Internal, indentured and regional migration were tightly interlinked in post-emancipation Martinique by both contemporary perceptions and migrant actions. Anticipating a flight from the estates, colonial elites were committed before emancipation to constructing a replacement workforce through immigration. Indentureship was therefore a reaction to a crisis of labour relations rather than of labour supply. Such schemes also stimulated regional movements, from marronage by indentured Africans and Asians to recruitment efforts in the British West Indies. Viewed together, the three faces of post-emancipation migration reveal the continuing tension between the colony's search for coerced labour and the migrants' assertions of agency. [abstract];
Cambridge [Cambridgeshire] New York: Cambridge University Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
609 p, Dr. Watts shows how the initial European vision of a land of plenty has been replaced by an awareness of the geographic and ecological fragiliaty of the area, and explains how the exploitative agricultural systems of the colonial and recent West Indies have not adjusted to the demands of the environment. An enormous array of historical, biological and literary sources are marshalled in support of Dr Watts' analysis, which is likely to remain the standard work on the subject for many years to come.;
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
316 p., Martinique-born Afro-Caribbean psychiatrist analyzes the psychology of the colonized and their path to liberation. Bearing singular insight into the rage of colonized peoples and the role of violence in historical change, the book also attacks post-independence disenfranchisement of the masses by the elite on one hand, and inter-tribal and interfaith animosities on the other.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
261 p, Contents: The black Atlantic as a counterculture of modernity -- Masters, mistresses, slaves, and the antinomies of modernity -- "Jewels brought from bondage" : black music and the politics of authenticity -- "Cheer the weary traveller" : W.E.B. Du Bois, Germany, and the politics of (dis)placement -- "Without the consolation of tears" : Richard Wright, France, and the ambivalence of community -- "Not a story to pass on" : living memory and the slave sublime
" While the black man's paintings or carvings were considered works of the Devil, music, on the other hand, did not cause much inconvenience. The plantation owners in Cuba, for example, allowed their slaves to beat their drums and dance every evening because this showed that they were in good health and that their "ebony flesh' was fit for hard labour. Meanwhile, the slaves listened to what they heard around them. During the sixteenth century, when they were first taken to America, they assimilated Spanish ballads, songs from Portugal and even French square dancing. They discovered musical instruments unknown in their own lands and learned to play them." --The Author
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
322 p., When a small group of free men of color gathered in 1838 to celebrate the end of apprenticeship in Barbados, they spoke of emancipation as the moment of freedom for all colored people, not just the former slaves. The fact that many of these men had owned slaves themselves gives a hollow ring to their lofty pronouncements. Newton demonstrates that simply dismissing these men as hypocrites ignores the complexity of their relationship to slavery. Exploring the role of free blacks in Barbados from 1790 to 1860, Newton argues that the emancipation process transformed social relations between Afro-Barbadians and slaves and ex-slaves.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
710 p, Examines the economic history of the Caribbean in the two hundred years since the Napoleonic Wars and is the first analysis to span the whole region. Its findings challenge many long-standing assumptions about the region, and its in-depth case studies shed new light on the history of three countries in particular, namely Belize, Cuba, and Haiti"
Discusses the emergence of an Afro-Cuban aesthetic. Notes the major contributions of Cuban writers Félix Tanco, Antonio Zambrana, Nicolás Guillén, Miguel Barnet, and others to the literary movement. Remarks that these authors give us a view of Latin American history from "below the deck of a slave ship" - a view that is very different from the traditional one.;
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
289 p., Traces expressions of both aesthetic and experiential transcolonial black politics across the Caribbean world, including Hispaniola, Louisiana and the Gulf South, Jamaica, and Cuba.
Epstein, an assistant music librarian at the University of Chicago’s Joseph Regenstein Library, worked independently for 20 years gathering evidence that African slaves had a rich musical culture. In 1973 she submitted her article “The Folk Banjo: A Documentary History” for publication in Ethnomusicology: Journal of the Society for Ethnomusicology. The article was published in a special issue devoted to black music.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
Originally published in Portuguese in Campinas by Editora da Unicamp as A formação do Candomblé: História e ritual da nação jeje na Bahia, 2006., 398 p., Interweaving three centuries of transatlantic religious and social history with historical and present-day ethnography, Luis Nicolau Pares traces the formation of Candomble, one of the most influential African-derived religious forms in the African diaspora, with practitioners today centered in Brazil but also living in Europe and elsewhere in the Americas.
Glissant,Edouard (Author) and Wing,Betsy (Translator)
Format:
Book, Whole
Language:
eng
Publication Date:
2001
Published:
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
294 p., Tells of the quest by Mathieu Beluse to discover the lost history of his country, Martinique. This book tells of the love-hate relationship between the Longoue and Beluse families, whose ancestors were brought as slaves to Martinique.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
316 p., She was an 18th century black Suriname woman with millions of dollars. But she sought the forbidden: to marry a white man. Why, when she already had so much? Elisabeth Samson's immense wealth puzzled many early historians who concluded that it could only have been the result of an inheritance from a master with whom she had lived and by whom she had been set free.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
219 p., This hurricane devastated the northwest Bahamas and impacted the economy of the Bahamas for years to follow. This storm occurred during the peak of the sponging era. Many boats were out at sea on sponging trips and were caught at sea during this storm not knowing a massive storm was approaching the Bahamas and many persons perished on-board these ships. The storm was one of the main reasons why the government of the Bahamas switched from Sponging to Tourism as the number one industry of the Bahamas.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
1 microfiche, [electronic resource]. Or, general survey of the antient and modern state of that island: with reflections on its situation, settlements, inhabitants, ... In three volumes.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Journal Title Details:
3 vols
Notes:
Contents: v. 3. An historical survey of the French colony in the island of St. Domingo: comprehending an account of the revolt of the negroes in the year 1791, and a detail of the military transactions of the British army in that island
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
135 p, Contents: Introduction / Richard Graham -- Racial ideas and social policy in Brazil, 1870-1940 / Thomas E. Skidmore -- Race in Argentina and Cuba, 1880-1930: theory, policies, and popular reaction / Aline Helg -- Racism, revolution, and indigenismo: Mexico, 1910-1940 / Alan Knight
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
247 p., The Southern Caribbean was the last frontier in the Atlantic world and the most contested region in the Caribbean during the Age of Revolution. The three British colonies of Grenada, Trinidad and Demerera were characterized by insecurity and personified by the high mobility of people and ideas across empires; it was a part of the Caribbean that, more than any other region, provided an example of the liminal space of contested empires. Because of the multiculturalism inherent in this part of the world, as well as the undeveloped protean nature of the region, this was a place of shifting borderland communities and transient ideas, where women in motion and free people of color played a central role.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
331 p., Partly autobiographical, this novel looks at the racial politics of the 1950s and 1960s. Ramsay Tull is witness to the black racial discontents and the desire for national independence that are threatening the old colonial order; but when a chance comes to study at Oxford University, he becomes immersed in European literary culture and Marxism. On his return to Jamaica, Ramsay becomes actively involved in radical nationalist politics and begins his second journey, away from his middle-class origins and back to a true appreciation of the Jamaican people.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
221 p, Rodney was disturbed by the inability of intellectuals to share common cause with the masses, thus ensuring that they would be unable to contribute to uplifting their talents or participate in the growth of the nation. Guyana and the Caribbean were subject to sugar and slave traffic that constituted cheap labor for the plantations and buttressed the capitalist-industrial system. A significant byproduct of that system was the master-slave relationship; a no-less iniquitous consequence was an active racism. Thus, social inequality became the heritage of Guyanese and Caribbean history.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
644 p., Covers the period from the end of slavery to the twentieth century. Its major themes are dependent labor groups, especially emigrants from Asia, the development and diversification of local economies, and the emergence throughout the region of varying degrees of national consciousness as well as forms of government.
Laurence,K. O. (Editor) and Ibarra, Jorge (Editor)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
2011
Published:
London: Macmillan
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
644 p, Covers the period from the end of slavery to the twentieth century. Its major themes are dependent labor groups, especially emigrants from Asia, the development and diversification of local economies, and the emergence throughout the region of varying degrees of national consciousness as well as forms of government.
Drescher,Seymour (Editor) and McGlynn,Frank (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
1992
Published:
Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
"Outcome of an international conference ... held at the University of Pittsburgh ... 25-27 August 1988", 333 p., This study considers the aftermath of slavery, focusing on Caribbean societies and the southern United States and addressing such questions as: what was the nature and impact of slave emancipation? And did the change in legal status conceal underlying continuities in plantation societies?
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
477 p., This study is a "deep history" of the British invasion and occupation of Havana and western Cuba (1762-3) at the end of the Seven Years' War. By contextualizing this event within the broader story of intercolonial relations of war, trade, and slavery from 1713 to 1790, it demonstrates that the British occupation was a continuation and expansion of relations that preceded and postdated the invading warships' arrival. These Anglo-Cuban relations were forged through contraband commerce, the British slave trade to Cuba, and the practices of interimperial warfare, all of which undermined Spanish sovereignty in Cuba and linked its populations of both European and African descent to its British colonial neighbors.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
The Steel Band was created by descendants of African Captives in the Caribbean who struggled to retain some elements of their culture while simultaneously rejecting elements of the captive culture that controlled their lives for three centuries. This book chronicles the origin and evolution of the Steel Band orchestra.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
239 p, Contents: Globalization, the "new world order imperialism," and Haiti -- Before Aristide : class power, state power, and the Duvalier dictatorships, 1957-1990 -- The prophet armed : the popular movement for democracy and the rise of Jean-Bertrand Aristide -- The prophet disarmed : the first Lavalas government and its overthrow -- The prophet checkmated : the political opposition and the low-intensity war against Aristide -- The prophet banished : the second overthrow of Aristide and the pacification of Haiti
Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
283 p., Using travel and tourism as sites where the pleasures of imperialism met the politics of empire, Christine Skwiot untangles the histories of Cuba and Hawai'i as integral parts of the Union and keys to U.S. global power, as occupied territories with violent pasts, and as fantasy islands ripe with seduction and reward. Grounded in a wide array of primary materials that range from government sources and tourist industry records to promotional items and travel narratives, The Purposes of Paradise explores the ways travel and tourism shaped U.S. imperialism in Cuba and Hawai'i.
Daughter Nettie was honoured in 1971 as "Alberta's Pioneer Daughter of the Year" and died in 1989 at the age of 96. The Ware's original cabin is a visitor attraction in Dinosaur Provincial Park and the name of old cowboy is remembered through the John Ware Junior School in Calgary. Alberta is bounded on the West by the Province of British Columbia, on the North by the Northwest Territories, on the east by the Province of Saskatchewan, and on the South by the Canada-U.S. border. The Province has a Provincial Conservative Government, led by Premier Ralph Kline, with 62 of the 83 Legislative Assembly seats. The Alberta Liberals have 16, the Alberta New Democratic Party 4 and the Alberta Alliance one.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
302 p, Illuminates the profound role sports play in the political and cultural processes of an identity that developed within a political tradition of autonomy rather than traditional political independence. Significantly, it was precisely in the Olympic arena that Puerto Ricans found ways to participate and show their national pride, often by using familiar colonial strictures--and the United States' claim to democratic values--to their advantage. Drawing on extensive archival research, both on the island and in the United States, Sotomayor uncovers a story of a people struggling to escape the colonial periphery through sport and nationhood yet balancing the benefits and restraints of that same colonial status.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
261 p, Contents: Language. Pidgins and Creoles ; Papiamentu : a look at the language -- Slavery. Slavery and Africa ; Spanish discovery and rule of the ABC Islands ; The emergence of the Dutch ; Dutch slavery on the ABC Islands ; Revolts and emancipation ; The formation of Papiamentu : how did it happen? ; The Sephardic Jews of Curacao ; The role of the church ; Papiamentu vs. Dutch : society, education and law ; Oral tradition ; The written word ; The issue of standardization -- Present and future. Papiamentu in the Netherlands ; The present-day situation and the future
Kingston Jamaica Princeton N.J.: I. Randle Publishers
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
434 p, An overview of Jamaican people in the past; "[Published] in collaboration with the Creative Production and Training Centre Ltd, Kingston, Jamaica."/ Includes bibliographical references (p. 412-419) and indexes.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
89 p, The transatlantic slave trade played a major role in the development of the modern world. It both gave birth to and resulted from the shift from feudalism into the European Commercial Revolution. James A. Rawley fills a scholarly gap in the historical discussion of the slave trade from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century by providing one volume covering the economics, demography, epidemiology, and politics of the trade.
Geggus,David P. (Author) and Fiering,Norman (Author)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
2009
Published:
Bloomington: Indiana University Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
419 p, Contents: Saint-Domingue on the eve of the Haitian Revolution /; David Geggus --; Vestiges of the built landscape of pre-revolutionary Saint-Domingue /; Jacques de Cauna --; Saint-Domingue's free people of color and the tools of revolution /; John D. Garrigus --; On the road to citizenship : the complex route to integration of the free people of color in the two capitals of Saint-Domingue /; Dominique Rogers --; The trans-Atlantic king and imperial public spheres : everyday politics in pre-revolutionary Saint-Domingue /; Gene E. Ogle --; The insurgents of 1791, their leaders, and the concept of independence /; Yves Benot --; Avenging America : the politics of violence in the Haitian Revolution /; Laurent Dubois --; "Fêtes de l'hymen, fêtes de la liberté" : marriage, manhood, and emancipation in revolutionary Saint-Domingue /; Elizabeth Colwill --; "The colonial vendée" /; Malick Ghachem --; The Saint-Domingue slave revolution and the unfolding of independence, 1791-1804 /; Carolyn E. Fick --; The French Revolution's other island /; Jeremy D. Popkin --; Speaking of Haiti : slavery, revolution, and freedom in Cuban slave testimony /; Ada Ferrer --; The Saint-Dominguan refugees and American distinctiveness in the early years of the Haitian Revolution /; Ashli White --; "Free upon higher ground" : Saint-Domingue slaves' suits for freedom in U.S. courts, 1792-1830 /; Sue Peabody --; Repercussions of the Haitian Revolution in Brazil, 1791-1850 /; Joao José Reis and Flavio dos Santos Gomes --; The specter of Saint-Domingue : American and French reactions to the Haitian Revolution /; Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall --; Representations of the Haitian Revolution in French literature /; Léon-François Hoffmann --; Neoclassicism and the Haitian Revolution /; Carlo Céliu
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
598 p, This book includes information of Theodore Roosevelt and Latin America, the Panama Canal, the Roosevelt Corollary, the Dominican customs house, and the Cuba intervention of 1906
On January 1, 1804, Gen. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, proclaimed to the world that his country, henceforth to be called Haiti, was free and independent. Previously dominated by France since buccaneers settled there in 1697, the small Caribbean island, whose eastern portion was under Spanish rule, had become an important slave colony. The slaves were imported from Africa and lived a harsh reality in comparison to the minority white slaveholding population. In 1789, Santo Domingo, as France called the colony, consisted of 450,000 enslaved Blacks, 40,000 whites, and 28,000 free Blacks and mulattos. The death rate for the enslaved population was high: While more than 800,000 Africans had been enslaved in the colony in the 1700s, only 450,000 survived in 1789. In 1791 a slave rebellion under the leadership of Vodou priest Boukman sparked a revolution that lasted thirteen years, culminating in independence in 1804. Toussaint L'Overture was the primary leader among the enslaved population, playing France against the British and Spanish, as he maneuvered the struggle closer to independence. However, in hoping to maintain a friendly relationship with France, L'Overture was deceived and placed in the French gallows upon an invitation to France. His able subordinates Dessalines and Henri Christophe, however, continued the liberation effort achieving independence and eventually driving all whites off the island nation.
Seventy-two Jamaican migrants left yesterday afternoon on the Ascania for Britain. The majority are joining relatives in England. Others are going directly into jobs there. The Ascania arrived yesterday morning from England and docked at No 3 Pier. Two hundred and thirty-six Jamaicans, who had been resident in Britain, returned home on the ship yesterday morning.
From earthquakes, hurricanes and fires to Olympic glory and Independence, The Gleaner started chronicling Jamaica's roller-coaster history ride in 1834, and has had a front-row seat at every major event since. The Honourable Roy McNeill, minister of home affairs, announced yesterday that he has refused the application of the Reverend Clennon King, a United States citizen, for political asylum in Jamaica. McNeill, according to the official statement, considered King's application and reached the decision that his case is not one that qualifies for political asylum. King, of Albany, Georgia, arrived in Kingston last month and asked for political asylum from what he describes as insidious persecution and official harassment in the United States.
From earthquakes, hurricanes and fires to Olympic glory and Independence, The Gleaner started chronicling Jamaica's rollercoaster history ride in 1834, and has had a front-row seat at every major event since. BARCLAYS BANK DCO announced today that to mark the emergence of Jamaica as an independent nation in the Commonwealth, it was as a gift to the Caribbean island an X-ray machine, an electro-cardiograph machine and other equipment for a children's hospital. VARIOUS COMPLAINTS of unfair treatment by certain sections of the police have been lodged by Jamaicans with the London High Commission. One distinct case was brought to the attention of Jamaica's prime minister, Sir Alexander Bustamante, who immediately Save instructions to the amaican Migrant Service to engage legal representation, at a cost to the Jamaican Government, of up to three hundred pounds.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
275 p, Research Setting -- Study as a "Talking Book" -- Travessao -- Book Overview -- 1. "A Passport to Heaven's Gate" -- "Heaven's Gate": Canada in the North American and Caribbean Black Imaginary -- Church-Ship: Spiritual Voyaging -- Spiritual Baptists in Multicultural Canada: Considering Religious and National Identities in Migration -- Countercultures of Modernity and the Problem of Multiculturalism -- Historical Overview of Multiculturalism in Canada -- Multiculturalism in the Spiritual Baptist Church -- Spiritual Baptist Perceptions and Experiences of Multiculturalism in Canada -- 2. "This Spot of Ground": The Emergence of Spiritual Baptists in Toronto -- Origins of the Spiritual Baptist Church in the Caribbean -- "This Spot of Ground": The Spiritual Baptist Church as "Homeplace" in Toronto -- Founding of the First Spiritual Baptist Church in Toronto (1975-1980) -- Toronto Spiritual Baptist Church Organization -- 3. "So Spiritually, So Carnally": Spiritual Baptist Ritual, Theology, and the Everyday World in Toronto -- "So Carnally, So Spiritually" -- Ritual as Performance and Social Commentary -- Joining the Spiritual Baptist Church in Toronto -- Coming to Canada -- Work Experiences -- "It Hurt Me Feelings": Naming Racism -- "I Say You Can Call Me 'Damn Bitch' ... Just Don't Call Me 'Madam'!": Challenging Sexist Racism -- Church as Community: Support Networks in the Spiritual Baptist Church -- 4. "Africaland": "Africa" In Toronto Spiritual Baptist Experience -- Africaland -- Sacred Space and Place in the Spiritual Baptist Church -- Sacred Time in the Spiritual Baptist Church -- Travelling to Africaland -- Africa as Eden -- Africaland and the African Diaspora -- 5. "Dey Give Me a House to Gather in Di Chil'ren": Mothers and Daughters in the Spiritual Baptist Church -- Overview of Domestic Service in Canada -- Mothers of the Church -- Family in the Spirit: Extended Family in the Spiritual Baptist Church -- "If You Don't Come to Me, I'm Coming to You": Ancestral Mother -- "Dey Give Me a House to Gather in di Chil'ren": Spiritual Mother/Carnal Mother -- "God Has Work for You to Do": Nation Mother -- "It Makes You Feel Like Home": Spiritual Daughter -- 6. Aunt(Y) Jemima in Toronto Spiritual Baptist Experiences: Spiritual Mother Or Servile Woman? -- "Seeing" Aunt Jemima -- (Re)Turning the Gaze on Aunt(y) Jemima -- Re-reading Aunt(y) Jemima and the Creole Woman -- Tie-head Woman -- Head-ties and the Social Construction of Identity -- "To Pick It Up and Take It Forward''.
Brasília: Gabinete do Senador Abdias Nascimento : Secretaria Especial de Editoração e Publicações
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
267 p, Contents: Diário de um negro atuante / Ironides Rodrigues -- Aspectos de la experiência afro-brasileira / Abdias Nascimento -- O negro desde dentro / Guerreiro Ramos -- A escultura de José Heitor / Efrain Tomás Bó -- Projeto Estudos Contemporâneos : Mesa Redonda de Rio de Janeiro / Elisa Larkin Nascimento -- As civilizações africanas no mundo antigo / Elisa Larkin Nascimento -- O preconceito nos livros infantis / Guiomar Ferreira de Mattos.
Based on the correspondence and diaries of three slaveholders in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this article identifies the differences in the attitudes and behaviour of each planter towards his slaves in response to structural constraints or norms. These include political, administrative, civic and religious institutions, but also the economic system, social expectations and cultural norms. The author concludes that, although one can detect degrees of harshness in the treatment of field labourers, sexual exploitation seems constant and intractable in all three cases. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT];
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
239 p, In the course of the nineteenth century, Jamaica transformed itself from a pestilence-ridden "white man's graveyard" to a sun-drenched tourist paradise. Deftly combining economics with political and cultural history, Frank Fonda Taylor examines this puzzling about-face and explores the growth of the tourist industry into the 1990s; Includes bibliographical references (p. 223-231) and index.
According to colonial records, he was granted his freedom, given 13 slaves and 15 acres of land and allowed to grow coffee and sugar cane, as a surrogate plantation owner. When this declaration of the rights of all men was denied to the slave population, they revolted and in 1791, the rebellion swept the northern part of the island like a massive tidal wave.
Born Francois Dominique Toussaint, he gained historical recognition as "Toussaint L'Ouverture"-the "L'Ouverture" part of his name was bestowed upon him as a result of his freedom-fighting exploits later in his life. He was a self-educated slave who joined other slaves to fight for their common goal-their freedom and the establishment of a free country. He had no military training, or formal education but he possessed a passion for freedom, and an innate ability to organize. He was born on the island of Hispaniola on the Breda plantation between 1743 and 1746 having descended from the Arrada people of the Dahomey Coast, Africa. Toussaint was the oldest son of a slave brought to the French colony of Santo Domingo located on the eastern part of the island At that time, the island was called "Hispaniola;" the name "Haiti" came later on. It was Toussaint who eventually brought Haiti into being as an independent country. His slave-master was one Count de Breda who originally named him Toussaint Breda. The master also encouraged young Toussaint to learn to read and write, a rarity for a slave-master. It was because of Toussaint's assistance, the French were victorious against the British and the Spanish forces, yet the French were not willing to grant freedom to the slaves, which was the primary teason that Toussaint had lent his expertise to them. His series of military campaigns became known as "L'Ouverture" or "the opening," because he exploited openings in the defenses of the opposition. And Francois Dominique Toussaint then became known as "Toussaint L'Ouverture." In addition to their treachery and deception, France sent more regiments to the island m furtherance their scheme to renege on the moderate terms of peace and freedom that were promised to Toussaint and his men. The French were contemptuous and they boldly proclaimed, "Did Toussaint think that they had brought half a million African slaves to the New World to make them French citizens?" As leader of the nation, L'Ouverture organized a structured government and instituted public improvements. He was widely renowned, revered by Blacks and detested by Whites-the French and the Americans. L'Ouverture's activities did not go unnoticed by the U.S., a country that was prospering off slaves and their free labor. In his book "In the Matter of Color," author and noted jurist, A. Leon Higginbotham noted a French historian and politician who at that time wrote, "Thus it is that in the U.S., the prejudice rejecting the negroes seems to increase in proportion to their emancipation." (These events apparently propelled Nat Turner's rebellion as he attempted to follow the footsteps of L'Ouverture in Virginia).
Toussaint L'Ouverture: The Other Bonaparte! When the friction of social injustice and deprivation ignite that fuel, glimmers of hope begin to surface. So it happened with the baby boy who came on the world scene as Toussaint L'Ouverture. Acts such as these stirred [Toussaint]; he felt destined to remedy the societal ills. He also knew the time was not yet right, so he waited and learned. Toussaint became the most humble, obliging slave. He was held up as a model to other slaves.