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1806-10-17

1806-10-17: (Dessalines Assassinated on the Outskirts of Port-au-Prince, Haiti Splitting Into a Black-Dominated North Under Christophe and a Mulatto-Dominate…

Haitian

1806-10-17: (Dessalines Assassinated on the Outskirts of Port-au-Prince, Haiti Splitting Into a Black-Dominated North Under Christophe and a Mulatto-Dominated South Under Pétion, the Colonial Caste System Reproducing Itself Within the Structures of the Republic): On October 17, 1806, Jean-Jacques Dessalines was assassinated on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. The man who had proclaimed independence, crowned himself emperor, and wielded absolute power was killed by his own officers, both Black and mulatto, who had grown tired of his authoritarian rule and his economic policies that imposed compulsory labor on the very peasants the Revolution had freed. His death shattered the fragile unity of the new nation. Haiti divided into two states: a Black-dominated north under Henri Christophe and a mulatto-dominated south under Alexandre Pétion. The division mapped almost perfectly onto the racial caste system of the colonial era, which had stratified the population into whites, mulattos, and Blacks. Independence had removed the whites from the equation, but the hierarchy beneath them remained intact, and it would govern Haitian politics for the next two centuries.