[CondorFlight]

The slavers in Haiti never wanted the slaves to learn to read and write, nor even to be converted to Christianity.

Hence, they kept their African religions and knew next to nothing about what was happening on the next plantation, let alone the outside world.

By contrast, in the mid-19th century free blacks in Jamaica were penning a petition to Queen Victoria—ie., they could read and write, knew about the world, and were led by a pastor (whose photo shows him wearing glasses).

A world of difference...

[hinckley buzzard]

Well, they have had 200 years of independence to learn, if they wanted to, plus the ministrations of untold numbers of Christian missionaries. Thomas Sowell has defined one of the great cultural stumbling blocks to development in Africa, and apparently Haiti as well, as the degree of relative impermeability to input from other cultures.

African culture is largely resistant to outside influence, whereas Japan and most of Asia, say, are highly permeable. They have quickly taken the best of western culture eg and made the most of it while retaining as much of their original cultures as they want. African cultures are poor at this, and Haiti culture appears not to be able to do it at all.

[Poe White Trash]

The slavers in Haiti never wanted the slaves to learn to read and write, nor even to be converted to Christianity.

Hence, they kept their African religions and knew next to nothing about what was happening on the next plantation, let alone the outside world.

Really?

My understanding is that slaveowners in French Haiti, at least by the late 17th century, were not only permitted to but were legally obligated to make sure that their African slaves were baptized and brought up in the tradition of Roman Catholicism.

By King Louis XIV's decree!

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