22nd August 1791: Start of the Haitian Revolution in the French colony of Saint-Domingue

Christopher Columbus landed on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola during his first transatlantic voyage in 1492 and the island and its population were soon exploited for their gold. However, by the 17th century Spanish interest in the island had waned and French settlers soon rose to dominance with the creation of large sugar plantations.

By the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 the plantations on Saint-Domingue were producing 60% of the world’s coffee and 40% of all the sugar imported by Britain and France. This economy was built on the slave labour of approximately 500,000 black Africans who lived in incredibly harsh conditions where they were regularly subjected to extreme cruelty at the hands of their masters.

Tensions between the different groups in the colony had often led to violence, and there had been several uprisings prior to the Haitian Revolution that began on 22 August 1791. Influenced in part by the new ideology expressed in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the slaves of Saint-Domingue rose against the plantation owners on an unprecedented scale and had seized control of a third of the entire island by 1792.

Desperate to end the revolt and regain control over the island’s wealth the French National Assembly abolished slavery, although Napoleon later attempted to reintroduce it to the colonies. He failed to do so in Saint-Domingue which declared independence on 1 January 1804 under the name Haiti, making it the first country to be established by former slaves.