Slavery in Haiti (French: L'Esclavage en Haïti; Haitian Creole: Esklavaj an Ayiti) began at an unknown time with slavery being practiced by the native populations when the Spanish first arrived on the island in 1492. The Spanish engaged in forced labor of the native population until that community was decimated by disease. To replace the diminishing native labor, enslaved Africans began being imported in earnest during the 16th century. By the early 17th century the Saint-Domingue (modern day Haiti) was a slave society with the majority of the population enslaved.
In response to the conditions of slavery, the ideals of the French Revolution, and the disproportionate ratio of enslaved to free people, Haiti was the site of a slave revolt that became the Haitian Revolution. Slavery was abolished during the revolution but afterwards forced labor was brought back by some leaders, believing a plantation-style economy was the only way for Haiti to succeed.
Unpaid labor is still widely practiced in Haiti. As many as half a million children are unpaid domestic servants called restavek, who routinely suffer physical and sexual abuse. Additionally, human trafficking, including child trafficking and sex trafficking, are significant problems in Haiti, in particular impacting Haitians migrating to the Dominican Republic. Many of these issues have been exasperated by natural disasters and instability.
Haiti has the second-highest incidence of slavery in the world, behind only Mauritania. The U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons has placed the country in the "Tier 2 Watchlist" since 2017.
History
Spanish Hispaniola (1492–1625) The Taino natives living on the island that would come to be called Hispaniola welcomed Christopher Columbus and his crew when they landed on the island in October 1492. In the Pre-Columbian era, other Caribbean tribes would attack the island to kidnap people into slavery. The Spanish colonists institutionalized slavery on the island and turned it into a major business.
Over time, the Spanish set up plantations dependent on slave labor that grew sugar and other crops. In addition natives were forced to mine gold and copper, which took a heavy toll in life and health.
In response to the brutality, some the natives fought back and escaped into remote parts of the island's mountains and formed communities in hiding as "maroons". The Spanish responded to the native resistance with severe reprisals, for example destroying crops to starve the natives. In 1495, Spaniards sent 500 captured natives back to Spain as slaves, but 200 did not survive the voyage, and the others died shortly afterwards. In the late 1490s they planned to send 4,000 slaves back to Spain each year, but this expectation failed to take into account the rapid decline the native population would soon suffer and was never achieved.
It is not known how many Taino people were on the island prior to Columbus's arrival – estimates range from several thousand to eight million – but overwork slavery and in particular diseases, inadvertently introduced by the Europeans to which the natives had no resistance, quickly killed a large part of the population. Between 1492 and 1494, one third of the native population on the island had died and by 1514, 92% of the native population of the island had died.
Spanish missionary Bartolomé de las Casas spoke out against enslavement of the natives and the brutality of the Spaniards. Las Casas' campaign led to an official end of the enslavement of Tainos in 1542; however, it was replaced by the African slave trade.
The rapid rate at which the natives died left a labor void which was filled with the import of Africans. African labor was viewed as ideal since Africans and Europeans had been in contact with each other for centuries and had immunity to the same diseases.
Some newly arrived slaves from Africa and neighboring islands were able to escape and join maroon communities in the mountains. In 1519, Africans and Native Americans joined forces to start a slave rebellion that turned into a years-long uprising, which was eventually crushed by the Spanish in the 1530s.
The practice of slavery in the Spanish New World colonies would become so large-scale that imports of African slaves outnumbered Spanish immigration to the New World by the end of the 1500s.
Saint Domingue (1625–1789)
The Spanish ceded control of the western part of the island of Hispaniola to the French in the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697; France named its new colonial possession Saint-Domingue. The colony, based on the export of cash crops, particularly sugar cane, would become the richest in the world. Known as the "Pearl of the Antilles", the colony became the world's foremost producer of coffee and sugar.
The French, like the Spanish, imported slaves from Africa. In 1681, there were only 2,000 slaves in Saint Domingue; by 1789, there were almost half a million.
While the French controlled Saint Domingue, they maintained a class system which covered both whites and free people of color. These classes divided up roles on the island and established a hierarchy. The highest class, known as the grands blancs (white noblemen), was composed of rich nobles, including royalty, and mainly lived in France. These individuals held most of the power and controlled much of the property on Saint-Domingue. Although their group was very small and exclusive, they were quite powerful.
Below the grands blancs (white noblemen) were the petits blancs (white commoners) and the gens de couleur libres (free people of color). These classes inhabited Saint Domingue and held a lot of local political power and control of the militia. Petits blancs shared the same societal level as gens de couleur libres.
The gens de couleur libres class was made up of affranchis (ex-slaves), free blacks, and mixed-race people, and they controlled much wealth and land in the same way as petits blancs; they held full citizenship and civil equality with other French subjects. Race was initially tied to culture and class, and some "white" St. Dominicans had non-white ancestry. Although the Creoles of color and affranchis held considerable power, they eventually became the subject of racism and a system of segregation due to the introduction of divisionist policies by the royal government, as the Bourbon regime feared the united power of the St. Dominicans.
Members of the petit blanc class began to distance themselves from gens de couleur libres and denigrate them. Influence by the Bourbon government rendered petits blancs envious of the gens de couleur libres''' economical power. As on other Caribbean islands, the majority of the population of Saint-Domingue was people of color, and they far outnumbered whites on the island.Meade, Tereas A. A History of Modern Latin America. 2nd ed., Blackwell Publishing, 2016.
Planters took care to treat slaves well in the beginning of their time on the plantation, and they slowly integrated slaves into the plantation's labor system. On each plantation there was a black commander who supervised the other slaves on behalf of the planter, and the planter made sure not to favor one African ethnic group over others. Most slaves who came to Saint-Domingue worked in fields or shops; younger slaves often became household servants, and old slaves were employed as surveillants. Some slaves became skilled workmen, and they received privileges such as better food, the ability to go into town, and liberté des savanes (savannah liberty), a sort of freedom with certain rules. Slaves were considered to be valuable property, and slaves were attended by doctors who gave medical care when they were sick.
There were numerous kinds of plantations in Saint-Domingue. Some planters produced indigo, cotton, and coffee; these plantations were small in scale, and usually only had 15-30 slaves, creating an intimate work environment. However, the most valuable plantations produced sugar. The average sugar plantation employed 300 slaves, and the largest sugar plantation on record employed 1400 slaves. These plantations took up only 14% of Saint-Domingue's cultivated land; comparatively, coffee was 50% of all cultivated land, indigo was 22%, and cotton only 5%. Because of the comparative investment requirement between sugar plantations and all other plantation types, there was a big economic gap between normal planters and sugar "lords."
While grands blancs owned 800 large scale sugar plantations, the petits blancs and gens de couleur (people of color) owned 11,700 small scale plantations, of which petits blancs owned 5,700 plantations, counting 3,000 indigo, 2,000 coffee, and 700 cotton; the affranchis and Creoles of color owned 6,000 plantations that mainly produced coffee of which they held an economic monopoly.
Some sugar planters, bent on earning high sugar yields, worked their slaves very hard. Costs to start a sugarcane plantation were very high, often causing the proprietor of the plantation to go into deep debt. Many slaves on sugar cane plantations died within a few years; it was cheaper to import new slaves than to improve working conditions. The death rate of slaves on Saint Domingue's sugar cane plantations was higher than anywhere else in the Western hemisphere; indeed, slaves working on sugar plantations in Saint-Domingue came to have a 6-10% annual mortality rate, causing St. Dominican sugar planters to import new slaves frequently.
Over the colony's hundred-year course, about a million slaves succumbed to the conditions of slavery. Some slaves of African ethnicities who believed in metempsychosis, the belief of the soul's migration at death, committed suicide shortly after arriving on the island, as they believed that in death they could return to their home territory where they would regain the rank, wealth, relatives, and friends that they had. Some pregnant slaves living in poor conditions on sugar plantations did not survive long enough or have healthy enough pregnancies to birth live babies, but if they did, the children often died young due to malnourishment. On some sugar plantations, food was insufficient, and slaves were expected to grow and prepare it for themselves on top of their 12-hour workdays.
In 1685, the French king Louis XIV decreed the Code Noir, a regulation of the treatment of slaves. Although the Code Noir was established to protect the rights of St. Dominican slaves and despite the presence of a rural police, due to Saint-Domingue's difficult terrain and the seclusion of various plantations, some slaves were abused. There are extreme cases recorded where slaves were whipped, burned, buried alive, restrained and allowed to be bitten by swarms of insects, mutilated, raped, and had limbs amputated. On some plantations, slaves caught eating the sugar cane crop would be forced to wear tin muzzles in the fields.
About 48,000 slaves in Saint Domingue escaped from their plantation; slaveholders hired bounty hunters to catch these maroons. Those who were not caught and re-enslaved established communities away from settled areas. Maroons would organize raids called mawonag on plantations, stealing supplies that their communities needed to survive, such as food, tools and weapons. One famous maroon, François Mackandal, escaped into the mountains in the middle of the 18th century and went on to plan attacks on plantation owners. Mackandal was caught and burned at the stake in 1758, but his legend lived on to inspire rebellion among slaves — and fear among slaveholders.