France extends citizenship rights to free people of color born to free parents

François Mackandal, an African-born maroon and organizer associated with a wide anticolonial resistance network, was condemned and executed by French authorities at Cap-Français. Colonial records...

France’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen proclaimed liberty and equality as universal principles, but colonial slavery and racial hierarchy remained in place. Enslaved people, free...

The French National Assembly voted to extend political rights to free men of color born to free parents. The measure did not emancipate enslaved people and excluded many free people of color whose...

Haitian historical memory places a Vodou ceremony led by Dutty Boukman and Cécile Fatiman at Bois Caïman on the night of 14–15 August. It is remembered as a moment of collective commitment and...

Enslaved people rose across plantations in the northern plain, burning estates and attacking the slaveholding regime. The uprising was organized through networks built by enslaved Africans and their...

Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, Étienne Polverel, and Jean-Antoine Ailhaud arrived in Saint-Domingue with troops to enforce the rights of free people of color and restore French authority. They initially...

As French republican forces faced revolt and foreign intervention, commissioner Sonthonax issued a measure promising freedom to enslaved people who joined the republican army. The offer was limited...

Under pressure from the uprising and the struggle to retain the colony, Sonthonax proclaimed freedom for enslaved people in the northern province. The decree was a decisive local abolition, won in a...

Commissioner Étienne Polverel issued emancipation measures covering the colony’s western and southern provinces, completing the local abolition begun in the north. Proclamations differed in timing and...

The Convention abolished slavery in all French colonies and declared formerly enslaved people citizens. Saint-Domingue’s mass uprising and the local emancipation decrees had made the old order...