1804: (The Geopolitical Isolation and the Dual Purpose of Governance): The Haitians could not know with certainty that the French would never return, but the…

1804: (The Geopolitical Isolation and the Dual Purpose of Governance): The Haitians could not know with certainty that the French would never return, but they were acutely aware that a French garrison remained in Santo Domingo and that every power ringing the horizon — France, England, Spain, and the United States — was a slave-owning state. It would be more than two decades, until 1825, before a single country recognized Haiti as a sovereign nation, leaving the republic in a prolonged diplomatic quarantine. Dessalines was as incapable of vision for the future as he was of understanding the outer world; for his purposes, government had only two goals: to prevent the return of any white man and to forestall the reintroduction of slavery. Behind both objectives lay a visceral suspicion of all mulâtres who, as descendants of French colons and former slave owners themselves, were regarded by Dessalines as inherently untrustworthy inheritors of colonial privilege. The administrative organization of the countryside, which would persist into the twentieth century, mirrored the army: Haiti was divided into four districts commanded by generals — the North under Christophe with Clervaux as deputy, the Artibonite under Gabart, the West under Pétion, and the South under Geffrard.