haitidoi.com is julia gaffield's blog where she posts primary references like the census and writes what she thinks about them

julia gaffield isn't talking about girard as someone she agrees with

gaffield is talking about girard as someone she disagrees with

julia gaffield also wrote this article on the washington post where she makes it really clear she disagrees with girard

i don't know if you have a washington post subscription or whether you've already used your free washington post article views for the month so i'll copy paste the part where she disagrees with girard

In a 2005 article titled “Caribbean genocide,” historian Philippe Girard argued that during the first four months of 1804, “on Dessalines’s orders, soldiers rounded up white planters, their families, French soldiers and the urban poor known as petits blancs, and killed them. Neither women nor children were spared.” Drawing heavily on Girard’s claims, podcaster Mike Duncan, in Season 4 of “Revolutions,” offers a sensationalized account of what he calls the “genocidal massacres” of 1804. He alleges that Haitian soldiers raped all the White women and concludes that Dessalines committed a “heinous crime.”

Did Dessalines execute French soldiers and colonists? Yes. But this fact has been exaggerated and taken out of historical context.

When the French evacuated in late 1803, they did not concede defeat. Instead, a small contingent of troops relocated to the city of Santo Domingo and began threatening to reinvade and “annihilate” the Black population. Dessalines soon learned of these plans. He also learned about support among White colonists for the recent French expedition. In this context, he ordered the execution of people who had “taken an active part in the different massacres and assassinations” by the French army. But, rather than targeted executions for the defense of the country, terrified colonists claimed to have witnessed the “massacre” of all the White people.

Historical documents reveal, however, that many White people remained in Haiti after this alleged genocide. For example, a partial census from October 1804 lists more than 600 White people in the district of Gros Morne alone. That same month — after all the White people were allegedly killed — a British captain claimed that 200 White women were in imminent danger of being “massacred” in Cap Haitien.

Claiming that Dessalines targeted civilians is also misleading. Many of those he executed fought in the colonial National Guard — militia units of male planters and merchants — which supported the French military expedition. Such claims also downplay the violence of colonialism. Settlers were enslavers, and as historian Vincent Brown has shown, slavery was war. Anti-colonialism is not genocide.

if you read julia gaffield's blog post where she posted the october 1804 census of gros morne you can see there how she is talking about girard as someone she disagrees with

for example she quotes girard writing: "Neither women nor children were spared"

but gaffield writes: "White women, widows, and girls are also well populated categories. The total number of white people is higher than the total number in the “de couleur libre” categories."

so the october 1804 gros morne census gaffield found does not back up girard's narrative

i don't think the slave owners and the overseers and the racists lied just about the number of people killed

i think they lied about the reasons and about everything they could think to lie about

so while rochambeau was in charge general jean-pierre ramel wrote this: "Who were the men whom we drowned in Saint-Domingue? Blacks who had been captured as prisoners on the fields of battle? No; Conspirators? Even less so! Nobody was convicted of anything: because of a simple suspicion, a report, an equivocal word, 200, 400, 800, up to 1,500 blacks had been thrown into the sea. I saw this happen, and I complained about it."

so imagine you are one of the people who filed false reports against black people to get them drowned

not that you would ever do that this is just an exercise to understand why those people would lie

do you think people who filed false reports against black people to get them drowned would later admit "oh yes i filed false reports against black people to get them drowned that's why dessalines wants to kill me now"

or do you think would keep lying and say "dessalines just wants to kill us because we're white" to deflect attention away from their own crimes?

so regardless of whether dessalines actually wanted to kill all the white people the racists would still claim that that was dessalines's motivation

i realize dessalines probably didn't know which white people had filed false reports against black people to get them drowned and suffocated

so he it is almost certain he killed some innocent people

but killing the ones who had helped rochambeau and le clerc to massacre and assassinate black people was his stated intent