Prelude to Rebellion

• The slave population on Saint-Dominguez totaled at least 500,000 by 1789, almost half of the 1 million slaves in the Caribbean
• Most historians have classified the people there at the time into three groups
  • Blancs- the white colonists
  • free blacks- usually mulattoes, or gens de couleur (people of color)
  • African-born slaves- spoke a patois of French and West African languages known as Kreyol.
• Bands of runaway slaves, known as maroons, lived in the woods and often raided the island's sugar and coffee plantations
• The first effective maroon leader to emerge was François Mackandal, who led a rebellion from 1751 through 1757 that succeeded in focusing the black resistance on its target
• Among St. Domingue’s 40,000 white French colons in 1789, European-born Frenchmen monopolized administrative posts, lording over proud but insecure native-born Creoles
• St. Domingue’s free coloreds, the [[gens de couleur]] numbered over 28,000 by 1789
• Statutes forbade [[gens de couleur]] from taking up certain professions, marrying whites, wearing European clothing, carrying firearms in public, or attending social functions where whites were present

Beginnings of Rebellion

• Saint-Domingue's free people of color, most notably Julien Raimond, had been actively appealing to France for full civil equality with whites since the 1780s
• In October 1790, Vincent Ogé, another wealthy free man of color from the colony, returned home from Paris. Convinced that an ambiguous law passed by the French Constitutent Assembly had given full civil rights to wealthy men of color like himself, Ogé demanded the right to vote
• Ogé was not fighting against slavery, per se, but his treatment was cited by later slave rebels as one of the factors in their decision to rise up in the same parishes in August 1791, and to resist treaties with the colonists
• Eventually, in 1792, the French legislature proclaimed the equality of all free people in the French colonies regardless of color, and sent Léger-Félicité Sonthonax to Saint-Domingue to ensure that the colonial authorities complied
• However, by that time, even larger disturbances were underway, as the slave uprising begun in August 1791, and led by Jean François and Biassou, associated itself with the pro-royalist Spanish authorities in Santo Domingo
• The slave rebellion began on the plantations in the north and spread across most of the colony
• Slaves burnt the plantations where they had been forced to work, and killed masters, overseers and other whites
• One of the most successful black commanders was Toussaint L'Ouverture, a self-educated former domestic slave
• A French general, Étienne Laveaux, was able to convince L'Ouverture to change sides in May 1794 and fight for the French Republic against the Spanish

Leadership of Toussaint

• Under the military leadership of Toussaint, the rebellious slaves were able to gain the upper hand and restore most of Saint-Domingue to France
• Having made himself master of the island, however, Toussaint did not wish to surrender power to Paris, and ruled the country effectively as an autonomous entity; Toussaint overcame a succession of local rivals (including Sonthonax, André Rigaud, and Comte d'Hédouville
• In 1801, Toussaint issued a constitution for Saint-Domingue which provided for autonomy and made Toussaint himself governor-for-life
• In retaliation, Napoleon Bonaparte dispatched an expeditionary force of French soldiers to the island, led by Bonaparte's brother in law Charles Leclerc, to restore French rule
• Some of Toussaint's closest allies, including Jean-Jacques Dessalines, defected to the French
• Toussaint was promised his freedom, if he agreed to integrate his remaining troops into the French Army; Toussaint agreed to this in May 1802, but was deceived, and was seized and shipped off to France, where he later died, while imprisoned at Fort-de-Joux

Final Rebellion

• For a few months the island was largely quiescent under Napoleonic rule. But when it became apparent that the French intended to re-establish slavery, Dessalines and Pétion switched sides again, in October 1802, and fought against the French
• In November, Leclerc died of yellow fever, like much of his army, and his successor, the Vicomte de Rochambeau, fought an even more brutal campaign than his predecessor; His atrocities helped rally many former French loyalists to the rebel cause
• The French were further weakened by a British naval blockade, and by the unwillingness of Napoleon to send the requested massive reinforcements
• Dessalines led the rebellion until its completion, when the French forces were finally defeated at the Battle of Vertières in November 1803