Polish-Haitian Connection Part 1: For Your Freedom and Ours

I happened across the subject of Poles in Haiti in Riccardo Orizio's "Lost White Tribes: Journeys Among the Forgotten". The Polish Legions serving under Napoleon were sent to put down the Haitian Revolution there in 1802. For those that subscribe to the ideal of a multicultural and tolerant Polish nation, what happens next goes like this: The Polish soldiers sympathised with the rebelling slaves since they, like the Poles, were fighting for their own independent state (Poland had by this time been carved up by its' neighbours and had ceased to exist). Resentful of Napoleon's decision to send them West to the Caribbean instead of East towards Poland, the legionaries defected to the side of the former slaves and fought alongside them to eventually establish the world's first Black republic. Following independence they took wives and passed on their surnames (e.g. Potenski) and fairer complexions, both of which can be witnessed to this day in rural Haiti.

By most accounts only up to 150 out of the 5000 legionaries sent to the western hemisphere switched sides. A proportion of those would no doubt have done so under duress. Most of the rest died from yellow fever or combat with the Black forces. Still, the legend endures among Haitians and some Poles (including my family) that many Poles fought for Jean-Jacques Dessalines in the liberation of Haiti. The Haitian Constitution of 1805 bars all "whitemen" from ownership of property in Haiti. An exception is given to the "naturalized Germans and Polanders", who are from thenceforth to be classified as Black:

12. No whiteman of whatever nation he may be, shall put his foot on this territory with the title of master or proprietor, neither shall he in future acquire any property therein.

13. The preceding article cannot in the smallest degree affect white women who have been naturalized Haytians by Government, nor does it extend to children already born, or that may be born of the said women. The Germans and Polanders naturalized by government are also comprized [sic] in the dispositions of the present article.

14. All acception [sic] of colour among the children of one and the same family, of whom the chief magistrate is the father, being necessarily to cease, the Haytians shall hence forward be known only by the generic appellation of Blacks.

[Haitian Constitution of 1805 as published in English in the New York Times that same year, full text on Professor Corbett's page here]

Orizio's book, too, contains some great evidence (including photographic) that these guys settled down and cast their seed to the present day. The Pope even met some of the "Haitian Poles" when he visited the island in 1983.

(click Comments just below to start a discussion or leave a message related to this article)

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Comments

[Nazia]

Multiculturalism should be more about the embracing of differing cultural ideals and less about toleration. With toleration (although a form of acceptance) there is an underlying inference that it is lacking in empathy. I think we can all learn a lesson or two from the Poles in Haiti – acceptance and perseverance!

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