Haitian Declaration of Independence, The National Archives of the UK: CO 137/111 The first and third sections are dated: “ce 1er Janvier 1804 et le 1er jour de l’indépendance” (the first of January 1804 and the first day of independence). The three-part declaration of independence is the first official iteration of the new calendar. Along with his secretaries, he also established a new calendar that celebrated the end of slavery and colonial rule. Yet, Dessalines did not just create the first national holiday. I document the creation and institutionalization of Independence Day (1 January) in the forthcoming collection edited by Julia Gaffield, The Haitian Declaration of Independence: Creation, Context, and Legacy and my dissertation, “Revolutionary Memories: Celebrating and Commemorating the Haitian Revolution.” In both instances, I focus on the ceremony.
French revolutionary calendar online series#
Over a month later, the former slave turned revolutionary general, declared Haiti’s independence and established a series of commemorative traditions. While Dessalines replaced the preliminary declaration, he kept the rejection of the French revolutionary calendar. The November 1803 proclamation initiated a return to the Gregorian calendar. Instead, official correspondence, constitutions, even newspapers continue the Haitian calendar and memorialize the country’s independence. Furthermore, these parallel systems did not end after a set number of years or even after the first U.S.
In Haiti, at least, Gregorian years co-existed with years of independence.
A radical break with the colonial power’s dating system, the organization of Haitian time also redefined the Gregorian calendar to include black liberation. Months earlier, he composed Haiti’s founding document, the declaration of independence, which also included this new dating system.Ī rejection of the French revolutionary calendar used throughout much of the Haitian Revolution, the declaration, Boisrond-Tonnerre’s memoir, and government publications established a new Haitian calendar that commemorated the end of slavery and colonial domination. Boisrond-Tonnerre was a secretary for Haiti’s first head of state, the former slave Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Literary scholar Jean Jonassaint, who located the 1804 text in the Harvard University Library, notes that Boisrond-Tonnerre’s date placed the narrative within the revolutionary and official discourses of the era. Until recently, scholars relied upon a later edition of the memoir edited by Haitian historian Joseph Saint-Rémy that did not include the Haitian dating system of years of independence. Boisrond-Tonnerre, Mémoires pour servir a l’histoire d’Hayti (Dessalines, 1804) digitized by Harvard University Library
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