Thinkers Timeline

Toussaint Louverture was the main leader of the Haitian Revolution. This was the only successful slave revolt in modern history. It turned a French slave colony into the first free Black republic in the world. He was born around 1743 on a sugar plantation called Bréda, in the French colony of Saint-Domingue. Today we call this country Haiti. His exact birth date is not known. His parents were enslaved people, probably brought from West Africa. Toussaint was born into slavery. But his life was unusual. His owner allowed him to learn to read and write. He studied French, some Latin, and medical herbs. By his fifties, he had been freed and owned a small coffee farm. He even owned a few enslaved people himself, which was common for free Black men at the time. This complicated background shaped his later choices. In 1791, a massive uprising began on the colony's northern plain. Enslaved people burned plantations and killed their owners. Toussaint joined the revolt but was not yet its leader. Over the next decade, through brilliant military campaigns, he rose to command. He defeated Spanish armies, British armies, and several French armies. He wrote a constitution for the colony in 1801 and made himself governor for life. In 1802, Napoleon sent a huge army to restore slavery. Toussaint was tricked into a meeting under a flag of truce and captured. He was shipped to France and locked in a freezing cell in the Jura mountains. He died there on 7 April 1803, cold and starving. But the revolution he had led did not die. The next year, his former generals defeated the French and declared Haitian independence on 1 January 1804.