The African Genius presents the ideas, social systems, religions, moral values, arts, and metaphysics of a range of African peoples. Basil Davidson points toward the Africa that may emerge from an ancient civilization that was overlaid and battered by colonialism, then torn by the upheaval of colonialism’s dismantlement. Davidson disputes the notion that Africa gained under colonialism by entering the modern world. He sees, instead, an ancient order replaced by modern dysfunction. Davidson’s depiction of the sophisticated “native genius” that has carried Africans through centuries of change is vital to an understanding of modern Africa as well.

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Howie

My name is Howard, I'm a solicitor and I live in London. I've always enjoyed writing in my spare-time and Colorful Times gives me the opportunity to muse on about most of my heroes.

If you ask the average person about nations responsible for unethical biological testing on human subjects, chances are America would be at the very bottom of the list. However, it is in the United States of America, that there is a great and proud tradition of biological testing on human guinea pigs.

As early as 1895 countless unethical experiments have been performed on test subjects. Many of the subjects were impoverished individuals who had little or no say in the matter, much less knew what was going on. Others that have been fed into the burgeoning industry of biological testing include prisoners, children, and minorities.

The flood of information about testing on human subjects reads like the evil agenda of a comic book villain, or even something that the tin-foil hat lunatic fringe would murmur about silently, for fear that ‘Big Brother’ would take them away if they talked too loudly about it. But it’s been so well documented that to refute the existence of such events would be to stick your head in the sand. Even the most incredible stories of soldiers being marched through nuclear bomb test sites to see how radiation would affect them, or mentally ill people being locked in refrigerators and even children being given spinal taps and hepatitis injections have occurred. While these stories sound like the babbling of the latest round of kool-aid kids, they are all part of documented cases reported in medical journals and newspapers alike. Incredibly, those responsible for these sorts of heinous acts are able to completely wash their hands of them.

The few cases that you might have heard about concerning these little known matters are usually underplayed and hid underneath the rug, only mentioned as little blurbs in the seedy underbelly of history to keep people from becoming a little too suspicious or nosy for that matter. Several of these tests were funded by various national governments. Furthermore, details concerning these experiments have constantly been struck from the record when regarded as being ‘too-sensitive’ for public viewing. As of 2010, not one researcher has been prosecuted for unethical testing, and several of the victims have never received official acknowledgement of what has been done to them, much less reparations.

To give you an idea of just what was considered “medically ethical” during the twentieth century, here is a short list of tests done on human subjects in chronological order. The squeamish might want to skip this.

1911: Dr. Hideyo Noguchi of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research publishes data on injecting an inactive syphilis preparation into the skin of 146 hospital patients and normal children in an attempt to develop a skin test for syphilis. Later, in 1913, several of these children’s parents sue Dr. Noguchi for allegedly infecting their children with syphilis¹.

1931: Dr. Cornelius Roads, a pathologist from the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, purposely infects human test subjects in Puerto Rico with cancer cells. He writes “The Porto Ricans (sic) are the dirtiest, laziest, most degenerate and thievish race of men ever to inhabit this sphere… I have done my best to further the process of extermination by killing off eight and transplanting cancer into several more… All physicians take delight in the abuse and torture of the unfortunate subjects.” He later establishes U.S. Army Biological Warfare facilities in Maryland, Utah and Panama. He also is named to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, where he begins a series of radiation experiments on American soldiers and civilian hospital patients. See: Germ War: The US Record.

1943: In order to ‘study the effect of frigid temperature on mental disorders,’ researchers at University of Cincinnati Hospital keep 16 mentally disabled patients in refrigerated cabinets for 120 hours at 30 degrees Fahrenheit (Sharav).

1950-1953: The U.S. Army releases chemical clouds over six American and Canadian cities. Residents in Winnipeg, Canada, where a toxic chemical known as cadmium is dropped, subsequently experience high rates of respiratory illnesses (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.). In order to determine how susceptible an American city could be to biological attack, the U.S. Navy sprays a cloud of Bacillus globigii from ships over the San Fransisco shoreline. According to monitoring devices situated throughout the city to test the extent of infection, the eight thousand residents of San Francisco inhale five thousand or more bacteria particles, many becoming sick with pneumonia-like symptoms and some die.

These are all horrific violations of human rights and shows a complete disregard for the sanctity of life and health among human beings by the those who would stoop to any level to further their research. However, the experiments seen here are not among the longest lasting tests done by scientists or the U.S. government on unsuspecting citizens. That dismal award goes to the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments.

The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, which have been called “…arguably the most infamous biomedical research study in U.S. History,” was an experiment conducted from 1932 to 1972. The test group was three hundred and ninety nine impoverished African-American share-croppers who were infected with syphilis (and two hundred and one control subjects who were not), these people were treated no better than lab rats by the U.S. Public Health Service who hosted and provided funding for the studies. These men received none of the treatment that they had been promised or that they had sought. Instead, they were given placebos, ‘inaccurate reporting of test results’ and were generally taken advantage of at every turn from the very system that was supposed to help and protect them. Unfortunately, for many of these patients, it was also their first experience of health-care run by the state.

Tuskegee Airmen Fighting for Country while at Home their Brothers are Experimented On

Unlike the final outcome, the initial plan for the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment was not ethically questionable at all. Initially, Dr. Taliaferro Clark formed the study group and wanted to see untreated Syphilis progress for six to nine months immediately followed by a treatment phase. When other members of the study wanted to use deceptive methods, Dr. Clark tried to stop the proceedings, but found that he could not. Within a year, he had tendered his resignation. The treatment of syphilis prior to the discovery of Penicillin was a grab-bag of toxic treatments. Some of the methods use included Bismuth, mercurial ointments, and Salvarsan. These sorts of treatment only helped to curb the disease’s progress, they were not cures, and they were quite poisonous. With the ongoing effects of the Stock Market Crash of 1929, and the Great Depression looming, it looked as if the program would have to come to an end due to a shortage of money for further treatment.

Around this time, however, there developed a medical debate about the possibility of a ‘racial factor’ taking place in the spread of syphilis. As a result of this, the Tuskegee study quickly adopted a stance towards its subjects similar to that used in the ‘Oslo study’ of 1928, where several hundred white males who had contracted syphilis were deliberately left untreated for some time. It was decided that the Oslo study would be replicated in Tuskegee, Alabama. Initially, this was not to be an unethical action, there simply was no longer enough funding for the kinds of treatments being used at the time, and the least doctors could do was to watch the progression of disease ravage through their patients. However, pretty soon, a thick air of lies, deception, and thinly-veiled racism would lurk between the white doctors and their all-black patients.  

It is perhaps important to note at this point that African-American access to health-care was almost non-existent at the time of this project. For many, the series of health-examinations conducted by the Public Health Service was the first treatment they had ever received. In order to drive more patients to participate, the Public Health Service recruited African-American church leaders, community elders, and other influential people to encourage greater participation among their numbers. And yet another lure was the invitation to join ‘Ms. River’s Lodge’ for those who could not afford traditional health-care.

Eunice Rivers was born in Tuskegee and had returned there to tend her career as a nurse. She was recruited at the start of the study by other head members and took to her role with great aplomb. Patients who joined Ms. River’s lodge received free medical examinations at Tuskegee University, were given free meals on examination day, including free transportation to and from the clinic, free treatment for minor ailments, and provision of free burial insurance. As the years rolled on and Public Health Service staff at Tuskegee kept changing, nurse Rivers was one of the few faces present from start to finish.

The Public Health Service’s recruitment drive would not have been nearly as successful without the unwitting assistance of key African-Americans and community leaders like Eunice Rivers. How could they have been coerced into working with the upper echelons of the white medical establishment? The prospect of working with a national government organization and opportunities for career advancement might have blinded them to the seedy nature of the experiments being conducted on their own friends and others they knew locally. Nurse Rivers herself was quoted with saying: “We were taught that we never diagnosed, we never prescribed; we followed the doctor’s instructions!” While her concern for her patients seems genuine, her willingness to follow instructions, along with the compliance of many others who must have known or suspected the truth was a major factor in the continuation of this vile experiment.

During this recruitment phase of the program, none of the volunteers were told that they were infected with syphilis. Dr. Raymond H. Vonderlehr, appointed on-site director of the treatment program, was crucial in shaping the many policies that would be carried out across the life of this experiment. Vonderlehr sought subjects for a spinal-tap procedure, and using carefully structured sentences and a few choice words, sent out fliers promoting a ‘once in a life-time treatment that would help them on the road to recovery.’ In reality, he wanted to study how disease moved from the spinal canal to the brain, and when those who were given this procedure asked how it would help them, he touted out some nonsense about being ‘therapeutic’.

Death by Syphilis is not a pleasant way to go. The long, slow anguish of the venereal disease can cause tumours, heart disease, paralysis, insanity, and blindness, all of which can take up to fifty years to kill. This was the fate of men who had placed their trust in doctors–men who had never seen a doctor before–and doctors who had stated that “As I see it…we have no further interest in these patients until they die.” Autopsies were carried out in secret for fear of causing high drop-out rates amongst the participating group. As one doctor put it, “If the colored population becomes aware that accepting free hospital care means a post-mortem, every Darky will leave Macon County.”

Among the more shocking aspects of the Tuskegee experiment is that it was never a secret. The experiment sent back reports and data, and the study was even leaked to a major newspaper as early as 1936 when it was broadly criticized. Local doctors tried to step in to ease the suffering of patients, but they were told not to interfere. During the Second World War, two hundred and fifty men from this group of patients signed up for the draft but found that they were refused entry because they suffered from syphilis. They were ordered to seek treatment before they could attempt re-enlistment.

It is a strange and tragic world in which we live, where Tuskegee Airmen who have served their country with such distinction during World War II that they are cited as a reason to end segregation in the armed forces, and yet, their friends, family, and neighbours back home are refused basic medical services that would have saved lives and ended the suffering of many.

It was in 1943 that Penicillin was found as the cure for Syphilis, and in case you may have been wondering whatever happened to Vonerlehr, he tendered his resignation that very same year, and one cannot help but marvel at his sense of timing.

By 1947, Penicillin was the standard treatment and cure for syphilis. When the Tuskegee test group was offered the option of distributing penicillin to their patients, it was refused. In the meantime, cases of syphilis among those treated with penicillin were drastically reduced, and a PHS research official went as far as to cite, “So far, we are keeping the known positive patients from getting treatment.”  At one point, even the Surgeon General of the United States sent letters to the participants, congratulating them for staying with the program for twenty five years and giving them certificates of appreciation for their contributions to the study.

In the immediate-post World War II era, as Imperial Japanese and Nazi Germany experiments were being uncovered, there was a wide-backlash prompting medical authorities to bring forward reform and a general standard of ethics. After the widely publicized Nuremberg Trials, western Allies set-up the Nuremberg Code as well as the related Declaration of Helenski. The Nuremberg Code included such ground-breaking concepts as ‘informed consent’ and ‘absence of coercion’ in human experimentation. Both documents provided a bedrock for further medical reform world-wide. However, with regard to the Tuskegee Experiment, which violated so many aspects of the Nuremberg Code, it seems as if someone had failed to review it. Instead of terminating the program, a decision was made to continue it until the last subject died, and those responsible were able to disassociate themselves from the project quietly.

In 1966, Peter Buxton, who then worked for the Public Health Service in San Francisco as a venereal-disease investigator, spoke out about the general lack of ethics and morality surrounding the Tuskegee experiments. The Center for Disease Control reaffirmed that the study should continue regardless until the very last subject was dead and autopsied. To bolster it’s position, it found affirmation in its position alongside members of the national American Medical Association. Upon discovering what had been going on in Tuskegee, Buxton said: “I didn’t want to believe it. This was the Public Health Service. We didn’t do things like that.” He sent yet another letter in 1968 only for it to be ruled irrelevant.

Finally, fed up with the inadequacies of his letter writing, Buxton went to the Washington Star in the early 1970s. His story was on the front page of the New York Times by the next day. In response, Senator Ed Kennedy called together a congressional hearing at which Buxton himself testified. Shortly thereafter, the study was reviewed and finally terminated. The NAACP settled a class action law-suit and the US Government paid nine million dollars to the survivors and agreed to provide free health-care to all surviving participants and their infected family members, indefinitely.

The Tuskegee study sent such shock waves throughout the United States of America and was directly responsible for the creation of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioural Research, which was to oversee and regulate ethical human testing through the USA, and was was the first national body to do so.

By the time the proper authorities were notified of the crime seventy four of its subjects were still alive. Twenty eight of the original two hundred and ninety nine men had died of syphilis; one hundred of them died from complications of the disease, while forty of their wives were infected, and nineteen of their children came into the world with congenital syphilis.

Even after his cover had been blown and the story was widely circulated, Dr. John Heller still tried to defend his actions: “The men’s status did not warrant ethical debate,” he argued. “They were subjects, not patients; clinical material, not sick people.” As for the black people of Tuskegee, Alabama, the trust that this community had in the Public Health Service has been totally shattered. A 1990 poll conducted by the Southern Leadership Christian Conference in five cities in the area showed that 34% of respondents believed that AIDS is an artificial virus, while 35% believed that it is a form of genocide, and 44% think that the government has still not told the truth about the origins of HIV/AIDS.

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Evan Arnold

1. Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America before the Second World War (The Henry E. Sigerist Series in the History of Medicine)

As with the Laws of Burgos, Le Code Noir gave some provisions for the humane treatment of the enslaved populace, but it also set provisions for hereditary slavery and torture. Perhaps the most horrific method of executing enslaved Africans was the insertion of gunpowder charge in the rectum and detonation of the explosive. Like the Laws of Burgos, Le Code Noir was also impossible to enforce to full effect, and the colonial French used the parts they liked, and ignored the rest. In the long run, it did more to continue the horrors that it sought to end, as the sections dealing with punishment and torture gave the French enslavers justification for their abominable actions.

San Domingue had the largest and wealthiest group of ‘freed’ Africans in the New World. These individuals were called gens de couleur (people of color) and the census of 1789 counted 25,000 individuals in this group. While many free people were formally enslaved, they were often people of mixed African and European ancestry and had never enslaved at all. They could own plantations of enslaved Africans, and often did. The enslaved peoples viewed them with contempt as these gens de couleur supported the very same system of oppression that plagued their brethrens. Until the revolution, the gens de couleur often supported this slave system but did not have all the same rights and privileges as ordinary white French people. Statutes and provisions within the law prevented them from holding certain jobs, marrying whites, carrying a sword or firearm in public, wearing European clothing, or attending social gatherings where whites were present. There was, however, no statute to prevent them from purchasing or owning land, and many did so. Ironically, coffee (which thrives on hilly plots of land) was the reason for the growth of this new planter class.

Before the revolution took place, there had been groups in Haiti that attempted to abolish slavery Two of the most prominent were the British Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and the Amis des Noirs (Friends of the Blacks). Such groups worked closely with other dissenters in Saint-Domingue, supplying arms to them and pushing emancipation in Paris. Many of Saint Domingue’s free people of color, among them Vincent Ogé, who was a member of Amis des Noirs, had been petitioning the French government for full civil equality with whites since the 1780s. Working with other abolitionists, they managed to make racial equality the leading question before the National Assembly in 1790 and again in 1791. By May of 1791, the National Assembly would pass new laws giving wealthy colored men the right to vote in the colonies. Vincent went to exercise his right. Denied by the colony governor, he waged a small and unsuccessful insurgency, in which he was captured and brutally put to death on the breaking wheel.

Many of Haiti’s formerly enslaved Africans saw the vicious treatment of Ogé as a sign to rise up and fight and resisted any treaties with the colonists. Before the time, the conflicts had been either legal as with the whites and the gens de couleur class, or violent, such as the war wages by the Maroons against the whites and gens de couleur that owned slaves. But the fighting was now divided along racial instead of class lines.

In 1789, Santo Domingo accounted for 40 percent of the world’s sugar production, and in that same year, The Rights of Man was published in France, declaring all men free and equal. The revolution in France was well underway. Some French colonists present on the island began clamoring for Independence as the political situation in France predicted that a major change would come. On the island of Haiti, its African population first heard talk of revolution among the Grands Blancs.

Le Grands Blancs were the highest ranking class, mostly comprised of minor nobles born in France but who had come to live in Haiti. Before the French revolution, they had wanted to leave Haiti as quickly as possible, unwilling to put up with what they saw as the rabble of their servants and the diseases they harbored. Tired of being under French control and resenting the French regulation of foreign trade on the island, the Grands Blancs made their own bid for independence. The Africans mostly sided with the royalists or Britain, knowing that an independent island whose ruling class was comprised of enslavers would only mean even worse treatment for them. This led to isolated incidents of fighting between the Grand and Petit Blancs (the latter being white, lower and middle class French nationals) on one side, and the gens de couleur and enslaved Africans on the other.

Then from among the Maroons came a strong leader. His name was Dutty Boukman; described as being…

“…a commandeur (slave driver) and later a coachman on the Clément plantation, among the first to go up in flames once the revolt began. While his experience as commandeur provided him with certain organizational and leadership qualities, the post as coachman no doubt enabled him to follow the ongoing political developments in the colony, as well as to facilitate communication links and establish contacts among the slaves of different plantations. Reputedly, Boukman was also a Vodou priest, and as such, exercised an undisputed influence and command over his followers, who knew him as “Zamba” Boukman. His authority was only enhanced by the overpowering impression projected by his gigantic size.”

Boukman’s rebellion was the spark that lit the Haitian revolution, and while he himself was killed in November, and his head displayed by the French to dispel his invincible aurora, not even the might of a French army could stop the people from rising up against their oppressors.

The formerly enslaved populace of Saint Dominique also rose up against their masters in droves on August 22, 1792. Within the next ten days, they had control of the entire Northern provenance. Within weeks, the armies of now free Africans totaled 100,000 and were growing stronger day by day. Having predicted such a move, the French colonists had themselves armed well, however, their attempts to fight off the enslaved Africans failed. In the next two months, over two thousand whites would be killed and close to two hundred plantations burnt to the ground as waves of wholesale violence and slaughter rocked the colony. By 1792, the enslaved population controlled a third of the isle. In its attempts to lessen the bloodshed, the Legislative Assembly granted civil and political rights to free men in the colonies in 1793. This decision shocked both America and the rest of Europe. However, it was not a completely magnanimous offer. To prevent further damage to the colony’s infrastructure and end the rebellion quickly, six thousand French soldiers were to be sent to the isle.

In 1793, Great Britain and Spain declared war on France, the planters and enslavers of Haiti sided with Great Britain, willing to make concessions for a British colony. Spain promptly invaded from the eastern part of the island, jealously protective of the wealth that her former land had enjoyed for years. There were but 3,500 French soldiers on the island now and they were facing military collapse. To prevent a military disaster, a French commander freed enslaved Africans in his jurisdiction, others followed suit, and a resolution was passed in 1794 by the National Convention—slavery was abolished and all men were granted the same political and civil rights throughout the colonies. This, of course, had a limited effect until the Haitian Revolution ended in 1804.

Toussaint L’Ouverture emerged from the revolution as one of its most important figures. Much of L’Ouverture life story is lost in time for all that can be said for certain is that upon reaching the age of thirty-three, he won his freedom. A doctor, initially, he soon became a general of legendary skills in battle. Like many of his contemporaries, he initially fought for Spain as a commander. After the British invaded Haiti, L’Ouverture agreed to fight for France, if they promised to free all of the enslaved. With his irresistible charm and obvious skills, many important people were said to be attracted to L’Ouverture, who resisted violence and slaughter. Under his leadership, the formerly enslaved Africans expelled the Spanish and won concessions from the British; essentially restoring the French back to power in Haiti but being careful to ensure that their power was in name only.

Having consolidated control of the colony by 1799, L’Ouverture quickly set about firmly establishing Haitian independence. Alexander Hamilton himself (the first United States Secretary of the Treasury, a Founding Father, economist, and political philosopher) helped him to draft a constitution for the new nation. Article 3He states: “There cannot exist slaves [in Saint-Domingue], servitude is therein forever abolished. All men are born, live and die free and French.”

L’Ouverture was a champion of equality for all races, negotiated trade agreements with the British and Americans, and instituted forced labor policies to keep production high. But as Napoleon came onto the scene in France after the chaos of the French revolution, he turned his hungry eye back to the colonies in the Americas. Under his brother Lecerc Bonaparte, he sent a force of twenty thousand soldiers with orders to re-establish control of the colony and reinstall slavery.

Toussaint L’Ouverture and the new government fought valiantly against the French, forcing Napoleon to send an additional forty thousand troops. Things were beginning to look impossible for the new republic. Betrayal from former allies, critical hesitations, and defections forced L’Ouverture to surrender to the French. He was later kidnapped, and taken to a prison in the French Alps where he died without seeing his beloved country again. His last words were: “In overthrowing me, you have cut down in Saint-Domingue only the trunk of the tree of liberty. It will spring up again by the roots, for they are numerous.”

While the French army had numerical superiority, their losses from yellow fever were costly, claiming substantial numbers of their men, Lecerc Bonaparte included. He was replaced by Viscount of Rochambeau who waged such a brutal campaign that it united both the gens de couleur and the free Africans of Haiti against him. When it became apparent that the French sought to reinstate slavery, the people of Haiti fought without end. These factors, coupled with a naval blockade and Napoleon’s shrinking interest in the New World as well as his unwillingness to send adequate frontline reinforcements meant that the direct involvement of France in Haiti was over. The island’s hard-earned independence had been won at last.

Haiti would go down in history as the first independent nation in Latin America, and the first post-colonial country in the world governed by former slaves; the only nation on earth whose independence was gained through a slave rebellion/an organized uprising. The problems that Haiti has suffered since, and is suffering now, may weigh heavily upon it; but its virtue is in its unrelenting quest for self-determination in which the fighting example it has set for oppressed peoples of the world still shines through even in the midst of this new devastation. From rising out of some of the darkest days the Western Hemisphere has ever seen, the people of Haiti prevailed, just as they will again now.

Evan Arnold

As more and more tales of extreme barbarity were heard by visitors to the colonies, the Spanish crown decided that their governors were now out of order. But rather than replace them, they decided to draft a set of new laws known as the Laws of Burgos codified in 1512. These laws regulated interactions between the Spaniards and their natives.

But the Laws of Burgos were a real mixed bag of humanitarian successes and failures, and while they called for a more humane treatment of the indigenous inhabitants of the New World, they also made it much easier for them to be exploited. They were to move into Spanish townships for use in the Encomienda labor system—whereby a person was granted a specified number of natives for whom they were to take responsibility—the crown believing that this would quell the violence from their governors. Catholicism was also forced upon the colonized; and those who did not attend mass were barred from any rest on the next working day.

The laws were near impossible to enforce because of the distance between Spain and her colonies, but at the same time, they also enshrined certain humanitarian regulations including, standards of hygiene, regular working hours, pay, and minimal living quarters. Even pregnant women were given time off rather than forced to work during their pregnancy. Yet in practice, the Spanish colonialists simply kept the parts they liked and dismissed the rest with impunity.

Having almost completely eliminated the Amerindian population, they now began importing kidnapped Africans as early as 1501 under the rule of Nicolás de Ovando; thus making him the first enslaver of both the Americas and Haiti. This process introducing shackled-slaves to the island would later give Haiti its unique and distinctive racial characteristic as the remaining Amerindians, Spaniards, Africans, and eventually the French, intermixed. Africans had filled the population vacuum that the Amerindians left behind in their demise, and soon outnumbered their white overlords by twelve to one. Gold, while still sought after, became much less important to the Spanish, who had already mined most of it. Sugar cane, and other cash rich crops, became the main source of income generation.

As time passed, Spain moved its interest from Hispaniola to larger mainland colonies. Seeing greater profits to be made in the mainland, especially from gold—the legend of El Dorado was still taken seriously by many conquistadors and officials. Interest in Haiti and activity on the island declined. Its population growth was also slowed due to a disproportionate male to female ratio. As piracy began in the early seventeenth century, the island and its neighbors became regular stopping points for pirates.

The first recorded of a settlement by French pirates was on Tortuga in 1625. The abundance of natural resources on this island; wild hogs, lumber, and fresh running water made settlement here idea. King Louis XIV of France recognized it as a French colony in 1659. The Spanish did their best to root out piracy for two reasons; pirates were capturing their ships and looting treasures meant for the Old World, and secondly, wherever they established settlements, the monarchy of France would not fail to seize an opportunity to recognize it as their own.

The Spaniards, however, could not hold back the tides. Pirates started landing on Haiti itself. In a panicked, the King of Spain warned colonists that they should withdraw close to the capital of Santo Domingo for their own safety, being unable or unwilling to send soldiers from his other interests to protect that island nation. This ensured that English, Dutch, and French pirates quickly established bases on the now abandoned Northern and Western parts of the isle. The French became the dominant group and, under the leadership of Bertrand d’Ogeron, established a permanent settlement there. Bertrand d’Ogeron encouraged the planting of tobacco, a cash crop that made the roving bands of pirates, bootleggers and brigands much more sedentary in their habits, and turned their pirate base into an unofficial ‘free’ French colony to which others of their countrymen flocked. Desperately wanting a hand in the growing economy of this island, the French crown recognized the new Colony in 1665, naming it Saint-Dominigue, which would become present day Haiti. Finally, Spain itself ceded some kind of defeat in 1669, and under the Treaty of Ryswick, it officially recognized the western third of the island as French.

The economy of Saint-Domigue expanded exponentially. In later years, sugar and coffee would become the most important export crops. By 1767, Saint-Domigue alone was responsible for exporting up to 72-million pounds of raw sugar; 51-million pounds of refined sugar; one million pounds of indigo; and two million pounds of cotton each year. But the new found sources of wealth exacted a terrible price in blood. In order to produce to the growing demands of Europeans, Saint-Domigue required more enslaved Africans. By the 1780’s, this single colony, roughly the size of Maryland in the United States, produced upwards of 40 percent of all the coffee and sixty percent of all the sugar used in Europe.

Saint-Domigue produced more coffee than all of the British West Indies. Conditions on the island were so harsh that a third of the people imported there died within a year of their arrival. It required some 800,000 kidnapped Africans to keep up with demands and production. From 1764 to 1786, the numbers of enslaved Africans imported fluctuated between ten and twenty-eight thousand people each year. An inability to meet French demands for more enslaved Africans saw to it that the island’s population declined and steadied-off at around 500,000 inhabitants. The population had fallen between two and three per cent each year for many reasons, including malnutrition, over-exposure, exhaustion, and a severe imbalance between the sexes. Five hundred thousand African men and women were ruled over by a population of barely 32,000 white French people.

So, what created the harsh environment that killed so many? Tropical diseases like Yellow Fever swept through the colony and killed several thousands. These illnesses affected more enslaved Africans much more than they affected the French, this in part, due to poor sanitation, poor health and poor hygiene conditions. The brutal treatment by their captors was also a major factor in the staggering numbers of deaths. This passage by Henri Christopes’ secretary, who lived more than half of his life as a slave, depicts the savage crimes perpetrated:

“Have they not hung up men with heads downward, drowned them in sacks, crucified them on planks, buried them alive, crushed them in mortars? Have they not forced them to eat shit? And, having flayed them with the lash, have they not cast them alive to be devoured by worms, or onto anthills, or lashed them to stakes in the swamp to be devoured by mosquitoes? Have they not thrown them into boiling cauldrons of cane syrup? Have they not put men and women inside barrels studded with spikes and rolled them down mountainsides into the abyss? Have they not consigned these miserable blacks to man eating-dogs until the latter, sated by human flesh, left the mangled victims to be finished off with bayonet and poniard?”

Few direct quotations from former enslaved Africans exist in this era. When they do appear, they are as poignant as any words from the Diary of Anne Frank. But one was not doomed to die in these retched conditions. For some, there was escape and hope. Thousands of Africans fled to the mountainous regions of Haiti, where they banded together as Maroons. From under the cloak of safety in the treacherous hills, they raided isolated plantations, destroyed sugar and coffee crops, and tried to free others who were enslaved just as they had been. The most famous among them was Mackandal–a one armed voodoo priest who escaped into the mountains in 1751, and banded together with several of the Maroons to wage war on their former enslavers. For six years, he staged many successful raids against plantations and avoided capture by the French, killing over five thousand people in a quest for freedom. In 1758, while trying to poison the water wells of the French nobility, he was captured and burnt alive at the stake.

Just like the Spanish before them, French colonialists also wrote a document intended to reel in control of the harsh treatment inflicted on enslaved peoples of the colonies. Le Code Noir was established by King Louis XIV. The Black Code, as it became known in English, immediately displaced all Jews from all French colonies, and established the Roman Catholic faith as the only practiced religion. Below you’ll find a few excerpts from Le Code Noir:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILLmoquqpAo

Evan Arnold

Haiti. What conceptions does the name bring to mind? You may have heard of it as the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Certainly, if you hadn’t heard about the island nation of Haiti before, you’ve heard of it now with the natural disaster that occurred there on 12 January 2010, leaving thousands homeless, without electricity, food, or running water.

“Until Haiti spoke the slave ship, followed by hungry sharks, greedy to devour the dead and dying slaves flung overboard to feed them, ploughed in peace the South Atlantic, painting the sea with the Negro’s blood.” – Fredrick Douglas

But underneath the wreckage and ruin, there is a story of hope in the island’s history; of how an entire people decided to rise up against their oppressors and liberate themselves. While Haiti has encountered many difficulties on its path to nationhood and independence, which plague it still today, there has always been a beacon of hope shining over the island nation; that gilded light ready to burst through dark storm clouds for the entire world to see.

The land of Haiti was originally inhabited by one of the many indigenous native tribes that called the islands of the Greater Antilles (including Jamaica, Haiti, Trinidad, Barbados, and several others) their home. They were the Arawaks or Taínos people. And there is some disagreement between historians as to whether the Taínos are a sub-section of the Arawak natives, or if they are two different tribes. Whatever the case, the Taínos did speak a language that was derived from the Arawak language family. Compared to other natives inhabiting the Greater Antilles, the Arawaks/Taínos had an advanced civilization. They had a social structure, domesticated crops such as maize were regularly grown, and they had even developed long boats. Words such as barbeque, canoe, and hurricane have been adopted into English and Spanish from the Arawak language family.

If you stayed awake during your history class, we all know that Columbus landed in the New World (not discovered) in 1492; you might even recall that he landed in El Salvador on 12 October. Perhaps even more important was his second landing, which took place in Northern Haiti on 15 December of that same year. Upon hearing rumors from other native peoples that Haiti was rich with gold (a tactic used to drive the Spanish away, which often worked) Christopher Columbus’s flagship, the Santa Maria accidentally ran aground while trying to land in a section of Haiti on 24 December. Columbus, seeing that the wreck was unsalvageable, had his men disassemble the seventy foot vessel and build a small fort out of the remaining wood. This was the first settlement in the New World, originally called La Navidad because it was established on December 24th; the fort was to eventually be called Môle Saint-Nicolas. When the Arawak/Taínos people made their presence on the island known to the Europeans, Columbus had this chilling statement to make as recorded in his journal.

“I have ordered a tower and fortress to be constructed and, a large cellar, not because I believe there is any necessity on account of [the natives],” he noted in his journal. “I am certain the people I have with me could subjugate all this island … as the population are naked and without arms and very cowardly.”

When Columbus returned to Spain, he left roughly thirty men at Môle Saint-Nicolas to search for the gold that had been spoken of and interact with the natives. By the time he came back on his second voyage the next year, he found corpses upon the beach and the settlement destroyed. He was told by some Arawak/ Taíno natives that the settlers had mistreated the natives and they were killed. Columbus built yet another settlement called La Isabela, moving it further to the East, establishing it in 1493 as a series of hurricanes as well as disease and constant hunger disillusioned some settlers so much that they talked of stealing the caravels and heading back to Spain on their own. The colony barely survived until 1496 where Columbus abandoned it and established Santo Domingo de Guzman instead, which would eventually be known as the capital of modern day Dominican Republic. The island was dubbed Hispaniola by the Spanish.

Christopher Columbus and the Spanish crown in particular had a monopoly on the island of Haiti. Unbeknownst to the natives, the island was claimed in the name of Spain when Columbus wrecked his ship there. Before his second voyage to the New World, his brother Bartholomew Columbus had tried to catch up with him, so that they could attend the trip together; unfortunately by the time Bartholomew got to Spain, Columbus had already sailed. Not to be deterred, he followed his brother Christopher, having been given funds by the Spanish crown. When he eventually arrived in Haiti, Bartholomew was appointed Adelantado of Hispaniola in his brother’s absence (meaning one who has come first). This was a position that gave him the powers of both governor of the colony as well as a judge in all legal matters. He ruled in this position for six years.

Bartholomew’s position made him answerable only to the Council of the Indies—an administrative branch of the Spanish government that oversaw the colonies and reported back to the king of Spain. This was a step towards taking the land away from the Conquistadors and putting it in the hands of the Spanish crown. It was the first seat of colonial rule for the Spanish, and set a pattern of interaction with the natives for many years to come. Unfortunately for the native peoples of the islands, that pattern of interaction left a great deal to be desired. When Christopher Columbus fell from favor with the Spanish crown and was imprisoned, his brother was also removed from office.

The rule of the Columbus brothers had been described by colonists as both tyrannical and cruel; those colonists who disagreed with them were tortured and in some cases put to death. Their treatment of the natives was equally appalling; for even a small offense, cutting off a nose or an ear was considered acceptable, after the punishment was doled out the ‘offender’ was sent back to their village to show the wrath of Spain. They began demanding anything and everything, women, food, spun cotton, but especially gold. The previous colonies set up by Columbus had not been profitable, and he was quickly running out of ways to appease the crown at home.

At first, the Arawak/Taínos people resisted passively, at first they moved away from Spanish settlements, refused to plant any crops that the Spanish gave them to farm, and attempted to avoid contact all together. Finally, the Arawak/Taínos people had enough of the Spanish cruelty and brutality. They began to fight against their oppressors. An account of Christopher Columbus’ reaction to this as recorded by Bartolomé de Las Casas is as follows.

“Since the Admiral perceived that the people of the land were taking up arms, ridiculous weapons in reality, he hastened to proceed to the country and disperse and subdue, by force of arms, the people of the entire island. For this he chose 200 foot soldiers and 20 cavalry, with many crossbows and small cannon, lances, and swords, and a still more terrible weapon against the Indians: this was 20 hunting dogs, who were turned loose and immediately tore the Indians apart…The soldiers mowed down dozens with point-blank volleys, loosed the dogs to rip open limbs and bellies, chased fleeing Indians into the bush to skewer them on sword and pike, and with God’s aid soon gained a complete victory, killing many Indians and capturing others who were also killed.”

Bartholomew himself was a priest who had owned enslaved Indians at first, but began to see what his countrymen were doing as not only wrong but completely inhumane. He was a first hand witness to many cruelties and recorded them in his multiple volume work, “History of the Indies.” This work shows the depths of depravity to which the Spanish had sunk in their conquest of the island. He spoke of the “strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty” inflicted upon the natives in order to prevent the “Indians from daring to think of themselves as human beings.”

The Spanish began killing the natives for sport and dog meat. Columbus, upset at not being able to find much gold on the island on his own, and still convinced that there was gold present, set up a tribute system. Ferdinand Columbus, his son, describes how this process worked.

“The Indians all promised to pay tribute to the Catholic Sovereigns every three months, as follows: In the Cibao, where the gold mines were, every person of 14 years of age or upward was to pay a large hawk’s bell of gold dust; all others were each to pay 25 pounds of cotton. Whenever an Indian delivered his tribute, he was to receive a brass or copper token which he must wear bout his neck as proof that he had made his payment. Any Indian found without such a token was to be punished.”

When the natives were given the token it made them safe for three months, during this three month grace period, it took nearly all of this time to gather the material. Those that failed to have the token had their arms cut off and died of blood loss. In October of 1499, Columbus sent two ships to Spain requesting that the Court of Spain send a commissioner to help him rule the isle of Hispaniola. The court appointed Francisco de Bobadilla to the job. Upon his arrival in the New World, while Columbus was absent, he was petitioned by everyone to put an end to Columbus’ tyrannical rule and take him back to Europe for imprisonment. Francisco, who actually had the full powers of a Governor (granted to him by the Spain crown who thought Columbus too wild) had his rival’s family arrested and shipped back to Spain on trial for their many crimes just a year later. Columbus and his family, while found guilty, were later pardoned by Spain’s monarchs and although they mounted a fourth unsuccessful expedition to the New World, they were never again to hold unbridled power in the manner they had done before.

Francisco ruled the island for two years until a hurricane killed him, wrecking twenty one of the thirty ships present on the colony. He was replaced by Nicolás de Ovando, a distant relative of Hernán Cortés; the man who would destroy and enslave the Aztec empire. Nicolás arrived with thirty ships—the largest fleet yet seen on the isle. Unlike previous expeditions to the region, he brought with him a cross-section of Spanish people, numbering roughly two thousand five hundred. His intentions were to put down the natives, and develop the island as well as the rest of the Greater Antilles, economically, in order to further Spain’s sphere of influence in the New World. Francisco Pizarro, who would conquer the Inca Empire in modern day Peru, also came with him. Hernán Cortés was to join the fleet but was prevented by an injury sustained while fleeing the bedroom of a married woman.

He arrived in 1502, and immediately began putting down the native insurrection in a number of bloody and barbaric campaigns. Mass suicides became common; natives simply chewed manioc leaves or threw themselves off cliffs rather than face the Spanish. Among the few native peoples who were friendly to the Spanish was Queen Anacaona. Queen Anacaona was ruler of the southernmost part of the five kingdoms in Haiti, and was certainly one of the most powerful nobles left. Before Nicolás came to the isle; she had worked out a deal with Bartholomew Columbus, whereby her people would be left alone as long as they paid a tribute of food and cotton to the new invaders. However, Nicolás still suspected her of leading the insurrection, because her husband had been responsible for the attack on Môle Saint-Nicolas (La Navidad) several years previous. During a feast in her honor with several other nobles, Nicolás found out about the meeting and approached them. Here is an account of what happened:

“But it happened one day, that the Governour of an Island [Nicolás de Ovando], attended by 60 Horse, and 30 Foot (now the Cavalry was sufficiently able to unpeople not only the Isle, but also the whole Continent) he summoned about 300 Dynasta’s, or Noblemen to appear before him, and commanded the most powerful of them, being first crouded into a Thatcht Barn or Hovel, to be exposed to the fury of the merciless Fire, and the rest to be pierced with Lances, and run through with the point of the Sword, by a multitude of Men: And Anacaona, herself who (as we said before,) sway’d the Imperial Scepter, to her greater honor was hanged on a Gibbet. And if it fell out that any person instigated by Compassion or Covetousness, did entertain any Indian Boys and mount them on Horses, to prevent their Murder, another was appointed to follow them, who ran them through the back or in the hinder parts, and if they chanced to escape Death, and fall to the ground, they immediately cut off his Legs; and when any of those Indians, that survived these Barbarous Massacres, betook themselves to an Isle eight miles distant, to escape their Butcheries, they were then committed to servitude during Life.”

Queen Anacaona is celebrated as one of Haiti’s primordial founders. She is listed among other important figures such as Toussaint L’ Ouverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines as a figure of Haitian independence. Nicolás, while governor, also introduced sugar cane plants from the Canary Islands, set up gold mines, established cities and went on expeditions of exploration. But who would work in these mines and sugar fields? Certainly, not the Spanish.

Nicolás used the subjugated native population to mine the gold and tend the fields. Those that refused to work were either killed or sold into slavery; diseases like small-pox for which the natives had no immunity devastated their numbers even further. He also set up the encomendia system, a word meaning ‘charge’ or ‘patronage’. This granted groups of enslaved natives to Spanish soldiers, merchants, or other officials, to be used as forced labor. Combining these factors with a steadily dropping birth-rate due to societal disruption, along with malnutrition caused a near extinction of an entire way of life and population.

Bartolomé de Las Casas writes:

“…there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it.”

Perhaps the most horrible thing to come out of the cruelty of the Spanish rule over the New World isn’t just the initial victims and the suffering they had to go through. That in itself is terrible, but far from the worst. The worst is that they set up a pattern of interaction between Europeans and Indigenous peoples that lasted for hundreds of years, vestiges of which can still be seen today. European technological advancements, coupled with religious zealotry and their own belief in the superiority of Europeans above all other peoples as well as their desire for rampant expansionism, set upon the New World like an apocalyptic nightmare. Spreading sickness, only sated by material goods, capable of committing extreme acts of cruelty and even nearly exterminating whole populations without so much as a single thought. Enslavement. Torture. Death. These were the daily realities that people subjugated by the Spanish had to face. One cannot help but ask, “Were these men or were these demons? How could men act in such a fashion and still be called human?”

Evan Arnold