A History Teacher Reacts | "The Haitian Revolution (Part 1)" by Extra Credits

[Music] hey YouTube and welcome back to another history teacher reacts video of mr. Terry's a continued my search for historical knowledge here on the Internet alright today we are going to start a new miniseries from extra history so extra history is awesome one of my favorite channels on the Internet regardless of history are not being history they have a great way of breaking down in more detail with really interesting stories some big moments in history and the most recent series that they have done and they're just wrapping it up it scenes is on the Haitian Revolution in the sort of age of revolutions that people largely talk about the mid 1700s mid to late 1700s through the early 1800s when we talk about American and French Revolution and a lot of the Latin American revolutions the Haitian Revolution is one of the most painfully overlooked ones as it is essentially a slave revolt and pretty much the most and barely only successful major slave revolts long lasting one in history and it's its history has been totally swept under the rug probably mostly because hate of of what Haiti is going to turn into which is still a very impoverished nation if it becomes some superpower it probably be a different story you know like America or France you know what I mean but its story that needs to be told so I'm really interested in going into deeper this I know quite a bit about it on the surface but now there's a lot of more intricate things that I don't know and I want to know more about so I'm hoping to learn a lot if I can add some context to it I will but as always it's important to me that if you like this original video okay go down below in the description there's gonna be a link to it and so be sure you head over there and give it a like and subscribe and give them your love over there to make sure they get credit because these guys do an awesome job and if you haven't stuff to them I recommend it no matter what okay all right with that we'll go ahead and get started so this is episode 1 of the Haitian Revolution the slave Society so let's go ahead and get started Santo mom 1791 only a year before the man had been a warrior in the Congo captured by his enemies he was sold into slavery crammed into a festering ships hold more than one out of every seven captives taken died before they ever saw western shores that that number is is so crazy because you hear about the over the you know centuries of the Atlantic slave trade of how brutal it actually was with a couple million probably dying on the journey itself with you know more you know millions more actually making it but the the treacherous journey called the Middle Passage which was the part of the network that brought slaves over from the port cities where they were traded for in the West African coast and then brought over to the Americas Americas by the to begin their their their lives of slaves the the Caribbean by the way was the place that had the most slaves that got taken there for a couple reasons one was the native population of the Americas groups at the Taino were virtually wiped out completely starting with the the Spanish with Columbus and with the you know the the lack of immunity to disease and warfare and stuff like that virtually wiped it out completely so there was no native population to to work right and African slaves were brought over there especially to to work on sugar which was the most profitable most famous crop that they were working on in the Western slave world so that's what they're coming through by the way they're talking 1791 important year because this is also in the French Revolution the beginnings of the French Revolution which is gonna have a place kind of in the Haitian Revolution as it was something going on in their colony but then more importantly in the Napoleonic years that are gonna start in about ten years after this alright talking too much early sixteen seconds in but he's one of the lucky ones who got last makes it to the plantation where he will likely die he learns this from one of the few enslaved men who speaks his language they will be raising sugarcane a dangerous and exhausting task with a harvest season of lasting from December to July half the new arrivals will die of disease before the year is out and if they try to escape they face punishments ranging from whipping to amputation the men who harvest the cane have cuts all over there by the way new narrator if I missed have I missed some series where they had a different narrator this guy is different bodies the women who process it are missing arms from the crushing machines or have massive burns from the boiling vats of sugar and those working conditions are just are just awful yeah if you if you worked on a slate or if you're one of the slaves on a sugar plantation you're probably not gonna make it without it the very least being brutally maimed from from workplace injuries and stuff like that the death rates are so high his guy says plantation owners don't bother providing food or clothing they just buy more enslaved people when the current group is worked to death because you'd think okay this can't be a good economic decision if you're a slave owner to have these slaves you buy at high prices and then they die right just from from just from that perspective but it shows you how productive and and and profitable slavery must have been that they can afford to have slaves die and just replace them rather than improve the conditions because the offset of course would be improved the working conditions right and then your slaves will be healthier and be able to live longer and stuff like that but it showed how profitable is that it was economically more beneficial just to replace the people unbelievable but not for much longer he says it is good this new arrival is a warrior because they have used by back house there's going to be a revolution alright sendin up this is a slave revolt revolution the Haitian Revolution is a unique event both an offshoot of the French Revolution and an anti-colonial struggle Haiti would become the second American nation to successfully win independence and it remained yeah just after the United States yeah slave colony into Republic to this day history's only example of enslaved people successfully rising up against their oppressors an act that stunned the world and reshuffled the political order from inspiring movements in other colonies to forcing Napoleon to sell Louisiana to the United States its effect would be profound but there is no good ending for the people that fought and died to create the world's first government led by liberated slaves for the example of Hades revolution including the violence of its rising cost other nations to do everything they could enjoy this wall metaphor the rest the world to weaken the young government policies that 200 years later still impact Haiti and contribute to its current difficulties but the roots of that instability were there from the beginning because the economy of the French colony of San Duma later known as Haiti was largely devoted to a single plant in San Duma sugar was King French settlers yeah Europeans can't grow sugar today it can't grow in Europe you have to have the the climate the warm tropical climate so it would be grown in you know in tropical climates right around there and the Caribbean especially was a place that you could do that because I had a similar climate and the African slaves were acclimated to to that type of work whereas they were not they were not very well acclimated so some of the stuff the Spanish are doing in the mining like silver mining the the Africans that they tried to have work in there weren't as good at those elevations and where especially would get sick that's where the the Spanish especially use more native populations in the mining and then you know although all the different countries that have colonies in the in the Caribbean would generally use African slaves others arrived on the island of Hispaniola via Caribbean piracy and though the island had been Columbus's first landing place in the Americas after a century as a Spanish colony it was neglected and sparsely populated by 1625 rehabing mainland Europe or mainland America was where the Spanish especially were worried too because they had conquered the Aztec empire in Mexico and the Inca Empire in western South America and we're devoting a lot of stuff to a lot of their efforts to to the mining silver mining so they could trade with Asia for those products because the the great Asia nations of places like India China they're not interested in European goods so much because the stuff they make is way better but they'll take your money you know but then importation of sugar changed everything Pirates had begun setting up agricultural settlements on the western side importing large numbers of African slaves by 1697 the division was official splitting Espanola into the French Sante mom in the West and the Spanish Santa Domingo in the East and within today you know as as in the West Haiti and then East is the Dominican Republic so you still have that split the years santa mom was a crucial part of the Atlantic trade because Santa Mon as it turned out was the ideal place to grow three products that Europe and its North American colonies couldn't get enough of the first was indigo a plant that produced a rich blue dye next was coffee the beverage of choice during the Enlightenment but mostly it was sugar a substance gene rom couldn't get enough of whether raw or converted to rum and the tiny colony of Santa ma produced about half of the coffee and sugar consumed in Europe it was by far the wealthiest colony in the Caribbean if not the world yeah that's a lot of people though maybe people know that they had a little oh I like that was among probably for the Frant I think for the French it's the gate sorry if I glossed over that but their most profitable colony of all of them that they have amazing little little island that you know produces those crops and the jewel of France's imperial crown in fact one in every 25 Frenchmen had a job supported by the Santa Mon trade but there was trouble underneath the surface of this economic Oh because Santa Mon was a slave society a place that didn't just have slavery but was structured entirely around the bloody institution and the different classes of people living in the colony all had different and overlapping grievances that would all explode once the burning fuse of revolution from America to France yes so the the you know over centuries in these colonies you get very different societies developing you get you know these people that like like to contrast with maybe Spanish colonial America where you get like peninsulares or people that were born in Europe that are there and kind of usually the top a society let me get like Creole populations which are you know European ancestry but born in like the Americas the Caribbean or something like that and then over generations of course people are gonna feel less those people are gonna feel less and less connected to their Imperial nation right and start to see more independence so what you can see would possibly the Haitian Revolution here is it maybe originally early on not just be a slave concer cuts concerned by the slave population but also Europe you know Haitians of European ancestry right they would like to see what it's more autonomy or something like that and but yeah I mean a revolution like that would likely get more support that way to the island itself so when the Revolution exploded in Santa mom it was not a single revolt but multiple different risings focused on different issues as much a civil war as a popular uprising now this gets really complicated and nuanced fast but to understand what's going to happen we have to give you a rundown of how society on Santa Mon stood in the 1780 right as revolution was starting to brew in Paris also classes we're going to look at three parts of Santa mom's population the whites the free people of color and the enslaved the white plantation owners known as the big whites lived in huge estates the city of like AB in the colonies north looked a little like Paris with street grids and a massive theater their sons and daughters dressed in the most current fashions and read newspapers brought daily from Paris in fact many of these big whites didn't even live in Santa Mon preferring rather to hold court in huge estates in France while others managed their land and finances the rich the big White's chafed under French economic policies which forbade them from diversifying the local economy or selling their product to any place but France even though British Barbados and America wanted their Goods and as the American colonies were these big whites found themselves identifying with revolutionary plantation owners like Washington and Jefferson and began to wonder if they too could win more economic freedom with a similar Declaration of Independence you see how the America revolution definitely it wasn't it did inspire a lot of these revolutions is this like domino effect you're gonna see through American Revolution French Revolution I'm Haitian Revolution the Latin American revolutions you see the domino effect that again largely came maybe maybe they saw the American Revolution as a successful experiment you know if they can do it then other people can do that below these big whites were these so-called little whites Frenchmen who arrived trying to make enough money so that they could go home rich they were the bookkeepers the plantation overseers or shopkeepers they in other words fulfilled any job that did not require physical labor these little whites resented the big whites for their money and power looked down on the enslaved as inferior and considered the colonies free people of color often richer and better educated as economic rivals yeah they don't want to sit yeah they don't want to see that like this yeah freed blacks right or what are the condom yeah and so that's gonna be ultra competitive right there too they don't want to see that they want to have a privileged status the three people of color require a bit of explanation as they were a fairly unique class to the Caribbean in the early days of the colony men outnumbered women heavily and there were few female colonists this led to a large number of French men having coerced or violently forced relations with female slaves in some cases these French men freed and married the women or freed the resulting children over time this created a class of people known as the free people of color who became a distinct economic force you see under the laws of France the free people of color were not equal they couldn't vote for instance but they could hold land and inherit property and unlike the little whites who were always taking their earnings back to France the free people of color stayed put and built multi-generational fortunes as a result many prospered often coming to own plantations with their own enslaved workforce indeed new arrivals to the colony from France often crossed the color line to marry into this group due to their wealth and local connections like the big whites they dressed in French or at least they did until a series of racist apartheid laws championed by the little whites and sweeping in after an aborted 1758 slave revolt came into force these new laws barred them from public office disallowed wearing european-style clothes and restricted where they could live official documents had to indicate that they were colored since many of these people you can see how this is set up for for I mean this there's no way this social structure could stand there's too many because you're talking you know heavily influential people that are that that feel they're out there you know they're they're not well treated and if you can get that kind of support multi-class support right revolutions tend to be far more successful the French Revolution was totally like that people of color might only have one black grandparent and could easily pass for white and Buzard sharps tract blood-quantum to figure out exactly how black someone was with the fairer system still within living memory the three people of color would see the French Revolution as an opportunity to gain legal equality as citizens though don't mistake that for abolitionism they often saw themselves as separate from the recently arrived enslaved and opposed the idea of emancipation and then there were the enslaved a group that outnumbered all the other groups tend to one and a population that died so fast due to disease mistreatment and the tortures of forced labor that a third of all enslaved people kidnapped from Africa went to santa mob recently arrived from different areas they spoke a common french creole and developed voodoo the system of religious beliefs that melded african religious elements with catholicism yeah you see that interesting that's what i think one of the interesting thing about religious histories is when you see that like the syncretism you get different beliefs that somehow find the find find the ability to reconcile their beliefs right and you might think some of that times that would be competin compatible you know it depends on the theology obviously but seeing those kind of things blend is really fascinating I think and while any open resistance and and generally speaking and I mean most religions are a blending of beliefs that came before them and from their place is kind of kind of how religions often developed was put down with violent punishments including being thrown into boiling sugar eaten alive by insects or blown up with gunpowder the enslaved developed other methods of economic sabotage in some cases they might go on strike disappearing until a particularly cruel overseer was fired you know the Americans just went there in the revolution although you're you're not seeing a slave revolt necessarily but like the Americans understood that you know when it comes to colonialism the way you hurts the imperial powers to hit them in their checkbook right and hit them in their pockets so like boy things like boycotts that's how you get the attention of these nations you know it's especially early on it's less about just like violent revolt because these nations these appear elations have massive armies that can suppress those but hit them hit them you know economically and then they'll listen and groups of escaped slaves known as Maroons lived in the mountains raiding plantations for supplies and carrying out guerrilla warfare yeah but there were also more everyday forms of resistance slow work faking illness or pretending not to understand tasks yeah it makes sense to just just don't don't uh don't don't don't follow suit they're just you know do the the very bare minimum to be able to not be punished I guess right half half-hearted labor because it proved so effective that the colonies white population were thoroughly convinced that the enslaved were stupid and lazy an attitude that caused them to fatally underestimate the threat when the revolution that makes sense that our enslaved turned their machetes to it different think their think they're like apathetic and they don't care but now this is intentional this this lack of work effort is intentional abuse because while there were divisions in class even among the enslaved they did have a unifying cause they wanted freedom and to put the plantations to the torch all right special thanks to our educational tier patrons Ahmed Zayat Turk Joseph Blaine and Dominic Valencia [Music] okay all right awesome so yeah good introduction they're glad they they brought in looks like I spent for this one mostly the the talked about the working collisions but the conditions with the social hierarchy that's the big one right because usually what we find in these these revolutions often is something wrong with the social structure like French Revolution had that with the estates right and the the in equal distribution of wealth and land and privilege and then you're seeing a similar thing here with multiple types of groups that all have grievances and if you get you know those kind of groups in majorities they can make change right so alright cool so now I guess what we're looking at in a way is we got the conditions there but good good name for the the next episode here looks like it's called the long fuse so you know what is gonna spark that and we'll see it some of the characters probably Tucson Levitt or and sorry if I butchered his name but guy that's the you know one of the one of the the major people I know what the revolution but I know there's a lot of other interesting people that are involved in I'm looking forward to looking or to learning more about that all right well this is awesome I'll definitely will get the series going here hopefully you follow along and learn a lot too and we can kind of go through a lot of this stuff together make sure it go down right now okay go down to the description click on the link to the original video give it a like and subscribing them and then come on back and we'll we'll you know talk about this some more so anyway a few other things if you haven't have to my channel load too heavy around be part of our community hit that note or a notification button as well I do a lot of live premieres and live streams it can be part of our very active community another way to interact with the channel a lot more is to join our discord server also which is down below you'll see a link down there where we have good five and a half thousand people that are members and you get all kinds of historical conversations going there thanks to everyone that has been supporting through things like patreon very appreciated thanks for doing that links to all that stuff is down below if you'd like to participate and with that we'll go ahead and end here and look out for the next video in the near future all right see you later bye [Music] you

Channel: Mr. Terry History

Views: 41,804

Keywords: react, history, haitian revolution

Id: 2xQo555U1_o

Length: 21min 59sec (1319 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 17 2020