French forces capture Toussaint Louverture and deport him from Saint-Domingue

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...

Under the treaty ending Spain’s war with France, Spain ceded its eastern colony of Santo Domingo to France. This diplomatic transfer brought the whole island under nominal French sovereignty, but...

The constitution promulgated under Toussaint Louverture declared that slavery could not exist in Saint-Domingue and made the ban permanent. It granted Louverture governorship for life and gave the...

A French expedition commanded by Charles Leclerc reached Cap-Français to reassert metropolitan authority over Saint-Domingue and displace Louverture’s autonomous government. Napoleon’s government...

Napoleon’s law maintained slavery in colonies returned to France where the 1794 abolition had not been implemented. Its wording did not itself reinstate slavery in Saint-Domingue, where abolition...

Louverture died at Fort de Joux after being deported and imprisoned by the French state. His death became a symbol of the violence used to destroy Haitian autonomy. The revolution continued under...

Jean-Jacques Dessalines’s forces defeated the French army at Vertières, the last major battle of the expedition. The victory made restoration of French colonial authority and slavery militarily...

Jean-Jacques Dessalines proclaimed independence at Gonaïves and named the country Haiti, drawing on the Indigenous name Ayiti. The declaration explicitly rejected the prospect of re-enslavement and...

The 1805 constitution stated that slavery was forever abolished. It entrenched the victory of the revolution in the new state’s founding law. Emancipation did not mean full control over work: the...

The expedition sailed from Los Cayos, Haiti, on 31 March 1816 to renew the independence struggle in Spanish America. Haitian authorities and communities provided refuge, logistical support, and...