NON-RESEARCH BASED ARTICLES ABOUT HAITI SLAVERY
Slaves initiated the rebellion in 1791 and by 1803 they had succeeded in ending not just slavery but French control over the colony.
In the 18th century, Saint Dominigue, as Haiti was then known, became France's wealthiest overseas colony, largely because of its production of sugar, coffee, indigo, and cotton generated by an enslaved labor force. When the French revolution broke out in 1789 there were five distinct sets of interest groups in the colony. There were white planters -- who owned the plantations and the slaves -- and petit blancs, who were artisans, shop keepers and teachers. Some of them also owned a few slaves. Together they numbered 40,000 of the colony’s residents. Many of the whites on Saint Dominigue began to support an independence movement that began when France imposed steep tariffs on the items imported into the colony.
sland of San Domingo came from the mass of enslaved blacks in the French sugar plantation colony there, who risked everything to pursue freedom. In 1791, the outbreak of the Haitian Revolution, at first localized in one district of the colony’s northern plain, soon spawned waves of slave insurgencies that assembled and fought the horrors of oppression. Historical accounts written by white contemporaries downplayed the organization of the blacks, and proposed chaotic, random events by groups of revolting slaves as the cause of revolution. However, the resistance had leadership, organization, and a unifying objective. Their struggle lasted for twelve years, and became the only successful slave revolt in human history.
The Haitian Revolution, which took place between 1791-1804, is significant because Haiti is the only country where slave freedom was taken by force, and marks the only successful slave revolt in modern times. A ragtag force of slaves managed to unify Haiti, defeat Europe’s most powerful army and become the first country in Latin America to gain independence, second only to the United States in the Americas as a whole.
