Henri Christophe
Henri Christophe (6 October, 1767 – 8 October, 1820) was a key leader in the Haitian Revolution and the only monarch of the Kingdom of Haiti.
Quotes
[edit]- My race is as old as yours. In Africa, they tell me, there are as many blacks as there are white men in Europe. In Saint Domingue, before we drove the French out, there were a hundred negroes to every master. But we were your slaves. Except in Haiti, nowhere in the world have we resisted you. We have suffered, we have grown dull, and, like cattle under a whip, we have obeyed. Why? Because, m’sieu, we have no pride! And we have no pride because we have nothing to remember. Listen! ... It is a drum, Sir Home. Somewhere my people are dancing. It is almost all we have. The drum, laughter, love for one another, and our share of courage. But we have nothing white men can understand. You despise our dreams and kill the snakes and break the little sticks you think are our gods. Perhaps if we had something we could show you, if we had something we could show ourselves, you would respect us and we might respect ourselves. If we had even the names of our great men! If we could lay our hands ... on things we’ve made, monuments and towers and palaces, we might find our strength, gentlemen. While I live I shall try to build that pride we need, and build in terms white men as well as black can understand! I am thinking of the future, m’sieu, not of now. I will teach pride if my teaching breaks every back in my kingdom!
- Conversation with Sir Home Riggs Popham in Port-au-Prince (c. 1820). Reported in John W. Vandercook, Black Majesty: The Life of Christophe, King of Haiti (Harper & Bros., 1928), ch. 12
Quotes about
[edit]- Christophe's aims were great, and many of them good. He was not only the patron of the arts, but of industry; and it gave him pleasure to see his country recovering the ground lost in the revolution and the civil wars, and advancing in name and wealth. He promoted industry on the principles laid down by his predecessor, Toussaint. A busy population covered the land with marks of its labors. Rich crops of the most coveted produce of nature annually rewarded the toil of the husbandman. Christophe was also the patron of education; and there are still on the island schools that were founded by him when king. In one respect he excelled Charlemagne,—he could write his own name; but that was all. He dictated letters and despatches, and was an admirable judge of the fitness and relevancy of words. He kept up a correspondence with Wilberforce and Clarkson, the English philanthropists, and both of these distinguished men had a high opinion of him as a man, and a friend of his race.
External links
[edit]
Encyclopedic article on Henri Christophe on Wikipedia
