Haitian Revolution

From 1791 to 1804 the enslaved people of Saint-Domingue overthrew both slavery and French colonial rule, founding Haiti as the first Black republic.

Overview

Saint-Domingue was the richest colony on earth, its plantations worked by half a million enslaved Africans. The ceremony at Bois Caiman in August 1791 launched a rebellion that destroyed the plantation system. Former slaves led by Toussaint Louverture and then Jean-Jacques Dessalines defeated Spanish, British, and finally French armies, wrecking the Napoleonic attempt to restore slavery. Dessalines declared independence on 1 January 1804. The Haitian Revolution remains the only successful slave revolt that created a state, terrified slaveholding societies across the Americas, and proved that freedom could be conquered by force. Haiti paid for the precedent with isolation, a crushing indemnity, and exclusion from world trade lasting generations.