The country’s first emperor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, on Haitian currency
Scholars contend that the Haitian Revolution remains the only successful large-scale revolt in which enslaved people won their freedom, overthrew the existing colonial government, and established an independent state. From its beginnings during the French Revolution to the leadership of Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the Haitian struggle reshaped ideas about race, freedom, and sovereignty across the Atlantic world.
Historian Alexander Mikaberidze traces the origins of the revolution to colonial Saint-Domingue, the wealthiest colony in the French empire and the largest producer of sugar in the world. A rigid racial hierarchy separated white planters, free people of color, and the enslaved African majority. The outbreak in August 1791 was fueled by multiple forces: the spread of revolutionary ideals from France, the demands of free people of color for equality, and the determination of the enslaved to claim their freedom. A coordinated uprising in the northern plains, beginning with the burning of plantations and the killing of overseers, marked the start of a conflict that would engulf the colony and draw in great powers.
Mikaberidze explores the revolution’s course to its culmination in 1804, when Haiti emerged as the first independent Black republic and the second independent nation in the Americas. In achieving freedom, Haitians overturned both the power of France’s colonial elite and the broader Atlantic system of racial slavery, sending shockwaves through plantation economies from the Caribbean to the American South. Their struggle inspired enslaved and colonized peoples worldwide, raising questions about the meaning of freedom and the price of equality while giving rise to fear and hostility among imperial powers determined to suppress similar movements.
Mikaberidze, a professor of history at Louisiana State University in Shreveport and Ruth Herring Noel Endowed Chair for the curatorship of the James Smith Noel Collection, is the author of more than two dozen books on European history, including The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History.
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