The Haitian Revolution
Learn about the Haitian Revolution — the only successful slave revolt in history, which created the first Black republic and challenged the foundations of colonial power.
The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) was the most radical revolution of the Age of Revolutions and the only successful slave revolt in world history. Enslaved people in Saint-Domingue — France's wealthiest colony, producing more sugar and coffee than any other Caribbean island — rose up, defeated the armies of France, Spain, and Britain, abolished slavery, and established Haiti as the first free Black republic in the world.
Saint-Domingue's slave system was among the most brutal anywhere. The colony's 500,000 enslaved people (versus 40,000 whites and 30,000 free people of color) worked sugar plantations under conditions so lethal that the population could only be maintained through constant importation from Africa. When the French Revolution proclaimed the rights of man, the contradiction between universal liberty and colonial slavery became unsustainable.
The revolution's greatest leader, Toussaint Louverture, was a formerly enslaved man who proved himself one of the most brilliant military and political leaders of his age. He defeated Spanish and British invasions, negotiated with French authorities, and established effective governance. When Napoleon sent an army to restore slavery in 1802, Toussaint was captured through treachery and died in a French prison. But Jean-Jacques Dessalines completed the revolution, defeating Napoleon's forces and declaring Haitian independence on January 1, 1804. The Haitian Revolution terrified slaveholders worldwide and inspired freedom movements across the African diaspora — but Haiti was punished with diplomatic isolation and crippling debt that impoverished the nation for generations.