Under the Ryswick Treaty (1697) Spain had ceded to France the western part of the island of Santo Domingo, which thus became a coffee emporium inhabited by more than half a million slaves and some 50,000 whites, in whose territory the current Haiti
At the outbreak of the French Revolution, the slaves demanded the abolition of slavery and equality with whites, inspired by the Declaration of Rights of the Constituent Assembly , without realizing that this declaration, which in theory referred to the entire human race, actually contemplated only the rights of whites. The latter, lacking vision and fearful of the possible consequences, steadfastly refused to agree, thereby only succeeding in precipitating the slaves' uprising in arms, which they did with terrible violence but in keeping with the barbaric exploitation to which they had been subjected. been subjected. The English, interested in taking over the rich coffee colony, helped the rebels, so the French government decided to put the colonial troops under the command of a capable black Haitian military officer, a member of the colony's army, Toussaint L' Overture , who managed to impose a tense calm while occupying the Spanish part of the island, the colony of Santo Domingo, which had been ceded to France in 1795 under the Treaty of Basel.
In 1801 L'Ouverture promulgated a Constitution for Santo Domingo which declared the entire island as an autonomous colony of the French empire, but faced with the refusal to surrender all the power of the population of Spanish origin, Toussaint imposed himself as supreme leader and openly broke with France. The state created by Toussaint was recognized by the US and Great Britain, but not by Napoleon, who sent General Leclerc to the island in command of a large contingent of troops. He defeats Toussaint, takes him prisoner through trickery, and sends him to France along with the other captured black chiefs. There he would die. Only mulatto chiefs such as Clervaux and Pétion remained in the country. . Leclerc died, he was replaced by General Rochambeau , who besieged from the sea by the British from Jamaica and from land by the mulatto leader Dessalines, was defeated in the battle of Cap Francais (November, 1803). Finally, January 1, 1804 , the independence of Haiti is proclaimed, the first black republic in the world and the second in America, after the USA.
The proclamation, made by Dessalines in Gonaives , was presided over by the jubilation of blacks and mulattoes. The pro-independence leader, a capable natural strategist but an illiterate ex-slave, proved incapable of governing an uncultivated and battered country, as he demonstrated by decreeing the extermination of the white minority that had decided to stay in the country, and subsequently invading the Spanish part of the island, Santo Domingo, where he sowed terror and murdered at close range, although he failed to take the capital. His despotism exasperated his own co-religionists and he was assassinated in October 1806. The country was divided between two governments:in the south of the island, that of Alexandre Pétion , of a moderate nature, and in the north, that of Henri Christophe , megalomaniac and despot like Dessalines who proclaimed himself emperor with the man of Henri I and subjected his people to the most curious extravagances, until a revolutionary movement made him commit suicide before the imminence of defeat. All the leaders of independence disappeared, only Pierre Boyer remained , intelligent mulatto who gave coherence and stability to the turbulent country.