The French Revolution: Or Why You Have to Thank Every Frenchman for your Freedom (If you live in the Americas)

This man freed the Americas, Deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, invented a legal code AND
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The French Revolution or also known as the Great French War. I'm sure many of you have gone over this in high school. You basically know the story right? It's a modern narrative too. A country tries to rule the world - and fails. A rich nation exhausts its resources, its people, its credit and its prestige. A nation in which citizens rise up to toss out the old order of things and bring in a new age of universal equality and tried to spread its 'ideals' everywhere and performs that task only for its own self-gain. Hmm, I wonder what nation resembles that.... it reminds me of an article I posted which notes the similaraties between France and the US. The world was a different place back then if Marx is right about history repeating itself, we're bound to see it happen again right?

The world was a different place back then. After the Atlantic European's world scramble for colonies, trade and gold the clear winner was Great Britain. The Netherlands couldn't keep up with Britain because of its small population, France had fallen into Imperial malaise, Spain was poor, Sweden was a military powerhouse and Germany still had a zillion little princes. But Britain was kind of frustrated too.... I mean the Dutch still had the East Indies and France still had rich sugar colonies in the Carribbean and most of England's North American colonies had gone American. Spain (and Portugal) still controlled everything south of Mexico. Russia stretched from Poland to North America. The Ottomans still controlled the Eastern Mediterreanean. India still had the Mughal Emperor and China was rich due to it;s mercantilist policies regarding silver. The British made profits in Africa but other European did business there and the Portuguese had Angola and Mozambique.

All of this began to change when the British started plundering India with its British East Indian Company using its sepoy army to kill Maharajah's all over the sub-continent and take their treasure like Tipu Sultan of Mysore or Siraj Ud-Daulah, Nawab of Bengal. However, the company could never turn a profit because of the palaces, barracks, bungalows, uniforms, weapons, armies, forts, servants that helped the company run its business. Besides this, Britain also dominated the Atlantic slave trade by buying from African dealers on the coast who rained the hinterland for slaves. Despite modern beliefs, it wasn't kingdoms like Britain or Portugal who took most of the slaves from West Africa. It was kingdoms like Dahomey and Ashanti in West Africa who sold other West Africans for cloth, cowrie shells and muskets. West African societies were pressured to the breaking point and it was a time of chaos in West Africa. Secret societies like Voodoo societies formed to protect themselves from slavers. Nonetheless, millions were sold to go to Brazil, America, the Carribean etc.

East Asia was in a good position despite the Manchu invasion which ended the last indigenous Chinese dynasty to ever rule the Middle Kingdom. The new Manchu overlords forced the Chinese to adopt the famous ponytail you always see in old Chinese movies but otherwise they let the Chinese run the bureaucracy. They weren't hardasses like the Mongols. After some openess by Emperor Kangxi, the Manchu Emperor Yongzheng closed up China because he saw Christianity as an alien cult with a hidden agenda. He let the port of Guangzhou stay open, after all China needed to maintain it's trade imbalance with the West in its favour, and so China was at peace. Japan was the hot ghetto mess of the region, until the Shogun Oda Nobunga unified Japan and kicked out Europeans (except the Dutch) from Japan.

By 1789, France's premier colony in it's America happens to be both the richest and the poorest cash cow of all time. 80% of its population are African slaves who barely live on anything and are forced to cut sugar cane while the other 20% are free Blacks, mixed race people and French colonists who're having a good time on the expense of their slaves. Most of that money winded up in France where the decadent French monarch drained the treasury which had already been strained by its bad credit and the fact it financed the American Revolution.

So the French revolution rolls along any many rich people lose their heads. The situation was far more interesting in Haiti. A civil war had broken out between the free mixed race people of Haiti and the White establishment on the western half of the island of Hispaniola and this chaos spread as the slaves revolted on August 21st, 1791 killing their masters and making the whole island smell like barbecue. The French Revolution spread to Haiti when a mixed race man at the National Assembly in Paris named Vincent Oge believed that mixed race people should be French citizens too. He was of course thrown out of the Assembly but he brought his ideas to Haiti and that's what made Haiti engulf into an inferno of burning sugar plantations and Caucasian flesh.

The War continues in Europe as France invades Holland and soon all of Europe (especially Austria, Prussia and Great Britain) declare war on France. They barely manage to hold back these European armies and the France is declared a republic. Also King Louis loses his head to a wonderful device called the Guillotine. Much better than having someone whack at your neck a couple times before it comes off. 600,000 young Frenchmen are sent off to war on masse creating the largest European army ever and the Great Terror of Robespierre takes over killing 'enemies of the Republic' but soon even Robespierre is seen as an enemy. He loses his head too. The meritocracy of the French Army produces great soldiers and officers like Napoleon Bonaparte who kicks Austrian ass in Italy and manages to invade Egypt too because he sends back enough pillaged treasure to Paris. Unfortunately for him, his British naval counterpart Horatio Nelson sinks his fleet in Egypt and he's forced to return to Europe and to become the dictator of France. Unfortunately, some problems just don't go away like France's messed financial situation and Haiti wasn't helping...

Haiti was mired in a 3 way racial war between whites, their former slaves and the mixed race product of the two. The French National Assembly decided to aid the Gens du Couleur faction in this civil war because these people needed France to maintain their rights as French citizens which were granted in 1792. With the help of the diplomat Leger Sonthonax, these mulatto warriors had control of most of Haiti. But when the Revolution killed Louis XVI (and brought on a British invasion) the Gens du Couleur turned on the new French government. Sonthonax now aimed to get support from the slaves by abolishing slavery in 1793 and one commander Toussaint L'Ouverture came over to Sonthonax the following year. By 1798 the war between the Gens du Couleur's and the Blacks grew too atrocious and the Blacks grew too powerful in Haiti. By 1801 Sonthonax had left after losing everything whilst L'Ouverture had conquered the island of Hispaniola and made himself governor for life.

By this time Napoleon was the dictator of France and as First Consul he didn't like to see someone else, especially a former slave be able to declare himself dictator of Haiti without his permission. Haiti also sold sugar to Britain and was acting if it was its' own independant state. Imagine that! Napoleon decided to invade Haiti and re-enslave its Black populace. 12,000 French invaded and in due time captured L'Ouverture by trickery. This was all part of Napoleon's grand plan. You see, Napoleon was a strategical dreamer like Hitler. Just as Napoleon thought conquering Egypt would allow him to put of all British India at risk, he thought by re-enslaving Haiti he could feed them with grain from French Louisiana and use the sugar to make more money thus helping curb France's increasing deficits and even maybe lower the national debt instead of looting some European principality for once. But as strategical dreamers usually do, he decided to invade Britain in 1803 and abandoned a French army thousands of miles away from France (for a second time). He also sold Louisiana to the young United States which doubled in size. Haiti was guaranteed independance and even had an Emperor or two before European/American interventions ended that pipe-dream. Haiti was also a haven for Latin American revolutionaries too...

This was only the start of the impact that the Napoleonic wars had on the Americas. Haiti became the first Black Republic and the United States was soon able to save itself from British invasion and expand further and further west due to the bloody European conflict.

I mean c'mon! If there was a 'Luckiest Nation on Earth' category it would obviously go to the United States. I mean, the greatest threat they had after independance was some Shawnee Confederacy oh and the British Navy. In the War of 1812, the Brits and the Yanks were at it again because Britain boarded American vessels to replace their losses from fighting Napoleon. Britain invaded, torched Washington. America invaded, torched York (now Toronto). Even as America sort of 'lost' that war it still one Indiana, Illinois and Michigan and managed to drive the Brits out of the port of New Orleans. Britain could not stop America from its western expansion. It was America's national goal to reach the Pacific and woe betide any Creek, Iroquois, Shawnee or Sioux that stood in its way. All of this was coupled by the Lousiana Purchase in which Napoleon sold that territory because he no longer needed it seeing that the richest colony France had in the hemisphere (Haiti) was now a free Black Republic. After the purchase, the US doubled in size overnight just for 15 million dollars.

The United States was only able to do this because thousands of British troops were already fighting the 340,000 French in the Iberian peninsula. Whilst 250,000 British soldiers and sailors were fighting elsewhere around the world. The British only started decisively impacting the war after Napoleon was sent to Elba in 1814. The naval blockade the Brits put on the Yanks plus the burning of Washington must've scared the hell of out the US. However, even as the US 'lost' the native allies of Britain such as the Shawnee lost even more. They lost Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and parts of the South due to the Creek rebellion. Insult upon injury, the rich port of New Orleans. America's western expansion could not be checked by Britain anymore, despite Britain's Indian allies like the Iroquois helping Britain prevent Canada to falling into American hands they got very little in return. Except for Joseph Brant who got a parcel of land in Southern Ontario. Thanks to the Napoleonic Wars interfering with Britain being able to check America, the native peoples of the America were at the mercy of land hungry settlers.

And yet the Napoleonic war raged on. Napoleon's luck (and demography) turned against him after the Russian campaign, he was starting to run out of young men to join his imperial army. Austria, Prussia, Spain and others advanced and the Emperor gave up and the first and possibly last time Russian troops were in Paris. However, he escaped and was crushed at Waterloo and sent to the Island of Saint Helena. Far, far away from Europe.

Meanwhile in Latin America, King Fernando VII reinstituted the old ways of doing things and this pissed off the colonials he had in South America. In his mind, they were subjects not citizens. Since 1810, people like Francisco de Miranda have been agitating for independance. Soon a rebel army led by Simon Bolivar had taken Caracas and was on his way to conquer Colombia. Further south, Jose de San Martin led an Argentine rebel army he had a plan to invade Chile and attack Peru, the control center of the Spanish American empire. Both generals fought mountainous campaigns and by 1821 San Martin was in Lima.

By the time Bolivar even got close to Peru, the two conquerors had agreed to meet in Guayaquil, Ecuador to decide the fate of South America. They had a closed door meeting between just the two of them and after the meeting San Martin decided to quit South America forever! Bolivar kept fighting in Peru until 1825 when they declared him Peru's dictator. He wished to unite South America in the Republic of Grand Colombia but he declared himself dictator of that union too, by 1830 he realized San Martin had the right idea and decided to quit in 1830 and retire to Europe but he died before he could leave the wretched continent.And like that, South America was freed but also broken and divided into differing juntas, dictators and prone to coups. Something's just dont change!

The Americas became truly free because of the Napoleonic Wars/French Revolution. Revolutionary ideas about mankind allowed Haitians to kill enough of each other and the French to be free...but not from dictators. This war allowed America to expand while fighting off the British Empire which was overcommitted in Europe and India too, while allowing to expand to the west in genocidal fury. Finally, South America kicked Spain's ass all over the place in order to become citizens....under differing juntas and dictatorships. Everyone wanted to be Napoleon I guess. Who wouldn't?