Andrew Marr’s History of the World - Age of Revolution

The British had at least been determined there would be no slavery in Australia. But what of the great enemies, the French? Their revolutionary version of the Enlightenment, the equality of man, was also spreading beyond Europe. But these ideas now collided with the dirtiest stain on Europe’s conscience.

By the end of the 18th century, the African slave trade was an entrenched part of the world’s economic system. 12.5 million Africans were ripped from their families and transported in appalling conditions across the Atlantic. The slaves were put to work on the plantations of the Americas and the Caribbean.

There, the death rate was terrible. Branding, whipping and unspeakable tortures were routine.

Slavery is almost as old and widespread as civilisation itself. What made the Atlantic slave trade different was simply its size. Here in the Americas, you had limitless quantities of cheap land, and in Europe, you had an insatiable desire for sugar, coffee and tobacco. But to put the two together, you needed very cheap labour. You needed African slaves. And the rotting remains of the great slave plantations are still dotted along the Atlantic coast.

Slavery produced an increasing moral problem for European countries which liked to think of themselves as enlightened. But the system was fabulously profitable, re-shaping cities in Europe and building awesome fortunes. It seemed too powerful to overthrow, too big to fail.

But the news of the French Revolution had an incendiary effect on the slaves of the French colony of Saint Domingue, now known as Haiti. Hundreds of thousands of slaves had died here. Slave leaders used voodoo ceremonies as a cover for plotting a revolution of their own.

On the night of 14 August, 1791, the group of slaves met with the voodoo high priest, Boukman Dutty. He was called “Boukman” because he knew how to read. Now he was mixing French revolutionary thinking with African religion and he urged the slaves, “Listen to the voice of liberty in your hearts.” To seal what was a desperate and dangerous plan, Bookman drank the blood of a slaughtered pig.

Haiti’s slave rebellion had begun. Within weeks, 100,000 slaves had risen up in revolt. 4,000 white planters were killed. Hundreds of plantations were burned to the ground.

The French plantation owners fought back. In November, Boukman Dutty was captured and killed. But the revolt only spread.

In France, a ferocious row broke out between those who argued that slavery was a stain on the ideals of the revolution and those who said, “Hold on, France needs the money.”

Guess who’s argument won. The slave revolution - evermore bitter, evermore complicated - dragged on.

The man who finally won the slaves their freedom was himself a former slave and a military genius. His name was Toussaint L’Ouverture. Haiti was still formally a French colony, but Toussaint ran it with his own constitution, which was liberal and optimistic. “I am too much a believer in the rights of man,” he said, “to think that in nature there is one colour superior to another. For me, a man is only a man!”.

Toussaint’s Haiti was a glimpse of a better way of living together. It was only a brief glimpse, because Napoleon then sent the largest army that has ever left France by ship to crush the slave rebellion. Toussaint was tricked into giving himself up, abducted and died shivering of cold in a French prison.

But in Haiti, the fighting went on until 1804, when the colony finally won independence from France and established the world’s first black republic. The revolt had rubbed European noses in the horrors of slavery. Three years after Haiti’s independence, the British abolished the slave trade. Most of the world followed soon after.

The end of the Atlantic slave trade was a great victory for enlightened values, but Haiti’s fate was rather grimmer.

Great white nations, such as the United States, with its noble new constitution, and republican France, shunned the young black republic. Her economy collapsed, and appalling tyrannies followed.

Today, Toussaint’s noble dream republic is one of the poorest and most miserable places on the planet.

The Enlightenment had taught that all men and women were brothers and sisters - noble ideals. But they were outpaced by the more immediate demands of money, power and luxury.