The Only Successful Slave Revolution in History: Haiti, 1791–1804

In 1791, five hundred thousand enslaved people on the richest colony in the world rose up and burned it to the ground. Thirteen years later, they had defeated the French army, the British army, the Spanish army, and created the first free Black republic in history. No slave revolution had ever succeeded before. None has since. This is the story of the Haitian Revolution: how it happened, who led it, why Napoleon sent forty thousand of his best soldiers and watched them die, how it accidentally produced the Louisiana Purchase, and what the world did to Haiti afterward for daring to win. New history every week. Subscribe so you never miss an era.