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The French Make The Colony "Saint-Domingue"
The French shared the island with the spanish who owned Santo Domingo. Saint Domingue had many black slaves that were abused and had no rights. They were ruled by the French Colonists. -
Saint Domingue Production
Saint Domingue produced sugar, coffee, and cotton for half of Europe. This forced farmers to work their slaves harder, many slaves became weak, and a lot of them died. The slaves were under norished, underfed, and overworked. -
The Affranchis
The Affranchis were free blacks, who were a lot of times very wealthy. They wanted equal rights to the French Colonists, so they demanded equal rights based off of the Declarations of the Rights of Man the Citizen. Their request was denied -
Rights of the Affranchis
The French government grants the free blacks full rights in Saint Domingue. The colonists refuse to even acknowledge this decision. The black slaves seeing the French give in to the Affranchis, revolved to attempt to get their own rights. -
A Change of Mind
The French government sees how unhappy the French Colonists are about the black rights. So they changed it back to only the whites having rights. The Affranchis join up with the slaves to work together for rights. -
Louis XVI
Louis XVI was the King of France when the Haitian Revolution started. He granted free blacks equal rights once again. -
L'ouverture
A rebel leader who joined the Spanish to try to defeat the French to re-capture the colony and to re-establish slavery. -
Official Rights
France finally makes it official that they abolished slavery in France and in all the other colonies owned by them. -
Napoleon
Napoleon was a military leader who was a very good tactician. He overthrew the French directory and made himself emperor of France. He tried to re-capture Saint Domingue and make blacks slaves again. -
The Constitution
After winning the War of Knives, L'ouverture makes a constitution that abolishes slavery, declared everyone to have equal rights, and outlawed the voodoo religion. -
French Invasion
The French invade Saint Domingue under control of Napoleon and they want to re-establish slavery because of L'ouverture's constitution. They take over the island and put slavery back into place in the colony. -
Independence
After beating the French with the scorch earth policy Jon-Jacques Dessalines declares Haiti's independence and crowns himself emperor.
