The Revolution That Made Haiti Independent

On the first day of 1804, independence was proclaimed at Gonaïves. The name Haiti replaced the French colony of Saint-Domingue. That change on a map represented something extraordinary: people whom a plantation society had treated as property had defeated the attempt to restore colonial control. Jean-Jacques Dessalines and his fellow commanders were not asking France for a more generous version of its rule. They were declaring that French rule was finished.

Saint-Domingue’s wealth had rested on coerced labor, particularly in sugar and coffee production. The revolution that began in 1791 was therefore more than a dispute over which government should collect taxes. It challenged the power of owners over human beings. Enslaved insurgents forced questions of freedom into a struggle also shaped by the French Revolution, rival European empires and the divisions within colonial society. Those pressures made the outcome uncertain at almost every stage.