Faustin Soulouque : l'esclave devenu empereur | Histoire d'Haiti
DigitekMedia
41,046 views
Threads of History: Haiti's Last Emperor.
By Mikelson Toussaint-Fils
Born a slave. Died a sovereign. This is the story of Faustin Soulouque—the man who escaped the slavery of colonial Haiti to crown himself Emperor Faustin I.
In 1847, the Haitian Senate elected an aging general, deemed "harmless," as a puppet president. He was thought to be barely literate. In less than two years, he crushed the elite who had brought him to power, resurrected Dessalines' imperial title, and commissioned from Paris an exact replica of Napoleon's coronation regalia—including a crown worth half a million dollars today.
On April 18, 1852, at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption in Port-au-Prince, no bishop from Rome was present. Undeterred, Faustin himself placed the crown upon his head—just as Napoleon had done—before crowning his empress, Adelina. He thus established a fully-fledged Black aristocracy, composed of princes, dukes, and barons, in a century where slavery still dominated the Americas.
Europe responded with mockery: his name even became an insult hurled in the face of Napoleon III. But behind the caricature stood a ruthless and defiant sovereign—a man who waged war on the Dominican Republic, defied the United States, and proclaimed that Black sovereignty could be crowned with the same grandeur that Europe reserved for its own.
This documentary retraces his life: his childhood as a slave in Petit-Goâve, his liberation during the Haitian Revolution, the mysterious eight-round election of 1847, his coronation, the wars, and finally the rebellion of Fabre Geffrard, which precipitated the fall of the Empire in 1859.
The Second Empire of Haiti lasted less than ten years.
0:00 The Rise of a Former Slave
1:16 From Slavery to Freedom
5:36 The Politics of Understudy
11:01 The Imperial Coronation
18:09 The Weight of Ambition
22:16 The Fall of the Empire
20 Comments
Faustin Soulouque : l'esclave devenu empereur | Histoire d'Haiti
DigitekMedia
41,046 views
Threads of History: Haiti's Last Emperor.
By Mikelson Toussaint-Fils
Born a slave. Died a sovereign. This is the story of Faustin Soulouque—the man who escaped the slavery of colonial Haiti to crown himself Emperor Faustin I.
In 1847, the Haitian Senate elected an aging general, deemed "harmless," as a puppet president. He was thought to be barely literate. In less than two years, he crushed the elite who had brought him to power, resurrected Dessalines' imperial title, and commissioned from Paris an exact replica of Napoleon's coronation regalia—including a crown worth half a million dollars today.
On April 18, 1852, at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption in Port-au-Prince, no bishop from Rome was present. Undeterred, Faustin himself placed the crown upon his head—just as Napoleon had done—before crowning his empress, Adelina. He thus established a fully-fledged Black aristocracy, composed of princes, dukes, and barons, in a century where slavery still dominated the Americas.
Europe responded with mockery: his name even became an insult hurled in the face of Napoleon III. But behind the caricature stood a ruthless and defiant sovereign—a man who waged war on the Dominican Republic, defied the United States, and proclaimed that Black sovereignty could be crowned with the same grandeur that Europe reserved for its own.
This documentary retraces his life: his childhood as a slave in Petit-Goâve, his liberation during the Haitian Revolution, the mysterious eight-round election of 1847, his coronation, the wars, and finally the rebellion of Fabre Geffrard, which precipitated the fall of the Empire in 1859.
The Second Empire of Haiti lasted less than ten years.
0:00 The Rise of a Former Slave
1:16 From Slavery to Freedom
5:36 The Politics of Understudy
11:01 The Imperial Coronation
18:09 The Weight of Ambition
22:16 The Fall of the Empire