Haitian Revolution History

Brought to you by Penguin. From the Wolfson History Prize-winning author of Black Spartacus, a revelatory history of enslaved people's resistance to Atlantic slavery. The ending of the slave trade and abolition of slavery by European powers during the 19th century is generally told as the work...

During the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804, arguably the most radical revolution of the modern world, slaves and former slaves succeeded in ending slavery and establishing an independent state. Yet on the Spanish island of Cuba barely fifty miles distant, the events in Haiti helped usher in the antithesis of revolutionary emancipation. When Cuban planters and authorities saw the devastation of the neighboring colony, they rushed to fill the void left in the world market for sugar, to buttress the institutions of slavery and colonial rule, and to prevent "another Haiti".