The only successful slave revolution in history — a thirteen-year uprising in the French colony of Saint-Domingue that destroyed the most profitable plantation economy in the world, killed or expelled the colonial ruling class, defeated the armies of France, Britain, and Spain, and produced Haiti, the first Black republic and the first nation founded by formerly enslaved people.
In 1789, the French Revolution proclaimed the Rights of Man. In 1791, the enslaved people of Saint-Domingue decided to take those rights seriously. What followed was the most consequential revolution of the modern era that the Western historical tradition has spent two centuries trying to forget: the only time in history that enslaved people rose up, fought off every colonial power that came against them, and built a state of their own. Haiti's founding terrified every slaveholding society on earth — and the punishment inflicted on Haiti for its audacity continues to shape the Western Hemisphere to the present day.