Haitian Revolution
In 1791, the French colony of Saint-Domingue in the Caribbean was the most profitable colony on the planet. A brutal caste-based society built entirely on the inhumane exploitation of slave labor, Saint-Domingue was a proverbial powder keg of social contradictions. When a revolution broke out in France, the enslaved masses of Saint-Domingue also rose up against their masters, beginning a long and violent struggle that resulted in the first and only fully successful slave rebellion in world history, and the creation of the modern nation of Haiti.
This is the story of the Haitian Revolution.
Cover Image: Battle of Santo Domingo (also known as Battle of Palm Tree Hill) painting by Polish artist January Suchodolski, 1845.
Episodes (listed in reverse order)
The Opener from the series Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture by Jacob Lawrence, 1997.
Bibliography
Dubois, Laurent. Avengers of the New World: the Story of the Haitian Revolution. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005.
Dubois, Laurent. Haiti: The Aftershocks of History. Metropolitan Books, 2012
Fick, Carolyn. The Making of Haiti: the Saint Domingue Revolution from Below. The University of Tennessee Press, 2004.
Geggus, David. The Haitian Revolution: a Documentary History. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc, 2014.
James, C.L.R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint Louverture and the San Domingo Revolution. Vintage Books, 1989.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines steps into the power vacuum left behind by Toussaint L’Ouverture, and helps to lead the Haitian people to a final victory against the French. But while the newly created nation of Haiti had secured its independence, its woes were far from over.