| HAITIAN REVOLUTION
AND THE STRUGGLE AGAINST SLAVERY
Professor Rex Nettleford
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The significance of the Haitian Revolution in human history is impatient
of debate. However, this event in modern Atlantic history continues
to challenge the collective intellect and creative imagination to
continuing discourse on, and repeated re-affirmation of, self and
society. As such, it summons a great many of our scholars and artists
throughout our region and in the African Diaspora to celebration and
challenge through drama, ritual, visual arts, song, poetry, dance,
historical analyses and explication as well as through the sort of
re-call that now puts it at the centre of UNESCO’s observance
of Year 2004, the bicentenary of the Revolution, as the International
Year of Commemoration.
This, of course, follows on some years of debate and discussion
on the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and its offspring Plantation
Slavery. This in turn led to the introduction by UNESCO of
the Slave Route Project designed to restore to human consciousness
a zone of memory that would hopefully prevent any future indulgence
in what has at last been acknowledged as a crime against humanity.
The Haitian Revolution brings us back on occasions like this to
that major responsibility of all who wish to advocate a progressive
enhancement of the quality of life for all who tenant Planet Earth.
From the late eighteenth century entry of Boukman, the Jamaican
slave into Saint Dominigue to the recent admission of Haiti as a
full-fledged member of the Caribbean Community, the Commonwealth
Caribbean has bonded with that part of African Diasporic history
which transforms Haiti, the iconoclastic rebel, to Haiti, the icon
of the freedom and liberation struggle which is fundamental to the
history of all who wish to maintain the integrity of their humanity.
It is our Caribbean intellectuals and creative artists like Aime
Cesaire, Derek Walcott and CLR James who have long addressed this
reality. James’ “Black Jacobins” remains a flagship
entity in Haitian and slave liberation studies which have focused
on “the nature of the revolution, the relative roles of the
different racial and social groups, the roles of the different colonial
powers or the formidable leadership skills of Toussaint L’ouverture”.
If, as Professor Tony Bogues asserts, too little attention has been
paid so far to the political ideas of the revolution, now is the
time, indeed, to place greater emphasis on the seminal contribution
the revolution in particular and the struggle against slavery in
general have made to the development of the idea of freedom –
a development that is independent of the idea’s European and
Graeco-Roman origins.
The recently created Centre for Caribbean Thought at Mona has its
job cut out for it then, and I hope that this particular commemoration
will serve to drive the Centre and the Faculties of Humanities and
Social Sciences in the wider University to greater, deeper interest
in investigating and analyzing slavery and the Haitian Revolution
in this regard.
I apologize for my inevitable absence but wish to tender the full
support of our University to the pursuit of knowledge of all areas
of our people’s historical growth and existential realities
in order to attain a mastery over all that would make us the effective
creators of our own destiny which is what the Haitian Revolution
expected us all to realize and achieve.
For hasn’t that great event served to remind us in the words
of Patrick Chamoiseau that “freedom is not given, must not
be given [since] liberty awarded does not liberate [the] soul?”
We are come to celebrate the possibility of our capacity to self-liberate
as the Haitians clearly indicated in 1804.
I wish to congratulate the University Committee at Mona which has
been set up to commemorate the bicentenary, and encourage it in
all its future endeavours throughout the year to bring our people
around to the historical importance of the Revolution and to guarantee
its lasting iconic stature in what is after all a lasting struggle
to maintain the dignity, freedom and sense of personhood denied
hoards of humanity for far too long.
I thank you.
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