50 Fun Facts About Haitian Revolution

Which vast territory did Napoleon sell to the United States after losing his army in Saint-Domingue?

Louisiana had little value to Napoleon without the revenues of his Caribbean sugar colony, so he abandoned his plans for an American empire.

Which nation's soldiers, sent by Napoleon to Saint-Domingue, switched sides and became Haitian citizens?

Poland's legionnaires had joined Napoleon hoping to free their own homeland, and Dessalines spared those who sided with the rebels; their descendants still live in the village of Cazale.

Which liberator did Haitian president Alexandre Pétion arm in return for a promise to free the enslaved?

Simón Bolívar arrived in Haiti as a defeated exile and left with money and military supplies, then declared the emancipation of all slaves on reaching the mainland.

Which disease ravaged the French army in Saint-Domingue in 1802 and killed its commanding general?

Yellow fever killed more than half of the soldiers Napoleon sent, and their commander died of it in November 1802, nine months after landing.

Which dish, once forbidden to the enslaved, do Haitians eat every Independence Day?

Pumpkin soup, called soup joumou in Creole, was by tradition cooked by enslaved people for their masters' tables, so eating it freely became a mark of liberty.

Which religion, blending West African beliefs with Catholicism, shaped the 1791 Bois Caïman ceremony?

Vodou rituals were among the few gatherings where enslaved Africans could organise, which is how a night-time ceremony became the signal for revolt.

Which animals did French commanders ship to Saint-Domingue as a weapon of terror against Black rebels?

Dogs trained to hunt people arrived by ship from Cuba, and historians generally accept accounts of prisoners being fed to them in makeshift arenas.

Which US president finally recognised Haiti, almost six decades after its independence?

Abraham Lincoln could act only once the Southern politicians who had blocked recognition for decades left Congress on declaring secession.

Which title did Dessalines take in 1804 as Jacques I, the first ruler of independent Haiti?

Emperor Jacques I was crowned in October 1804, but his reign was short: members of his own administration had him assassinated two years later.

The Haitian Revolution was the largest slave uprising since which rebel's failed revolt against Rome?

Spartacus lost to Rome's legions, whereas the rebels of Saint-Domingue, nearly 1,900 years later, founded a state ruled by former captives.

Which island, shared today with the Dominican Republic, was the setting of the Haitian Revolution?

Hispaniola also holds the first permanent European settlement in the Americas, the city of Santo Domingo, at the opposite end of the island from the revolt.

Which US president, himself a slaveholder, refused to recognise Haiti and embargoed trade with it?

Thomas Jefferson feared that a successful slave revolt in the West Indies would set a dangerous example for the American South, and Congress banned trade with Haiti in 1806.

What name was given to people who escaped slavery and lived in bands in Saint-Domingue's hills?

Maroons living in the hillside woods often carried out raids on the island's plantations, long before the general uprising of 1791.

On which holiday did Dessalines proclaim Haiti's independence in 1804, ending more than a decade of war?

New Year's Day is followed in Haiti by Ancestry Day on 2 January, a second public holiday honouring those who fought the revolution.

Which 1789 French text did Saint-Domingue's free men of colour invoke when they demanded the vote?

The Declaration of the Rights of Man praised liberty but did not abolish slavery, so the colony's enslaved majority gained nothing from it.

Which nickname did Saint-Domingue earn in the 1700s as the most profitable colony in the French empire?

Pearl of the Antilles was no idle boast: the colony's plantations generated about 40 percent of France's foreign trade.

The name Haiti, adopted at independence in 1804, comes from the language of which Indigenous people?

Taíno speakers called their homeland Ayiti, meaning land of high mountains, and Dessalines revived the word to erase the French colonial name.

Saint-Domingue grew about 60 percent of Europe's supply of which crop, as well as 40 percent of its sugar?

Coffee was grown mostly on small hillside estates, many of them owned by free people of colour, while sugar needed the big plantations of the plains.

Which European power invaded Saint-Domingue in 1793 to seize the colony, then pulled out five years later?

Great Britain found the campaign devouring money and soldiers without the expected profits, and left after its commander signed an agreement with Toussaint Louverture.

Which kingdom armed Toussaint Louverture and other early rebel leaders against France in 1793?

Spain offered land, privileges and freedom to the rebel soldiers, but Toussaint Louverture went over to the French in 1794 once the republic moved to abolish slavery.

On being deported in 1802, Toussaint Louverture compared Black liberty to what, saying it would spring up again?

A tree was his image: the French had cut down only the trunk, he warned, and it would grow back because its roots were many and deep.

Which UN agency chose 23 August, the night the 1791 uprising began, as its day for remembering the slave trade?

UNESCO's day of remembrance was first observed in 1998 in Haiti itself, then in Senegal the following year.

The surname Louverture, which Toussaint adopted around 1793, comes from a French word with which meaning?

The opening is usually explained by his knack for creating gaps in enemy lines; until then he was known as Toussaint Bréda, after the plantation where he grew up.

Which brother-in-law of Napoleon led the French expedition sent to retake Saint-Domingue?

Charles Leclerc brought his wife Pauline Bonaparte, Napoleon's younger sister, to the island; when he died there she cut off her hair and laid it in his coffin.

Which rebel leader presided over the 1791 Bois Caïman ceremony and was killed within months of the uprising?

Dutty Boukman probably owed his surname to an English nickname, Book Man, which some scholars take as a sign that he was a Muslim.

Which revolutionary general later ruled northern Haiti as a king and built the mountaintop Citadelle Laferrière?

Henri Christophe created his own nobility to surround the throne, and in 1820, ill and fearing a coup, he shot himself, by tradition with a silver bullet.

In which coastal city, still called Haiti's city of independence, did Dessalines proclaim the new nation in 1804?

Gonaïves heard the act of independence read on its main square, the Place d'Armes, and the city built a pavilion to mark the centenary in 1904.

Which rich northern port did Toussaint Louverture's troops burn in 1802 rather than surrender it?

Cap-Français had been the colony's showpiece, admired for its architecture and artistic life; rebuilt, it is today's Cap-Haïtien.

In which French fortress did Toussaint Louverture die a prisoner in April 1803, less than a year after his capture?

Fort de Joux also held Mirabeau and the German writer Heinrich von Kleist, but Toussaint Louverture is the prisoner it is best remembered for.

Which battle of November 1803, the last major clash of the Haitian Revolution, forced the French army to leave?

Vertières gave Haiti a second day of celebration: 18 November has been marked ever since as the Day of Victory.

Which French king sent warships in 1825 demanding 150 million francs for recognising Haiti's independence?

Charles X wanted the money to compensate former planters for lost property, the enslaved included, and the loans it forced on Haiti took until 1947 to clear.

Which decree of Louis XIV, issued in 1685, set the rules of slavery in France's colonies?

The Code Noir also made Catholicism compulsory for the enslaved and ordered every Jew out of France's colonies.

Which French revolutionary assembly abolished slavery throughout the colonies with its decree of 4 February 1794?

The National Convention was catching up with events: its commissioners in Saint-Domingue had already proclaimed freedom there in 1793 to win the Black population to their side.

Which title did the constitution of 1801 give Toussaint Louverture, in a challenge to Napoleon's authority?

Governor for life came with near-absolute powers and the freedom to choose his successor, under a text drafted mostly by white planters he had appointed.

Which mixed-race general, master of the south, fought Toussaint Louverture in the civil war of 1799 to 1800?

André Rigaud lost, fled to France, and sailed back in 1802 with the very expedition sent to unseat his old rival.

Which Trinidadian historian wrote The Black Jacobins, the classic 1938 account of the Haitian Revolution?

C. L. R. James said he wanted a book in which people of African descent took action on a grand scale instead of being the objects of other people's ferocity.

Which American painter, famous for his Migration Series, made 41 paintings on the life of Toussaint Louverture?

Jacob Lawrence was just 21 when the series went on show at the Baltimore Museum of Art, in an exhibition of African-American artists.

News that France had restored slavery on which Caribbean island in 1802 pushed Saint-Domingue back into revolt?

Guadeloupe showed what Paris intended for every colony, and Black cultivators in Saint-Domingue rose that summer rather than wait their turn.

Which American singer and actor played Toussaint Louverture on the London stage in 1936?

Paul Robeson took the title role in a three-act West End play billed as the story of the only successful slave revolt in history.

Which job was the young Toussaint Louverture trained for on the Bréda plantation, thanks to his skill with horses?

Coachman was a post of trust, and records found in the 20th century show he was a free man by 1776, about fifteen years before the uprising.

Free men of colour from Saint-Domingue fought for American independence in 1779 at the siege of which city?

Savannah now has a monument to the Chasseurs-Volontaires de Saint-Domingue, some 545 of whom took part in the failed Franco-American assault.

Who, by tradition, sewed the first Haitian flag at the Congress of Arcahaie in May 1803?

Catherine Flon, a seamstress and goddaughter of Dessalines, is honoured as a heroine of the revolution, although rebels had flown blue-and-red flags before the congress met.

Which French general, once his father's aide in the American Revolutionary War, surrendered Saint-Domingue in 1803?

Rochambeau was captured aboard a frigate by a Royal Navy squadron as the colony fell, was held in England until 1811, and died of wounds at Leipzig two years later.

Which runaway leader, burned at the stake in 1758, was accused of plotting to poison Saint-Domingue's planters?

François Mackandal became a legend at the stake: many in the crowd believed he rose out of the flames as a winged creature and flew to safety.

Which wealthy free man of colour led a 1790 rising to win the vote and was broken on the wheel for it?

Vincent Ogé had been the richest merchant of African descent in the colony's largest city, and outrage at his execution pushed Paris to grant rights to some free men of colour in May 1791.

Which French commissioner proclaimed freedom for all the enslaved in Saint-Domingue's north province in August 1793?

Sonthonax had been sent to enforce equality for free men of colour, not to end slavery, but he needed Black fighters on the republic's side.

Which stronghold did Dessalines's garrison hold for three weeks in 1802 before slipping through French lines?

Crête-à-Pierrot cost the French heavy losses, yet soon after the siege its defender swore allegiance to France and briefly changed sides.

Which Haitian officer kept charging in 1803 after a cannonball hit his horse, winning a salute from the French?

François Capois ran on at the head of his men with sword in hand, and the enemy general called a brief cease-fire to congratulate him.

Which woman, who rose to lieutenant in Toussaint Louverture's army, refused a blindfold at her execution in 1802?

Sanité Bélair was sentenced to beheading but would not bend to the block, so the officer in charge had her shot; she later appeared on a Haitian banknote.

Captives from which African kingdom formed the largest ethnic group among Saint-Domingue's enslaved people?

Kongo lay in what is now northern Angola and the western Congo, and two-thirds of the colony's enslaved people had been born in Africa.