Why Haiti's Revolution Was Different

The Haitian Revolution stands apart in this course because it was the only revolution of the era in which enslaved people overthrew slavery and founded their own state. In America and France, revolutionaries were mostly free property-holders demanding political rights; in Saint-Domingue, the central question became whether slavery itself would survive.

The revolution unfolded in phases: free people of color demanded equal rights after 1789; enslaved people rose in mass revolt in 1791; France abolished slavery in 1794; Toussaint Louverture governed the colony; and when Napoleon tried to restore French control, the war ended in independence in 1804.

Historian David Geggus and others stress that it combined a slave revolt, a civil war among free groups, a colonial independence war and an international conflict involving Spain and Britain. That complexity makes it a demanding but essential test for every model of revolution.