A ceremony in a wooded place in the northern plain, traditionally said to have launched the August 1791 rising (1791)
Bois Caïman, associated with the Vodou priest and rebel leader Dutty Boukman.
History · Revolutions & empires
The Haitian Revolution
1791–1804
Slave revolt and war of independence in the French colony of Saint-Domingue
The only slave uprising in history to produce a lasting independent state. It began in the sugar colony of Saint-Domingue, France's richest overseas possession, with a rising in the northern plain in August 1791, and passed through invasions by Spain and Britain, the French abolition of slavery in 1794, the rise of the formerly enslaved general Toussaint Louverture, and Napoleon's attempt to restore both French control and slavery. The expedition under General Charles Leclerc was destroyed by resistance and by yellow fever, and Jean-Jacques Dessalines declared independence on 1 January 1804 under the indigenous Taíno name Ayiti. The new state was the second republic in the Americas and the first modern state founded by formerly enslaved people.
How to spot them
- ▸A rising that begins in the north of France's richest sugar colony in August 1791
- ▸A general born into slavery who ends up writing a constitution and dying in a French prison
- ▸A Napoleonic expedition wrecked as much by yellow fever as by fighting
- ▸An independence declared on New Year's Day 1804, under a restored indigenous name
- ▸A crippling indemnity demanded by France in 1825 as the price of recognition
What happened
A general born enslaved who in 1801 issued a constitution making himself governor for life (1801)
Toussaint Louverture; he was seized in 1802 and died at Fort de Joux in the Jura in April 1803.
Napoleon's 1802 expedition under his brother-in-law, destroyed largely by yellow fever (1802)
The expedition of General Charles Leclerc, who himself died of the fever in November 1802.
The battle near Cap-Français on 18 November 1803 that broke the French army (1803)
The Battle of Vertières, won by Jean-Jacques Dessalines and François Capois.
A declaration read at Gonaïves on New Year's Day, restoring a Taíno name (1804)
The declaration of independence, 1 January 1804; the colony of Saint-Domingue became Ayiti.
A mountaintop fortress in the north, built by a self-crowned king to repel a French return (1805–1820)
The Citadelle Laferrière, built under Henri Christophe, who reigned in the north as Henry I.
C. L. R. James's 1938 history of the revolt, named for a Jacobin faction (1938)
The Black Jacobins, the classic account in English.
Quick-fire facts
- •Saint-Domingue produced roughly half the world's coffee and a large share of its sugar, worked by around half a million enslaved people
- •The French National Convention abolished slavery in the colonies in February 1794; Napoleon restored it in 1802
- •Toussaint Louverture was deported to France in 1802 and died at Fort de Joux in April 1803
- •Jean-Jacques Dessalines proclaimed himself Emperor Jacques I in September 1804 and was assassinated in 1806
- •The country then split, with Henri Christophe ruling as king in the north and Alexandre Pétion as president in the south
- •Pétion gave arms and shelter to Simón Bolívar in 1816, on condition that he free the enslaved in the territories he liberated
- •France recognised independence in 1825 only in return for an indemnity of 150 million francs, later reduced to 90 million; the debt was not cleared until the twentieth century
- •The United States withheld diplomatic recognition until 1862, under Lincoln
- •The state was the second republic in the Americas after the United States, and the first in the world founded by formerly enslaved people
Drill it — 10 cards
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Sources
- C. L. R. James — The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
- Laurent Dubois — Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution