Haiti: When Independence Became a 122-Year Invoice

On 1 January 1804, Jean-Jacques Dessalines declared that Saint-Domingue was no longer a French colony and restored the name Haiti. The declaration followed the slave uprising that began in 1791, the only modern revolution in which enslaved people defeated a colonial regime, ended slavery, and formed an independent Black-led state.

Saint-Domingue had been the richest colony in the Caribbean. Sugar, coffee, and indigo brought France immense wealth, but the system depended on hundreds of thousands of Africans held as property. When the enslaved defeated Napoleon’s expeditionary army, they did more than seize land. They broke the commercial model that European empires had used for centuries.