The 88 and David Minge

In 1825 David Minge (“meengee”), who must have been about 17 years-old, took all the way to Baltimore. That was some trip if you

consider that he had to get on a comfortless carriage in his Virginian North Bend plantation, cross through swampy Charles City to get to Richmond, and travel to Charlottesville, and then Manassas on very bumpy roads, to perform next a last leap over several miles of Maryland small farms and spots of wilderness before finally arriving to Baltimore. The harbor was not as attractive as it is today, but the city was almost as livable as Richmond, which he was very familiar with. So, why would he have wanted to journey all the way to Baltimore?

David was a teenager with lots of power now. He had just earned a degree from the College of William and Mary, the most reputable university in the South. David was healthy and strong—he was going to live a full life of 76 years—and was handsome and well spoken. David ancestors had been eating well since they arrived in Virginia from Wales in the 17^th Century, and were well connected with the southern high society. To anybody in t

he street he would have looked like a privileged gentry’s male in his prime, a bit humble, but well-dressed and refined, with a charming southern accent. What a catch. But he did not come to Baltimore seeking a bride nor was he looking to the liberal north for a casual tryst.

Though it was obvious from the distance that David was not like your average White male, his charm and bearing were the least of the surprises for the Anti-Slavery radical Benjamin Lundy, who a few years before had come himself all the way from Ohio to Baltimore to broaden the reach of his diehard activist paper, “The Genius of Universal Emancipation.” There was something else that was going to splash on Lundy’s face like fresh water on a desert.

David had just inherited 90 slaves in addition to lots of cultivated land in arguably the best location in Virginia: The Tidewater, where the nutrient-filled water of the James River makes a broad opening toward the sea. It was the perfect location for plantations because the land was fertile enough to plant practically anything. It was at Richmond’s waterway entrance to the ocean and thus could move along cash-crops to virtually any place in the long chain of Atlantic trade networks.

And the Tidewater region was the perfect place for plantations that depended on slave labor because there were no mountains, caverns or hiding place, but small swampy dots easily enclosed by headhunters. It was also near to one of the least cosmopolitan and most conservative cities of the union, Richmond. Whites from all social classes were engaged in imposing the social order based on race differentiation. In other words, with nowhere to escape, the enslaved had to submit or find other less intimidating forms to resist the system.

David could be cocky, then. His future could be as one of his ancestors who had served in the House of Burgesses, state assemblies, and in the Federal Government. But he came to Baltimore not to talk with commercial agents or bankers, but to visit Lundy’s unrem

arkable office, from where his paper emanated like today’s current online blogs—yes, Lundy was like an activist blogger. The question still stands: what would this young fortunate man wanted to do in Baltimore?

He had come all the way from the South to liberate the enslaved Blacks he had just inherited. Why would he do that? In what manner was he going to free them? What were the repercussions of his act?

The Great Divide: The first steps in the fabrication of the Eurocentric “me” and the non-White “other.”

It was during the third decade of the 16^th century, in the midst of the European Renaissance and of the religious Schism, which non-Catholics prefer to call The Protestant Reformation. Leo Africanus, a man that toddled the worlds of the Christian West and Africa, who was between Christianity and the Islam, published then the first modern ethnographic work about Africa. Since he knew both Europe and Africa well, and had been both Christian and Muslim, he could interpret both universes fairly well. In his effort to “explain” Africa to the European mind he emphasized the similarities: how both were not that different (though some critics have correctly made him responsible of helping in "creating" the false concept of "Africa" as a particular place).

But as the European world expanded beyond its original physical borders, and Europeans saw themselves masters of the rest, they found Africanus's description of the African person insufficiently disparate. There should be more striking differences between the Christian and the Muslim, between the civilized European and the barbaric African. The African and the European, no matter how pale the former would be, should be fundamentally distinct, different in kind, and altogether entirely dissimilar. Otherwise, how could you justify the swelling number of slaves being transported from Africa to the Americas, and some even taking residence as subservient individuals in marginal sectors of European cities? How can you call yourself a "master of equals"? That title did not ring attractive. Enter the Spanish adventurer and writer, Luis del Mármol Carvajal, with a revised edition of the Description of Africa. The first part came out in 1673 (BTW, there is no entry for Mármol in the English Wikipedia as of today).

Differently from Africanus, Mármol stressed the differences between the African, who is more African as he becomes darker, and the European, who is more European as he is more refined, Christian, and of course, lighter. In a recent article Mar Martínez Góngora tells us that Mármol helped initiate the imperialistic discourse, which Edward Said studied, that consisted in circulating a series of knowledges, real and imaginary, about the “Orient.” In other words, this is arguably our first Orientalist. I am not going to spoil the reading of this article, just to encourage you to read it. It is in Spanish, though, but a very readable one. Let me know if you would like a copy.

Mar Martínez Góngora, “El Discurso Africanista del Renacimiento en La primera parte de la descripción general de África de Luis del Mármol Carvajal,” Hispanic Review (spring 2009): 171-189.

Haiti’s Environment and Social Justice

Haiti presents us with a complicated environmental and social justice problem. Columbus marveled because of its slush and green, but as many popular films and books are displaying, brown has been replacing the green lately.

Though it is true that French colonialism exploited its agriculture as no other colonial power did in the Western Hemisphere, the intense harvesting of trees for lumber export after independence and the essential usage of domestic charcoal have been the main reasons for its depleted forests. With little industrial base Haiti had relied heavily on its woods for everything, starting with family residences, institutional buildings, to badly needed woods for export. 

Unfortunately, with a chronically exhausted central government, Haiti had not been able to follow any meaningful conservation or replanting policies. And international interventions have not helped much either. Whereas the United States occupation in neighboring Dominican Republic helped spark interest in Dominican nature conservation (one of the few positive effects it had), the U.S. occupation of Haiti did exactly the opposite. Later international intrusions like the one that wiped out the Haitian Pig population (pay attention to a similar case in Egypt and the Coptic Pigs) followed the same pattern of worsening of the peasant condition and thus of the forest conservation: the poorer the peasantry is, the poorer the forests are.  

Haitian history is also differently from most other histories in the sense that the Haitian peasantry successfully resisted (to a large extent) the seizing of their lands from large Hacendados (the elite resorted to other means for exploitation). Pétion began land redistribution, and Boyer continued it. So, one legacy from the Revolution that has persisted has been the image of the peasant with its own plot of land, which explains why Haiti did not have to go through the same profound land-reforms that other Latin American nations experienced. 

But these little plots of lands have had to be split in even smaller pieces as families grew. Moreover, with a governing class unconcerned with the peasantry (watch the Agronomist), the growing population had no other place to go, but to the city slums, while the peasant only had its plot to rely upon. The fierce grasp peasants had on their land made it even more difficult for any government to practice conservation. That the peasant relies only on its land, make our cause for action even more desperate: this is an endangered species, namely, peasants owning their own land, but losing it to environmental degradation.

Currently the lack of enough trees in Haiti is not simply affecting the current peasant economy, but it is washing away the top soil, which is essential for any type of future agriculture and sustainable ecosystem. This means that our inaction not only is affecting the people there today, but will affect the people there tomorrow. We need to help restore the forests, help create the type of conditions in which trees could survive on Haitian soil, and peasants could continue living off their land without being exploited. I feel compel to save one of the few remnants of the Haitian Revolution as well as helping prevent mass emigrations and environmental refugees.

Like most problems in the world, the Haitian environmental degradation stemmed from a combination of external and internal forces. The same type of arrangement has to bring the solution. Haitians and non-Haitians have to work in collaboration to bring an end to the environmental chaos that exists there today. But there are plenty organizations that work on Haiti, sometimes even in opposition. That is why I urge you to support an organization that its main objective is to help save the Haitian environment in cooperation with other institutions, and not in isolation.

Please, consider giving and getting involved with this organization: Reforest Haiti

Jean Pierre Boyer

This is the first draft of a piece on the Haitian President Jean Pierre Boyer. As such, it is still in pre-publication state, and should not be cited. I welcome, however, feedback and constructive cricicism in order to improve it. Dennis R. Hidalgo

Jean-Pierre Boyer (February 28, 1776- July 9, 1850), the longest serving head of state in Haiti, was President from 1818 to 1843.  Boyer personified the Creole liberal politics of the affranchis, better known as free persons of color or mulattoes, whose republican rhetoric concealed a wariness of the masses.  His ascension to the presidency stands out as one of those rare moments on the island’s history when transition to power did not result from bloody insurrection.  The international community admired Boyer for his diplomacy while the majority of Haitians endured his imposing, but erratic grip.  He exerted influence beyond Haiti by attempting to secure the ambiguous legacy of the Revolution.  This was a hostile time for the first independent black nation, a time when every single Caribbean colony, particularly the neighboring Puerto Rico, Cuba, and even the southern United States were still thriving enslaving societies.  Initially, Boyer appeared to preside over a politically stable country.  He averted impending foreign intervention, attracted a measure of international recognition, and experimented with modernizing social programs.  However, his career deteriorated as his regime sustained a number of natural disasters, political setbacks, and economic downturns.  As a result he grew insular and authoritarian.  Ultimately, Boyer’s most notable accomplishments, the French recognition and the integration of the Spanish side, helped drive his administration to the ground.  His own political class later found him insufferable, and through Charles Rivière-Hérard, deposed him on March 13, 1843.  Disempowered, Boyer escaped to Jamaica and from there into exile in France where he remained until his death in 1850.  He left a country in debt and with the promise of the Revolution unfulfilled.

Born in Port-au-Prince, Boyer was the son of a Congolese woman and a mulatto tradesman.  Like with many young mulattoes, his parents sent him to military school in France, and at sixteen, enticed by the Revolution, he enlisted in the Republican Army.  Two years later he joined Jacobin Léger-Félicité Sonthonax and Saint-Dominguan mulatto André Rigaud in their efforts to export radicalism to Saint-Domingue.  Across the ocean they met with a colony transformed by the Revolution in a conflict where blacks struggled to preserve their independence from mulattoes, royalists and foreign empires alike.  After defeat in the 1799 War of the Knives, when the mulatto army lost decisively to Toussaint Louverture in Jacmel, Boyer left for France.  His ship, however, arrived in the United States instead, seized because of a brief French-American diplomatic dispute.  During his short stay in the U.S., Quakers and Masons offered him hospitality after learning about the Masonic regalia he carried.  But, although he gave his Americans counterparts a favorable impression, U.S. racism left Boyer humiliated. He will later remember this sojourn somehow bitterly.

From Paris, Boyer enlisted in yet another Saint-Dominguean military venture. It was 1801, and Napoleon Bonaparte’s brother-in-law, Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc led it. Bonaparte had turned his attention to Louverture’s virtual independence, and Boyer embarked hoping that this time the French would recognize mulatto privileges.  A year later, with Louverture captured, but with Bonaparte’s anti-revolutionary plans exposed, Boyer did the unthinkable.  Together with other mulatto officers who had learned of the French duplicity, he joined the black resistance now led by Jean Jacques Dessalines.  In 1804, Boyer partook of the abolition of both slavery and colonial rule, even though his most pressing aspirations had been mulatto interests.  Dessalines’ 1806 assassination split the country alongside the color line.  The black general Henri Christophe now ruled the north while in the south the mulatto Alexandre Sabès Pétion led a rival state. Christophe evolved into King Henri I, and Pétion into the President of the impoverished Haitian Republic.  With little control over these events Boyer stayed at his friend Pétión’s side.

In 1818, hot in the heels of Pétion’s heartrending funeral, senators duly certified Boyer as the succeeding president. Boyer was genuinely concerned with the specter of a French invasion, and accurately recognized the Spanish side as the island most vulnerable part. He quickly began forging secret alliances with generals in the northern kingdom, and businesses in the eastern Spanish colony. His first opportunity for expansion came in 1820, after Christophe’s death.  Boyer’s supporters inside the crumbling kingdom summoned him and he easily filled the political vacuum that Christophe had left in the northern capital of Cap-Haïtien.

Not two years had passed when Boyer again expanded.  In November 1821, José Núñez de Cáceres had led the Spanish Creole elite to independence from Spain. They called their new nation “Independent State of Spanish Haiti.” The elite, however, had little influence beyond Santo Domingo.  The “Haitian Party,” which were Dominicans who had been in contact with Boyer, requested annexation to Haiti, and ultimately carried the day.  Boyer preempted his entry into Dominican territory with a deliberately tactful letter and arrived in Santo Domingo with a powerful show of force.  In February 1822, city officials not only opened the doors to Boyer, but led in the transferring of power ceremony.  Days after taking control, Boyer thwarted French filibusters off the coast of the northeastern peninsula of Samaná, justifying in this way the obligation of his occupation. It did not take long for the insecure Spanish and French elites to emigrate and leave its land behind. In just a few years Boyer had reached the apex of his political life. In both expansions he had managed to cross his army through otherwise unfriendly borders without military conflicts and conspicuous looting. This marked a contrast to previous raucous Haitian expansions.

Legend affirms that in 1818 while in deathbed, Pétion had warned General Joseph Inginac of Boyer’s latent ambitions. After Pétion’s death, however, the equable general still sided with the new president.  In fact, Inginac proved as faithful to Boyer, as Boyer had been to Pétion— but longer.  Whereas Boyer served Pétion from 1806 to 1818, Inginac was inseparable from Boyer from the start until his overthrown in 1843. Inginac left his marks of erudition in most, if not in all of the new president’s correspondence and writing. After years of debilitating civil war, Boyer had come to embody Haitians hopes of harmony and prosperity. This shows how much Boyer had inherited and learned from Pétion. He watched while in 1816 Pétión assisted Simón Bolivar and prodded him against slavery.  Like his tutor, Boyer quickly discovered the convenience of being a President-for-Life rather than a King, as oppose to Christophe, his rival to the north. Like Pétion, Boyer quickly snubbed the idea of a truly but weak democratic president. Instead, like Pétion, Boyer distributed land to win the hearts of the people.

In 1822, shortly after becoming the master of the entire island of Hispaniola Boyer launched his modernization project. He aimed to consolidate the gains of the revolution and to cast Haiti to the world as a genuine modern nation. He performed surgical land distributions designed to increase both political approval and agricultural production.  He tried to navigate an imaginary middle between allotting land for commercial cultivation and subsistence agriculture. He eliminated slavery on the east and faced off against the Church. The number of Spanish slaves had never been as high as those of the French in Saint-Domingue, but the mere existence of slavery on the island threatened Haiti’s existence.  Boyer was not alone on his stand against the Church.  Liberals throughout the hemisphere also viewed its extensive holdings, hefty salaries and cultural monopoly, as the main obstacles toward reengineering modern society.  With an unprecedented amount of land and political capital Boyer then consolidated power and redistributed land among his soldiers and peasants.  In 1824 he even sent Jonathas Granville to the U.S. to negotiate the immigration of thousands of free blacks whom he then resettled throughout the island.

The last yet most important French offensive came in 1825.  Former masters arrived exacting profits lost to the revolution. With warships bullying Haitian ports, Boyer bowed down, and accepted the colossal indemnity of 150 million francs for trading rights and official recognition. The deal opened the doors to Haitian products in France, which had yet to find eager legal buyers on the international market. Boyer’s hope was that with a loyal, happier, and more productive population at home, Haiti would finally spring out of poverty and oblivion.  And in fact, with the treaty Boyer lifted forever the French menace, but left the nation scrambling for money to pay the debt.  Boyer’s plan for revenue was also his most important legal contribution. In 1826 the Senate approved Boyer’s Rural Code, which was to transform the Haitian economy into a modern industrial agricultural society. Though abolitionists abroad hailed it as an example of Haitian ingenuity, in reality the code was a sort of liberal serfdom.  It outlawed vagrancy and allowed certain level of subsistence agriculture, but the emphasis was on keeping peasants tied to the land. The objective was to produce great quantities of cash crop for exportation.

Unforeseen circumstances took Boyer’s plans in the opposite direction when Haitian and Dominican peasants appreciated the redistribution of land, but rejected his enthusiasm for commercial agriculture. The army, which was supposed to police peasants, readily admitted failure, and retired, like the rest, to tend their plot of land instead. Production of coffee, cacao, sugar and tobacco for export plunged severely hurting the government’s coffers. Only lumber continued its exporting frenzy curtailing dramatically the number of forests even while Boyer’s government decried it. While the peasantry became the vast anti-modern sector, the commercial urban class prospered with its new trade freedom, and through a money-less economy. Tax policies meant to exploit a large agricultural production that never happened, quickly trickled down to the peasantry, which sought in turn increasing isolation from government as well as from the middling groups. The commercial class, particularly the Dominicans, presented Boyer with its most difficult opposition.  They opposed sharing the French debt and his increasing authoritarian measures. Additionally, Boyer’s diplomatic efforts yielded only minor achievements, leaving him without the international validation and trade contracts he desperately needed to stabilize his government.  Under these circumstances the French debt became such an unsettling burden that Boyer and many of his successors spent their tenures trying unsuccessfully to tackle it.

Political upheaval followed discontent toward the French debt and Rural Code.  The mood was such that in 1830 Boyer prohibited political meetings to safeguard his damaged authority. That same year a drought curtailed the nation’s agricultural production limiting even further the government’s ability to manage public works. Mounting disappointment with Boyer’s regime brewed, but without public venues the opposition submerged and fragmented. It was not until 1838 when the first significant conspiracies developed. Juan Pablo Duarte led the Dominican bourgeois opposition and helped create the secret society La Trinitaria. Haitian liberals formed The Society for the Rights of Man and Citizen. The insurgents organized, educated and waited for the most opportune moment to strike. The opening came in 1842 when a devastating earthquake shocked the entire island and revealed the extent of Boyer’s crippled and unresponsive government.  Because of isolation and the government’s inability to assist those that the earthquake have dislodged, common people perceived Boyer as cruel. In January 1843 the conspirators declared against the regime, and southern peasants supported the coup by denying food to soldiers. Without a functional army, Boyer fled the country on March 13 aboard a British schooner. A year later Dominicans declared independence and create the Dominican Republic. After 25 years of leading Haiti through most of its post-revolutionary period, Boyer spent his last days in France, the same country that facilitated his political demise.

Select Bibliography

Coupeau, Steeve. The history of Haiti. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008.

Dubois, Laurent. Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution. Harvard University Press, 2005.

Nicholls, David. From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race Colour, and National Independence in Haiti. Rutgers University Press; Revised edition, 1995)

Pons, Frank M. History of the Caribbean: Plantations, Trade, and War in the Atlantic World. Markus Wiener Publishers, 2007.

The Hidalgo Family Celebrates Earth/Arbor Day in Blacksburg, VA

Just today a friend asked me why, considering the controversy around the politics of the environment and the few but loud dissenting voices about climate change, I celebrated the arbor and earth day with my family. In short, I told him that the way I thought about history compelled me to do it, and that if I was to err I would err on the side of precaution.

To use Logic and reason rather than emotion and tradition is what we try to teach our kids. This is the same lesson that my colleagues and I try to impart when we challenge students to study the past through critical analysis, instead of habitual ways of interpreting history. Applying the same thought processes to present times should be so simple choice as to require no further thought. And yet, it is not that easy to view our lives as historical because we are frequently caught in the same web of daily contingencies as the people from the past were.

We indeed live in a historical age, as every other individual in history has lived, and taking responsibility for our actions today is in a way applying logic and reason over emotion and tradition. In scholarly jargon this is akin to the awareness of personal agency. And as students of the past we are certain that our shifting relationship with nature has always had consequences.

We study the long term effect of human actions, and understand that often historical individuals do not realize how their behavior may translate into reverberations for generations to come. But we have no excuse now: because of the long view that history affords us we do notice the cost.

The logic is that even if we did not know the future in its fullest extent we can still figure out its probabilities. If we play with fire we run the risk of getting burned. Reason, the same analytical tool we ask our students to employ, requires us to weigh our prospects carefully.

The scientific community has reached a rare consensus about the human causes of global warming—a consensus that could easily leave other disciplines green with envy. Historians, for example, have not even reached a consensus on fundamentals like the origins of modern racism, and the impact of modernity.

This is not to say that the green consensus is uniform. Most scientists are scholars, and as scholars we tend to perceive the world in complex ways. We are likely to appreciate ideas as in transition and could definitely hold opposing views. Thus, not all of the scientists that have thrown their lot with the green community necessarily think like Al Gore.

Yet, that most scientists admit that the changes in climate and the environment that we are starting to witness are largely our responsibility should move us to action, not because they are unquestionably correct, but because they may just be right.

Scientists have erred before. There was broad scientific consensus on the biological formation of races, and similar support for eugenics. Indeed, most late nineteenth century scientists believed that geography determined race and social temper.

This racialism helped them explain why races living in the southern hemisphere appeared inferior and uncivilized. These premises resulted in large part because of poor empiricism and cultural myopia. They also suspiciously collaborated with Western imperial longings of domination and preservation of the status quo. But it was the scientific practice of unrelenting skepticism in sync with political activism that successfully challenged them.

The scientific community today, however, is not advocating conservatism. In fact, climate-change scientists are launching a frontal assault on the status quo, and reformists, taking their cue from them, are again on the streets holding everyone accountable.

The underlying message resonates with that of the 19th Century abolitionists. They asked their audiences to recognize how the consumption of sugar and cotton related to slavery. Today environmentalists and social justice activists continue to draw attention to seemingly indiscernible links that may also render our society immoral. For example, they say, New Englanders should know that Colombian coal, from one of the most hazardous open pits in the world, fuels their electricity. In other words, you may not know the origins of what you consume, but that ignorance is dearly expensive and cumulative.

That we have chosen to celebrate Earth Day by planting trees and by appropriating measures that will gradually decrease our carbon footprint, should not be seen as illogical fanaticism. It is, actually, the most reasonable course of action: it would be totally reckless to have seen the possibility of disaster and not have done anything about it. If by any chance it happens that our modern way of living turns out to be harmless, and that the green community’s suggestions for change were unnecessary, nobody is hurt, and nothing terrible would have come from this movement for change. What we would have, regardless, is a more politically and socially aware community.