5. The Haitian Revolution
If you think that the Storming of the Bastille was the most dramatic act of the French Revolution, then you’re well mistaken. Thousands of miles away, another revolt was brewing that would have just as long-lasting an effect on the way that society was to be governed in the future, and just like in Paris, it would stem from the power of the people rather than the wisdom of governments.
Though the island of Saint-Domingue is thousands of miles away from Metropolitan France, politically speaking it was completely contingent with the rest of the nation. France administered its colonies in the same manner as it did its provinces and thus, as far as the government was concerned, Saint-Domingue might as well have been floating off the Cote d’Azur instead of in the Caribbean Sea.
The economy of Saint-Domingue was both simple and brutal. The whole colony – which shared the island of Hispaniola with the Spanish colony of Domenica – was a huge sugar plantation, feeding the European demand for white gold with African slave labor. While many European colonial powers had slaves, few were as dependent on theirs as France was in Saint-Domingue.
It was the most profitable colony in the whole world and up to 5% of the entire French economy was dependent on it. 90% of the island’s population were slaves and it was the policy of plantation owners to work their slaves to death before tropical disease killed them first. Suffice, to say, conditions were ripe for revolt.
Back in France, a negligible act of the French Revolution would have huge ramifications in Saint-Domingue. When the National Assembly passed the Declarations of the Rights of Man, many in Saint-Domingue thought that it had freed them too. Certainly, they weren’t going to wait to find out. Lead by freed slaves Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, they rose against the white masters and overthrew them. The uprising was characterized by extreme violence – their flag read “Liberty or Death” – and resulted in the foundation of the Republic of Haiti, the first free republic founded by Africans and the second republic in the Western Hemisphere.
As far as protests go, the transformation from the brutal conditions of disease and oppression in Saint-Domingue to the independent, free nation of Haiti, run by ex-slaves, is one of the most spectacular of all time.