Haitian Revolution Research Paper

The Haitian Revolution was a monumental event in the history of the Atlantic World.

“For only the second time in history, a colony had revolted against their mother country to

form an independent nation”(Riley)(1). With Haiti, this was especially unique due to the

fact that the revolution resulted from a slave population overthrowing their oppressors

and winning their freedom in addition to their political independence. “In the years prior to

the start of the revolution, Saint Domingue was a colony of international renown and

prestige. Considering the value of the colony, its loss was a tremendous blow to the

French”(2). Therefore, does the success of Haitian Revolution determined by the tradition

of racial hierarchy within
The economy was based on small multi-crop ventures. They grew cotton, tobacco,

indigo, a few subsistence crops, but they were small farms with very few slaves, and

everyone working side by side. The rulers were the french, they had total control over

Haiti, Haiti was their wealthiest colony, largely because of its production of sugar, coffee,

indigo and cotton generated by an enslaved labor force.

The Haitian rebellion began with the Bois Caiman which was initiated on August

14,1741. The Bois Caiman ceremony is a voodoo ceremony, where slaves would gather in

the forest to create plans to start the revolution. Toussaint L'aventure was the leader of the

revolution. He was a free man at by the age of 33. On Aug. 22, 1791, the rebellion officially

starts, taking whites by surprise. At this point, northern Saint-Domingue was on fire.

Toussaint L’Ouverture did not take part in the early stages of the rebellion. He got

involved after a few weeks and sent his family to safety in Spanish Santo Domingo. “He

joined the forces of Georges Biassou as a doctor to the troops and then as a commander of a

small regiment around September 1791”(2).By the end of the war over 100,000
The Haitian slaves were

forced to work for the french and were paid very little or no money. The slaves were

worked to near death and sometimes when they get old they were killed and disposed of.

This would relate to Animal Farm in a way that Napoleon would treat the animals as his

slaves and make them do things that they did not want to do .

Therefore, the success of Haitian Revolution was determined by the tradition of

racial hierarchy within Saint-Domingue and by the spread of the ideals of

the French Revolution. Both factors forced the planter to either relinquish some

power or risk a violent uprising. This success led to some ostensibly negative impacts on

emancipation efforts but was often outweighed by the positive ramifications. one has used

a combination of Eurocentric, slave agency, and colonial-metropole channel theories to

demonstrate that the Haitian Revolution had catalyzing effects upon several arenas that

contributed to the emancipation