Haitian Revolution

Haitian history
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By The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Last Updated: Dec 2, 2022 Article History

Haitian Revolution

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Date:

1791 - 1804

Location:

Haiti

Participants:

France Haiti United Kingdom

Context:
 French Revolution

Key People:

Henry Christophe Jean-Jacques Dessalines Charles Leclerc Alexandre Sabès Pétion Toussaint
Louverture

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Haitian Revolution, series of conflicts between 1791 and 1804
between Haitian slaves, colonists, the armies of the British and French colonizers, and a
number of other parties. Through the struggle, the Haitian people ultimately won
independence from France and thereby became the first country to be founded by
former slaves.
Colonial rule and slavery
The Spanish began to enslave the native Taino and Ciboney people soon after December
1492, when Italian navigator Christopher Columbus sighted the island that he called La
Isla Española (“The Spanish Island”; later Anglicized as Hispaniola.) The
island’s indigenous population, forced to mine for gold, was devastated by European
diseases and brutal working conditions, and by the end of the 16th century the people
had virtually vanished. Thousands of slaves imported from other Caribbean islands met
the same fate.

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After the main gold mines were exhausted, the Spanish were succeeded by the French,
who established their own permanent settlements, including Port-de-Paix (1665) in the
northwest, and the French West Indies Corporation took control of the area.
Landowners in western Hispaniola imported increasing numbers of African slaves, who
totaled about 5,000 in the late 17th century. By 1789, on the eve of the French
Revolution, the estimated population of Saint-Domingue, as the French called their
colony, was 556,000 and included roughly 500,000 African slaves, 32,000 European
colonists, and 24,000 affranchis (free mulattoes [people of mixed African and European
descent] or blacks).
Haitian society was deeply fragmented by skin colour, class, and gender. The affranchis,
most of them mulattoes, were sometimes slave owners themselves and aspired to the
economic and social levels of the Europeans. They feared and spurned the slave majority
but were generally discriminated against by the white European colonists, who were
merchants, landowners, overseers, craftsmen, and the like. The aspirations of
the affranchis became a major factor in the colony’s struggle for independence. A large
part of the slave population was African-born, from a number of West African peoples.
The vast majority worked in the fields; others were household servants, boilermen (at
the sugar mills), and even slave drivers. Slaves endured long, backbreaking workdays
and often died from injuries, infections, and tropical diseases. Malnutrition and
starvation also were common. Some slaves managed to escape into the mountainous
interior, where they became known as Maroons and fought guerrilla battles against
colonial militia.
Factional conflict and the rise of Toussaint Louverture

Toussaint Louverture

Against this background arose a revolution, beginning as a series of conflicts from the
early 1790s. Among the causes of the conflicts were the affranchis’ frustrations with a
racist society, turmoil created in the colony by the French Revolution,
nationalistic rhetoric expressed during Vodou ceremonies, the continuing brutality of
slave owners, and wars between European powers. Vincent Ogé, a mulatto who had
lobbied the Parisian assembly for colonial reforms, led an uprising in late 1790 but was
captured, tortured, and executed.

In May 1791 the French revolutionary government granted citizenship to the

wealthier affranchis, but Haiti’s European population disregarded the law. Within two
months isolated fighting broke out between Europeans and affranchis, and in August
thousands of slaves rose in rebellion. The Europeans attempted to appease the
mulattoes in order to quell the slave revolt, and the French assembly granted citizenship
to all affranchis in April 1792. The country was torn by rival factions, some of which
were supported by Spanish colonists in Santo Domingo (on the eastern side of the
island, which later became the Dominican Republic) or by British troops from Jamaica.
In 1793 a commissioner, Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, was sent from France to maintain
order and offered freedom to slaves who joined his army; he soon
abolished slavery altogether, a decision confirmed the following year by the French
government.

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In the late 1790s Toussaint Louverture, a military leader and former slave, gained
control of several areas and earned the initial support of French agents. He
gave nominal allegiance to France while pursuing his own political and military designs,
which included negotiating with the British. In January 1801 Toussaint conquered Santo
Domingo, and in May of that year, he had himself named “governor-general for life.” He
put the peasants back to work on the plantations under military rule and encouraged
many of the French proprietors to return. In December 1801 Napoléon Bonaparte
(later Napoleon I), wishing to maintain control of the island, attempted to restore the
old regime (and European rule) by sending his brother-in-law, Gen. Charles Leclerc,
with an experienced force from Saint-Domingue that included Alexandre Sabès
Pétion and several other exiled mulatto officers. Toussaint struggled for several months
against Leclerc’s forces before agreeing to an armistice in May 1802; however, the
French broke the agreement and imprisoned him in France. He died on April 7, 1803.
Independent Haiti

Jean-Jacques Dessalines

Some of Toussaint’s lieutenants—most notably Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henry

Christophe— resumed the war against the French in 1802. They were soon joined by
Pétion and other mulatto leaders, who were infuriated by the restoration of the
restrictions on their caste. Both the blacks and the mulattoes were enraged by reports
that France had reestablished slavery in Guadeloupe and Martinique, and the struggle
was carried on with great desperation. The French were weakened by
an epidemic of yellow fever—Leclerc succumbed to the disease in November 1802—and
the conclusion of the Louisiana Purchase in May 1803 signaled Napoleon’s intention to
withdraw from North America. Less than three weeks later, the French position in Haiti
became truly hopeless with the renewal of hostilities between France and Britain on
May 18, 1803.

On November 18 the Armée indigène (French: “Indigenous Army”) under Dessalines

defeated the French at the Battle of Vertières, and French Gen. Jean-Baptiste-Donatien
de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, surrendered Cap-Français (now Cap-Haïtien), the
last significant French stronghold. Under the terms of the surrender, the French were
given 10 days to evacuate, but Rochambeau showed no haste in embarking his troops.
Dessalines responded by threatening to turn his cannons on the French ships at anchor
in Cap-Français harbour. Ironically, it would fall to the Royal Navy, which had
been blockading Saint-Domingue since the resumption of the Napoleonic Wars, to carry
out the evacuation. British Capt. John Bligh treated with both Rochambeau and
Dessalines, and the French garrison finally departed Cap-Français as British prisoners.
While this marked the end of French military action on Haiti, France continued to
maintain a presence in the eastern part of the island until 1809.

On January 1, 1804, the entire island was declared independent under the Arawak-
derived name of Haiti. Many European powers and their Caribbean surrogates
ostracized Haiti, fearing the spread of slave revolts, whereas reaction in the United
States was mixed; slave-owning states did all they could to suppress news of the
rebellion, but merchants in the free states hoped to trade with Haiti rather than with
European powers. More important, nearly the entire population was utterly destitute—
a legacy of slavery that has continued to have a profound impact on Haitian history.

Pétion, Alexandre Sabès

Sans Souci Palace, near Cap-Haïtien, Haiti

In October 1804 Dessalines assumed the title of Emperor Jacques I, but in October 1806
he was killed while trying to suppress a mulatto revolt, and Henry Christophe took
control of the kingdom from his capital in the north. Civil war then broke out between
Christophe and Sabès Pétion, who was based at Port-au-Prince in the south. Christophe,
who declared himself King Henry I in 1811, managed to improve the country’s economy
but at the cost of forcing former slaves to return to work on the plantations. He built a
spectacular palace (Sans Souci) as well as an imposing fortress (La Citadelle Laferrière)
in the hills to the south of the city of Cap-Haïtien, where, with mutinous soldiers almost
at his door, he committed suicide in 1820. It was not until 1825 that France recognized
Haiti’s independence, and then only in exchange for a large indemnity of 100 million
francs, with a repayment period until 1887.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated
by Michael Ray.