On 1 January 1804, the Republic of Haiti declared independence.
“Haiti offered asylum to enslaved people who could reach its shores. The Haitian Revolution inaugurated an independent Haitian trade, which sent free Haitians on business around the Caribbean and encouraged enslaved sailors to desert to freedom. Enslaved people also escaped to Haiti by other means. For example, in the Bahamas in 1822, slaveholders complained that more than 100 enslaved men and women from the island of Grand Caicos had overwhelmed their drivers and overseers, taken their children with them, and stolen open boats to flee to Haiti. Once on land in the Black republic, any person of African descent was free and eligible for citizenship. It was Haitian policy never to permit the re-enslavement of Haitian citizens or refugees.
Robin Blackburn writes that ‘Haiti had saved the honor of the New World revolutions’, coming closer to realising the universal rights proclaimed by American revolutionaries than American founders had ever done. Haiti was an island of Black freedom in a sea of white supremacy.”
—Excerpt From Padraic X. Scanlan‘s Slave Empire – How Slavery Built Modern Britain, 2020
That was the time of the transatlantic slave trade, empires, the plantations, barbaric treatment of enslaved people, and when commodities were – and still are – treated much better than human beings.
In the contemporary times of ‘modernity’, ‘liberal democracy’, ‘our values’, ‘the free world’, etc. asylum seekers, refugees and migrants are being sent back home – if not to Rwanda –, a fortress Europe has been erected, tens of thousands have died crossing the Mediterranean, the French authorities recently sent refugees to die in the Channel, detention centres are abound – cages in the U.S. … hate crimes and neofascism are on the rise … The lucky refugees though were welcomed with open arms because the colour of ones skin and culture as well as geopolitics still matter.
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