14867: Edouard- News-Napoleon lost Haiti, then hope (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Felix Edouard <loveayiti@hotmail.com>

The Times-Picayune

Napoleon lost Haiti, then hope

Monday February 17, 2003

Looking at Haiti's current misfortune, it's difficult to imagine that it was
once the richest French colony in the New World.

This perhaps explains why, as we celebrate the bicentennial of the Louisiana
Purchase, few people are mentioning Haiti and its importance to the deal
that shaped our nation.

Several scholars are in town to set the record straight.

"The most important territories for the French were the Caribbean
territories," said Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, a professor at the University
of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. "First and foremost was San Domingue, which became
Haiti in 1804.

"You had the richest colony the world had ever seen and the poorest people
in the world because all of the money was being sent off to France," he
said.


Revolution set up sale

Bellegarde-Smith is one of several scholars participating in "Our History,
Our Truth: The Impact of the Haitian Revolution on the Louisiana Purchase,"
a two-day event being held this week at Southern University at New Orleans.

The event, which is being sponsored by SUNO and the Haiti Support Project,
aims to remind Americans that the Louisiana Purchase had Haitian roots.

For more than a decade Africans in Haiti fought to overthrow the French,
though by 1798 Haitian liberator Toussaint L'Ouverture was very much in
charge, and by 1804 the island had all but declared its independence.

"Once one of the most important jewels in the French crown was lost,
Napoleon Bonaparte lost hope," he said, noting that the fall of Haiti was
the crucial factor in Napoleon's decision to sell Louisiana to the United
States.

Alfred Hunt, a professor at the State University of New York in Purchase,
offered a similar analysis when he spoke last month at LSU. Hunt further
argued that the Haitian Revolution was one of the factors that led to the
Civil War.

Southern plantation owners, fearful that freed slaves would attack their
former masters as the Haitians had done, were hardened in their opposition
to emancipation and less apt to compromise with their Northern brethren.

Interwoven events

The events at SUNO this week are one step toward correcting this record.

The culmination of the celebration of the bicentennial of Haitian
Independence will take place next year when the Haiti Support Project
sponsors "Cruising into History," an educational voyage to Haiti.

Their efforts serve as a constant reminder that Louisiana history is a far
more tangled web than most of us realize.

. . . . . . .

Tonight at 7 p.m. the Haiti Support Project and Southern University at New
Orleans will present "A Celebration of Culture" in the SUNO multipurpose
auditorium. Tuesday night there will be a symposium titled "The Impact of
the Haitian Revolution on the Louisiana Purchase," featuring Patrick
Bellegarde-Smith, Jean Chenier Brierre, Jack O'Connor and Leon D. Pamphile.
For information, call 945-0502 or visit www.cruisingintohistory.org.




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