How Did Geography Affect the Haitian Revolution?

Abstract

This paper concerns Haiti’s geography and how it affected the Haitian Revolution. Its aims involve detailing the geography (especially human and physical) of colonial Saint-Domingue at the end of the Eighteenth Century and investigating the impact of that geography on the Haitian Revolution. The study focuses chiefly on primary sources from France, Saint-Domingue, and the United States in the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth centuries and uses them to narrate the relationship of the Haitian revolutionaries to the geography of their country. It paints a picture of colonial Saint-Domingue as a mountainous and sparsely-populated place, largely remote from the French metropole, and with certain regions alienated from each other by a lack of economic ties. It then discusses the unconventional, Fabian, and proto-Guerrilla tactics that the Haitian revolutionaries employed, including asymmetric warfare, the employment of the surrounding biome in manufacturing supplies and gaining positional advantages, and the use of mountainous jungle to bluff the enemy concerning the size and equipment of insurgent forces. It notes how this strategy works symbiotically with the local environment, and how it propelled the Haitian Revolution to victory and allowed the continuous maintenance of an upper hand against enemy armies despite a disadvantage in numbers and equipment and a pro forma colony-metropole relationship with France. It describes the ways in which this symbiotic relationship with geography not only won Haiti’s independence but also shook the world. This paper describes Saint-Domingue’s geography during the time of the Haitian Revolution, and then discusses the importance of this geography in the creation of the first revolutionary black republic.