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It helps to begin the story with a little geography. In 1492 Christopher Columbus and the Spanish landed on the large Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Two centuries later, in 1697, the French officially took control of the western half of the island and renamed it Saint Domingue. Saint Domingue changed its name to Haiti in 1804 and remains so today. Behind the name change, of course, is a much deeper history. Under French control, Saint Domingue became one of the richest colonies in the world. By the 1780s its 8,000 plantations were producing 40 percent of the world's sugar and more than half of the world's coffee. The work was done by over 500,000 slaves, owned by several thousand rich white (European-French) planters. It was into this world that these men were born, sometime in the 1740’s. Records suggest that Toussaint was taught to read and write by his godfather and at one point rented a small coffee plantation and acquired a dozen slaves of his own. In the summer of 1789 news of the French Revolution swept across the island. Words like “Liberte" and "Egalite" were in the air. After French refusal to end slavery in Saint Domingue, thousands of plantations were burned and hundreds of whites and mixed-race people were killed. In the midst of this struggle, Jean Jacques Dessalines and Toussaint L’Ouverture emerged as leaders. They were no longer slaves when the rebellion broke out. They worked behind the scenes to encourage people who were enslaved to fight for their freedom. When in 1794, the revolutionary government in France abolished all slavery in the French colonies, Dessaline and Toussaint pledged allegiance to France. But then an unexpected change. Napoleon Bonaparte had risen to power in France and it was feared he was planning to reinstate slavery in Saint Domingue. Indeed in 1802, Napoleon Launched an invasion of 21,000 French troops. The leaders of Haiti put up an impressive fight but Toussaint was captured and taken to France. Surprisingly, at this point Napoleon pulled his suffering troops out of Saint Domingue, giving up the fight. Ironically, just as Saint Domingue was celebrating victory, Toussaint was dying from pneumonia in a French jail. He never knew that Saint Domingue, on the first of January 1804, would become an independent nation and be renamed Haiti.

5. What explains why Dessalines & Toussaint fought against the French
as a slave rebel leaders in 1793, but then fought again against the French
in 1802?
6. Why wasn't Toussaint able to celebrate the independence of Haiti?

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