Haiti becomes free
The only successful slave revolt that became a state
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Saint-Domingue was France's richest colony, a Caribbean sugar island where around half a million enslaved people worked under a few thousand free ones. The revolution forced Napoleon to abandon his American plans and led directly to the sale of Louisiana to the United States — Haiti is therefore the reason the United States has its continental shape. The price was extraordinary: in 1825 France demanded an indemnity of 150 million francs for lost "property", that is, for the people who had freed themselves. Haiti paid on the debt until 1947, and it is a leading explanation of the country's later poverty.
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Enslaved people in Saint-Domingue rose in revolt, defeated both British and French armies, and established Haiti as a free state in 1804. It was the second republic in the Americas, and the first founded by formerly enslaved people.
Sources
- Dubois, Avengers of the New World (2004)
- Trouillot, Silencing the Past (1995)
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