Haitian Revolution
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50 free Haitian Revolution trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Haitian Revolution is the most successful slave revolt in history: enslaved people overthrew their masters and founded a country of their own. It began in 1791 in Saint-Domingue, then France's richest colony, and ended in 1804 with the birth of Haiti. This quiz follows the whole story. It covers the plantation world the rebels rose against, the night the uprising began, the rise of Toussaint Louverture, the armies that three European powers sent and lost, and the final campaign under Dessalines. Later questions look at what came next: the first rulers of the new country, the price it was made to pay for recognition, and the books, paintings and holidays that keep the memory alive. The questions suit history students, teachers building a lesson around the Égalité for All documentary, and anyone curious about a revolution that shaped the Americas. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which vast territory did Napoleon sell to the United States after losing his army in Saint-Domingue?
Louisiana
Louisiana had little value to Napoleon without the revenues of his Caribbean sugar colony, so he abandoned his plans for an American empire.
Q 02Which nation's soldiers, sent by Napoleon to Saint-Domingue, switched sides and became Haitian citizens?
Poland
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.
Q 03Which liberator did Haitian president Alexandre Pétion arm in return for a promise to free the enslaved?
Simón Bolívar
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.
Q 04Which disease ravaged the French army in Saint-Domingue in 1802 and killed its commanding general?
Yellow fever
Yellow fever killed more than half of the soldiers Napoleon sent, and their commander died of it in November 1802, nine months after landing.
Q 05Which dish, once forbidden to the enslaved, do Haitians eat every Independence Day?
Pumpkin soup
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.
Q 06Which religion, blending West African beliefs with Catholicism, shaped the 1791 Bois Caïman ceremony?
Vodou
Vodou rituals were among the few gatherings where enslaved Africans could organise, which is how a night-time ceremony became the signal for revolt.
Q 07Which animals did French commanders ship to Saint-Domingue as a weapon of terror against Black rebels?
Dogs
Dogs trained to hunt people arrived by ship from Cuba, and historians generally accept accounts of prisoners being fed to them in makeshift arenas.
Q 08Which US president finally recognised Haiti, almost six decades after its independence?
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln could act only once the Southern politicians who had blocked recognition for decades left Congress on declaring secession.
Q 09Which title did Dessalines take in 1804 as Jacques I, the first ruler of independent Haiti?
Emperor
Emperor Jacques I was crowned in October 1804, but his reign was short: members of his own administration had him assassinated two years later.
Q 10The Haitian Revolution was the largest slave uprising since which rebel's failed revolt against Rome?
Spartacus
Spartacus lost to Rome's legions, whereas the rebels of Saint-Domingue, nearly 1,900 years later, founded a state ruled by former captives.
Q 11Which island, shared today with the Dominican Republic, was the setting of the Haitian Revolution?
Hispaniola
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.
Q 12Which US president, himself a slaveholder, refused to recognise Haiti and embargoed trade with it?
Thomas Jefferson
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.
Q 13What name was given to people who escaped slavery and lived in bands in Saint-Domingue's hills?
Maroons
Q 21On being deported in 1802, Toussaint Louverture compared Black liberty to what, saying it would spring up again?
A tree
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.
Q 22Which UN agency chose 23 August, the night the 1791 uprising began, as its day for remembering the slave trade?
UNESCO
UNESCO's day of remembrance was first observed in 1998 in Haiti itself, then in Senegal the following year.
Q 23The surname Louverture, which Toussaint adopted around 1793, comes from a French word with which meaning?
The opening
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.
Maroons living in the hillside woods often carried out raids on the island's plantations, long before the general uprising of 1791.
Q 14On which holiday did Dessalines proclaim Haiti's independence in 1804, ending more than a decade of war?
New Year's Day
New Year's Day is followed in Haiti by Ancestry Day on 2 January, a second public holiday honouring those who fought the revolution.
Q 15Which 1789 French text did Saint-Domingue's free men of colour invoke when they demanded the vote?
Declaration of the Rights of Man
The Declaration of the Rights of Man praised liberty but did not abolish slavery, so the colony's enslaved majority gained nothing from it.
Q 16Which nickname did Saint-Domingue earn in the 1700s as the most profitable colony in the French empire?
Pearl of the Antilles
Pearl of the Antilles was no idle boast: the colony's plantations generated about 40 percent of France's foreign trade.
Q 17The name Haiti, adopted at independence in 1804, comes from the language of which Indigenous people?
Taíno
Taíno speakers called their homeland Ayiti, meaning land of high mountains, and Dessalines revived the word to erase the French colonial name.
Q 18Saint-Domingue grew about 60 percent of Europe's supply of which crop, as well as 40 percent of its sugar?
Coffee
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.
Q 19Which European power invaded Saint-Domingue in 1793 to seize the colony, then pulled out five years later?
Britain
Great Britain found the campaign devouring money and soldiers without the expected profits, and left after its commander signed an agreement with Toussaint Louverture.
Q 20Which kingdom armed Toussaint Louverture and other early rebel leaders against France in 1793?
Spain
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.
Q 24Which brother-in-law of Napoleon led the French expedition sent to retake Saint-Domingue?
Charles Leclerc
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.
Q 25Which rebel leader presided over the 1791 Bois Caïman ceremony and was killed within months of the uprising?
Dutty Boukman
Dutty Boukman probably owed his surname to an English nickname, Book Man, which some scholars take as a sign that he was a Muslim.
Q 26Which revolutionary general later ruled northern Haiti as a king and built the mountaintop Citadelle Laferrière?
Henri Christophe
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.
Q 27In which coastal city, still called Haiti's city of independence, did Dessalines proclaim the new nation in 1804?
Gonaïves
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.
Q 28Which rich northern port did Toussaint Louverture's troops burn in 1802 rather than surrender it?
Cap-Français
Cap-Français had been the colony's showpiece, admired for its architecture and artistic life; rebuilt, it is today's Cap-Haïtien.
Q 29In which French fortress did Toussaint Louverture die a prisoner in April 1803, less than a year after his capture?
Fort de Joux
Fort de Joux also held Mirabeau and the German writer Heinrich von Kleist, but Toussaint Louverture is the prisoner it is best remembered for.
Q 30Which battle of November 1803, the last major clash of the Haitian Revolution, forced the French army to leave?
Vertières
Vertières gave Haiti a second day of celebration: 18 November has been marked ever since as the Day of Victory.