ABSTRACT
The storm finally came in the unmasked fury of the triumphant Haitian Revolution. Not to be overlooked, however, is the fact that almost as soon as slavery began in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, turbulent slave revolts and other acts of rebellion served consistently as distant antecedents of the ultimate explosion in the colony. With the powerful Haitian Revolution, the most massive and most successful of slave uprisings history had seen, came an interlinking of the realization of racial equality, the unconditional abolition of slavery, decolonization, and the birth of a nation—the very first in not only the Caribbean, but in all of Latin America. The rallying call not just in Paris, but in faraway Saint-Domingue as well, was Fraternité, Egalité, Liberté. The rapid outbreak and then prolonged succession of bloody warfare in the French colony between 1791 and 1803 was both praised and condemned at the same time by slaves and slave owners respectively throughout the hemisphere. Former slaves had brought about the destruction of the world’s richest colony, had destroyed an otherwise thriving economic system, and eliminated totally the class of individuals who had ruled over this system. Indeed, from the perspective of world history, the Haitian Revolution was certainly unique. This war involved Blacks, mulattos, French, Spanish, and English participants—with the fearless ex-slave Toussaint L’Ouverture emerging as Haiti’s most charismatic hero.
