Haitian Revolution

The Haitian Revolution was fought from 1791 to 1804 in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, beginning as a slave uprising and culminating in the establishment of Haiti as the first independent nation founded by formerly enslaved people and the first Black-led republic in the modern world. The revolt, inspired partly by the ideals of the French Revolution, was led at various stages by figures including Toussaint Louverture, who rose from enslavement to command the colony's forces and negotiate its autonomy, before Napoleon Bonaparte's attempt to restore slavery and French control triggered renewed war under Jean-Jacques Dessalines after Louverture's capture and death in French custody in 1803. Dessalines defeated the French expeditionary force, decimated by yellow fever as much as by combat, and declared Haitian independence on 1 January 1804. The revolution abolished slavery permanently in the new nation, inflicted a catastrophic loss on Napoleon's colonial ambitions that contributed to France's decision to sell the Louisiana Territory, and stood for decades afterward as a singular and threatening example to slaveholding societies across the Americas.