Final Phases Of The Haitian Revolution

At the close of the 18th century, Haiti was in the final phases of the Haitian Revolution, which had begun in 1791. By 1797, the French held power in Saint Domingue (as Haitiwas known before independence) in name only, and slavery in the colony had been abolished (see Caribbean, French). The colony's leader, Toussaint Louverture (1801–03), having proclaimed himself governor-for-life, alarmed and offended the French ruler Napoléon Bonaparte by promulgating his own constitution without France's approval. In response, in late 1801 Napoléon sent an expeditionary force led by General Charles Leclerc to reinstate direct French rule. The Haitian rebels resisted, but when the French negotiated for peace, one by one they surrendered. The Haitian military
Mulattoes under Alexandre Pétion (1806–18) and blacks under Jean-Jacques Dessalines (1804–06), fearing that Napoléon would reinstate slavery (as he did in nearby Guadeloupe), joined forces and defeated the French at the Battle of Vertières on November 18, 1803.
Independence from France was proclaimed on January 1, 1804, with Dessalines as the new governor-for-life, making Haiti the first free black republic in the world and the second country (after the United States) to gain independence in the Western Hemisphere. This feat generated both positive and negative attention in the international community. As much as the Haitian Revolution symbolized hope for those in bondage, it shocked and instilled terror in nations still actively using the slave system.
The years of war upset the highly lucrative colonial agricultural system. While many of the plantations that had been worked by slaves were destroyed, the newly acquired colonial plots of land were irregularly distributed under the new Haitian government. Freed slaves were not interested in undertaking the intensive physical labor required to generate the volume of crops necessary for profit either on plantations or the smaller plots of
The colonists had compensated for this by cultivating crops that required less space and labor, such as coffee and indigo. These plantations, therefore, had smaller slave populations and a lower slave mortality rate. Additionally, slave owners and slaves often cohabitated or lived in much closer proximity than in the north. The result was an abundance of mulatto offspring as Frenchmen engaged in sexual relations with their female slaves. Mulatto children were often claimed by their French fathers, as permitted by French law (Code Noir), and thus received better treatment than they might have otherwise. They were commonly freed by their fathers and educated in France, and many were Catholic. They also often inherited their father's property, with some becoming wealthier than whites and slave owners themselves. Although mulattoes were unhappy with the restrictions placed on them by France and the racism they experienced as people of "mixed race," they nonetheless desired to be closer to the French and strove to emulate European culture and