and the adoption of the Constitution.” It doubled the size of the American republic and gave it the ability to control the whole of the Mississippi River and much of the Gulf Coast; it was the making of part or all of fifteen new states. The purchase created the conditions for Americans to limit the influence of foreign powers in the region, and it set into motion a pattern of expansion that radically altered the demographics of North America. The boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase were so vague that it made Manifest Destiny — the idea that the United States had both a right and a duty to own and settle these vast open spaces — almost inevitable.
Alexander Mikaberidze is Professor of European History at Louisiana State University at Shreveport, where he is also Ruth Herring Noel Endowed Chair for the Curatorship of the James Smith Noel Collection. He is the author of several books, including The Burning of Moscow: Napoleon’s Trial by Fire 1812 and The Battle of Borodino: Napoleon versus Kutuzov.
