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The declaration defines a single set of individual and collective rights for all men. Influenced by the doctrine of natural rights, these rights are held to be universal and valid in all times and places. -
An angry French mob attacks the Bastille prison in Paris on July 14, 1789—an event that heralded an increase in violence and the symbolic beginning of the French Revolution. -
In May 1791 Paris granted French citizenship to landowners—which included some affranchise and excluded some whites, leading to civil war. A general slave revolt in August started the revolution. Its success pushed France to abolish slavery in 1794, and the Haitian Revolution outlasted the French Revolution. -
The Reign of Terror, which took place from the summer of 1793 to the summer of 1794, was the most violent episode of the French Revolution. Contrary to popular view, most of the people executed were not aristocrats and priests but rather workers and peasants. -
Toussaint Louverture led a successful slave revolt and emancipated the slaves in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti). A formidable military leader, he turned the colony into a country governed by former black slaves as a nominal French protectorate and made himself ruler of the entire island of Hispaniola. -
With full popular support behind him, Napoleon proclaimed himself emperor of the French.
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In 1804, General Dessalines assumed dictatorial power, and Haiti became the second independent nation in the Americas. -
Bolivar favored independence, and in 1810 he joined a revolutionary group that expelled the Spanish governor from Venezuela in 1811.
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Painting of José María Morelos assuming leadership of the Mexican struggle for independence after the execution of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla in 1811. -
The Bolivarian countries are six Hispanic American countries whose republican origin is attributed to the ideals of Simón Bolívar and independence war led by the Venezuelan military in the viceroyalties of New Granada and Peru.