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What does it say about France that 2021 is "L'Année Napoléon" (the Year of Napoleon) in commemoration of the bicentennial of his death? Napoléon was a racist, warmongering, genocidal maniac, responsible for 60K French troops dying in St. Domingue where he tried to restore slavery
NUMEROUS eyewitnesses--Haitian, French, British, US, & Polish--reported that during the Leclerc expedition French troops pumped sulfur gas into the hold of ships to mass execute Black people. They also used mass drownings to kill them & sent dogs to eat the revolutionaries.
To learn about the modern legacy of the genocidal tactics Napoléon's army used against the Black troops in St. Domingue--which became the "blueprint for Hitler"-- you can read Claude Ribbe's 2005 book, Le Crime de Napoléon (The Crime of Napoleon).
Despite the fact that historians in France freaked out & claimed there was little evidence to support Ribbe's history, General Leclerc & Rochambeau's own letters (along w/ the testimony of eyewitnesses) confirm France tried to kill the majority of people of color in the colony.
19th-century Haitian historians who lived through the Revolution, like Boisrond-Tonnerre and Vastey, and those who wrote about it afterward like Madiou and Ardouin, also confirmed the mass drownings and other genocidal tactics. They sought to record this history for "posterity."
So, how come none of these "Year of Napoleon" expositions seem to include any discussion of Bonaparte's "undeniable impact" on Saint-Domingue and then on independent Haiti?
https://fondationnapoleon.org/en/2021-annee-napoleon-calendar-of-events/ https://www.sortiraparis.com/arts-culture/exposition/guides/241156-l-annee-napoleon-a-paris-toutes-les-expositions-a-voir-en-2021
https://fondationnapoleon.org/en/2021-annee-napoleon-calendar-of-events/ https://www.sortiraparis.com/arts-culture/exposition/guides/241156-l-annee-napoleon-a-paris-toutes-les-expositions-a-voir-en-2021
I don’t seem to remember 2003 being declared the year of Toussaint in France to commemorate the bicentennial of his death: https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/wrongful-death-toussaint-louverture
