A hand-coloured print of Toussaint Louverture on horseback
Toussaint Louverture on Horseback, 1802
Marked Cap-Français

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

The Haitian Revolution

In 1791 enslaved people in the French colony of Saint-Domingue rose up. After thirteen years of war against France, Spain and Britain, they founded Haiti in 1804, the first state born from a successful revolt of the enslaved.

Place
Cap-Français · Bois Caïman · Vertières · GonaïvesThe Americas
Laid out as
A revolutionHow things were before, the moment it turned, and how things were after.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

BeforeThe most profitable slave colony in the world.

  1. IThe richest colony
  2. IIBois Caïman, 1791
  3. IIIToussaint Louverture
  4. IVNapoleon’s army
  5. VIndependence, 1804
  6. VIThe debt France made Haiti pay

AfterHaiti, a free nation of formerly enslaved people.

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Toussaint Louverture
  • Jean-Jacques Dessalines
  • Cécile Fatiman
  • Sanité Bélair
  • Napoleon Bonaparte

Objects

  • The Haitian Declaration of Independence
  • Portraits of Toussaint

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1791 to 1804. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?