Re: [A-List] Henry Liu on central banking 3a

["bon moun" <sherrynstan@xxxxxxx>]

> The most significant achievement of the Jefferson presidency was the
> Louisiana Purchase. In 1800, the Treaty of San Ildefonso secretly
> transferred Louisiana from Spain to France, which presented the United
> States with the alarming prospect of a vigorous and expansionist European
> power controlling the mouth of the Mississippi river to block the
westward
> expansion of the US. James Monroe was sent to Paris to negotiate the
> purchase of Louisiana from a willing Napoleon Bonaparte, who earlier had
> sent an expeditionary army to Haiti to put down a black slave rebellion
with
> subsequent plans to occupy New Orleans to exercise French control over
> Louisiana. The decimation of the French expeditionary army by yellow
fever,
> the need for more troops for renewed Napoleonic wars in Europe, and the
> difficulty of running the British naval blockade convinced Napoleon that
> strengthening the United States as a potential ally under a pro-French
> Jefferson and as a potential rival of Britain might serve French
interests.

Just to set the whole record straight...  White historians are very
reluctant to point this out, but yellow fever was only part of the
equation, and a part factored in by the General who defeated Napolean's
troops on the battlefield - Jean Jacques Dessalines, a former slave.  And
that "slave rebellion" translated into a successful revolution for
independence, the first black nation, the first independent nation in Latin
America, and the seocnd independent nation in this hemisphere.  The
reluctance of white historians to tell this story is based on the fact that
it shattered once and for all the myth of white supremacy.