If Iam not wrong, Haiti was the smallest empire in the world back then, and I wonder if it was just because they wanted to sound more cool of if it had deeper meaning. The fact that they went from republic to empire to kingdom to empire to republic makes it even more weird - also why did they switched from empire to kingdom when they already had "Imperial tradition"?
It is a little bit more complicated than that. Haiti was an empire for two years (1804-1806), then split into several republics from 1807 to 1811, and one of the republics became a kingdom from 1811 to 1820. Once reunited, Haiti was a republic for more than 30 years, then became in 1849 an empire again for 10 years until it reverted finally to a republic in 1859. Here's the sequence from 1804 to 1859:
Jean-Jacques Dessalines
Alexandre Pétion (Southern Haiti) (plus two secessionist states run by André Rigaud and Goman)
Henri Christophe (Northern Haiti)
Presidents from 30 March 1818 to 27 February 1847: Jean-Pierre Boyer (1818-1843), Charles Rivière-Hérard (1843-1844), Philippe Guerrier (1844-1845), Jean-Louis Pierrot (1845-1846), Jean-Baptiste Riché (1846-1847).
Faustin Soulouque
The reasons for Dessalines' decision to become Emperor remain murky. It was done almost in secrecy, perhaps to hide it to the republican faction. According to Haitian historian Thomas Madiou, writing in the late 1840s, Governor-General Dessalines, having won the fight against Napoléon's expedition and declared independence, learned in August 1804 that Consul Bonaparte was planning to be crowned Emperor (Bonaparte had been proclaimed Emperor in May, but the coronation took place in December). Dessalines was impressed by this unopposed manifestation of power, which he found both threatening (the French could come back, this time led by an Emperor) and quite inspiring. Officers were asked to sign a petition demanding that Dessalines became Emperor. The petition's authors were "convinced that there is no sharing supreme authority" and that “a people can only be suitably governed by one". A head of state was needed with “an august and sacred title that concentrated in his person the forces of the state" (cited by Stieber, 2020). The act signed by the officers considered that the title of Gouvernor-General was unsuitable because it implied that it was dependent on "a foreign authority whose yoke we have forever thrown off". Some proclamations were backdated from February 1804 to make people believe that Dessalines had the idea before Napoléon (or so claims Madiou). In a speech, Dessalines said the the title of Emperor was "appropriate to the customs, usages and character of the Haitian people" (cited by Nicholls, 1996). One "imperial" move was a failed attempt to conquer the eastern part of the island.
In 1806, Emperor Jacques was ambushed and killed in a plot led by the main leaders of the Haitian revolution, among whom Pétion and Rigaud. A power struggle resulted in Haiti being split in several states: those ruled by Alexandre Pétion, André Rigaud and Gorman in the South, and one ruled by Henri Christophe in the North. At first, all leaders ruled as presidents. In 1811, Christophe decided to become king and to install a hereditary monarchy. According to his secretary Vastey (cited by Madiou, Tome IV), this was to ensure long term stability: when a king dies, his successor is already known and the transition is peaceful, without "revolutions and civil wars". The Council of State of the Northern Haiti published in March 1811 a long explanation of the benefits of the monarchy. The council rejected the idea of Empire, because an Emperor is supposed to rule over other sovereigns, which was not the case in (Northern) Haiti. "President" was found "insufficient", despite the example of the United States: a king had more extensive powers than a president. So the Council followed the "great Montesquieu" and preferred a "paternal monarchy".
After King Henri's suicide in 1820, the kingdom was reunited to the southern republic, and presidents succeeded to presidents. Jean-Pierre Boyer managed to conquer the brand new independent Dominican republic in 1822 and the whole of Hispaniola became Haitian for more than 20 years, until the eastern part of the island reclaimed its independence in 1844.
In 1847, after experiencing the short-lived and chaotic rule of four presidents in four years, Haitian elites elected Faustin Soulouque to the presidence. An aging, illiterate and loyal general, Soulouque was supposed to be an obedient figurehead easy to manipulate. Instead, President Soulouque got rid (violently) of his handlers and opponents and, like Dessalines, convinced his partisans to name him Emperor. The pattern was once more Napoleonic: this time it was Napoleon III who followed a Haitian ruler on the President-to-Emperor promotion track. Unlike that of Dessalines, the coronation of Faustin 1 in April 1852 - again predating that of Napoléon III - was a lavish and expensive ceremony inspired by that of Napoléon I, down to the dresses worn by the new Emperor and his wife. Soulouque was shrewder than he looked, and surrounded himself by relatively competent men and diplomats. His Empire lasted ten years but eventually fell apart due to corruption, mismanagement, and the less-than-favourable influence of Atlantic powers (and let's not forget the French indemnity that Boyer had agreed to). Those problems, compounded by another ill-conceived and catastrophic expedition to recapture San Domingo, resulted in a relatively bloodless coup and Soulouque was exiled in 1859.
So there were the three instances of Haitian rulers chosing a monarchic system over a republican one. The difference was no so wide since Haitian republican presidents were barely less authoritarian than the monarchs; Dessalines had been Governor-General for life before becoming Emperor, Pétion was president-for-life after 1816, and so was his successor Boyer. The main difference was in the rhetorics: Haitian republican leaders subscribed (or at least paid lip service) to the concept of liberty as laid out by Enlightement philosophers, and borrowed the symbols and the vocabulary from the French revolution. Monarchists did not feel such constrains: for them, the goal had been freedom from slavery, not the building of a democratic society. All tried to set up political systems that were modelled after European ones, thus becoming their equals. Portraying the new nation as a "civilized" one with proper institutions, whether republican or monarchist, was supposed to help Haiti to gain the trust of foreign powers who, fearing the contagion of the Haitian revolution, were still hostile to them. Dessalines anticolonial rethoric was toned down immediately after his coronation. Dessalines used Napoléon as a role model while Soulouque used both Napoléon I and Napoléon III. Christophe was more British-inspired (and he had Englishmen in his court).
It is notable that Christophe and Soulouque both created extensive nobility systems to reward their allies and their families. This was done, again, in the manner of both Napoleons, and can be read as another attempt at turning Haiti into a "normal" modern country with its own meritocratic (rather than land-based) aristocracy. If the French could do it, so could the Haitians. These efforts at political stagecraft were totally lost on the Atlantic powers, however. Americans and Europeans found the Haitian dukes and counts, whose names sounded like puerile jokes, deeply hilarious. Soulouque's regime, particularly, was used as a demonstration of the inability of Black people to rule themselves, or at least, like Karl Marx did, as a way to insult Napoléon III, the "French Soulouque".
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