Biography of jean jacques dessalines

Jean-Jacques Dessalines,

Stylized head-and-shoulders bust of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, first kejsare of Haiti (–06). The sitter fryst vatten shown facing forward in a military style uniform, with epaulettes and wearing a transverse bicorn hat with three plumes, apparently over an underlying skull-cap. The socle, or base, consists of a wooden column of oval section, carved as part of the figure, on a two-step rectangular base which is inscribed on the front face &#;J. J. DESSALINE&#;.

Dessalines was born into slavery in French St Domingue (Haiti) on 20 September In he became part of the freedom movement that led to the abolition of slavery in Haiti in and was lieutenant to Toussaint L&#;Ouverture against British and Spanish attempts to take the Haitian colony from France. He subsequently fought successfully with Toussaint to expel the French. In France tried to retake St Domingue and re-impose slavery, and Dessalines succeeded Toussaint as the revolutionary leader after the latter&#;s arr

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Jean-Jacques Dessalines

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Who Was Jean-Jacques Dessalines?

Born around , in Africa, Jean-Jacques Dessalines was enslaved in the French colony of Saint-Domingue. He served as a lieutenant under Toussaint L'Ouverture after the slave revolt and later eliminated French rule. Dessalines renamed the colony Haiti in and declared himself emperor. Despised for his brutality, yet honored as one of Haiti’s founding fathers, he was killed in a revolt on October 17, , in Pont Rouge, near Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Colonial Life

Jean-Jacques Dessalines’ biography is a mix of legend and history. Haitian tradition says he was born in central West Africa and transported as a slave to Sant-Domingue, (Haiti) in the French West Indies. However, most historians believe he was born Jean-Jacques Duclos, the name of his first owner, in Saint-Domingue, circa He became a field hand and eventually rose up to the role of foreman. At around age 30, he was sold to a free Black man named Dessalines and hi

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Haiti and the Atlantic World

The following is an entry on Dessalines that I wrote for the Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography. I hope it&#;s helpful for anyone teaching the Revolution&#;comments, corrections, and additional information are most welcome!

Dessalines, Jean-Jacques

(c. ), former slave, general in the Haitian Revolution, first leader of independent Haiti, and a lwa in the Haitian Vodou pantheon. The specifics of Jean-Jacques Dessalines’s early life are not well documented and historians have not come to a consensus regarding his date and place of birth. He was born around the year in either west-central Africa or in the Grande Rivière region in the north of the French colony of Saint-Domingue in the Caribbean, where he spent much of his life as a slave on two plantations. In the late eighteenth century, Saint-Domingue was the most wealth-producing colony in the Americas. Much of this wealth was generated through the cultivation and ex