1 January 1804 · Haitian

Independence is declared at Gonaïves2 sources

The second republic in the hemisphere and the first anywhere founded by the formerly enslaved.

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1804 to 1806 · Haitianspan

Haiti's first constitution grants freedom of worship, then never again

Dessalines opened the country to religious liberty; every later government closed it back down.

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From 1804 · Haitianyear only

Haitian privateers named for abolitionists hunt slave ships

Vessels called Wilberforce and Abolition of the Trade went after traffic bound for Cuba.

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1804 · Haitianyear only

The Haitian flag read as an object of Vodou

Red for Ogou, blue and red for Ezili Danto, white held in place by the pythons of Ouidah.

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1804 to 1914 · Haitianspan

Twenty six heads of state and not one governed with his own shade alone

Price-Mars counted the presidents of a century and drew the conclusion from the tally.

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1 January 1804 · Haitian

Woodward credits a British blockade for the final victory

Independence is declared, and the article says English ships made Rochambeau's defeat possible.

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1 January 1804 · Haitian

Dessalines gives the country back the Taino name for mountainous land2 sources

Independence is declared and the island is renamed to honour the people the Spanish destroyed.

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1 January 1804 · Haitian

Independence lets the country define itself for the first time

Gaffield dates the shift from colonial continuity to national self-definition here.

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1 January 1804 · Haitian

The independence proclamation promises not to export the revolution

Dessalines tells neighbours to breathe in peace and warns against proselytising.

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1 January 1804 · Haitian

Issuing the declaration, Dessalines claims the mantle of founder

A general who shaped the first postemancipation society then defined its statehood.

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1 January 1804 · Haitian

A violently anti-French declaration is drafted in polished French

Boisrond-Tonnerre, educated in France, writes the independence text that renounces France.

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1 January 1804 · Haitian

Haiti declares independence and makes anti-colonialism a founding rule

The act names France the enemy, restores an Indigenous name, and renounces conquest abroad.

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1 January 1804 · Haitian

Independence settles slavery and opens the colour question

With whites gone, the ideology built to defend them is recycled into a fight between Black and mulatto elites.

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1 January 1804 · Haitian

The declaration asks for liberty and never uses the word sovereignty

Gaffield reads the omission as deliberate: colonial dominion, not personal bondage, was what had to end.

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1 January 1804 · Haitian

Dessalines names the new state with an Amerindian word2 sources

Independence was declared, then the remaining white colonists were killed and barred from land.

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January to April 1804 · Haitianspan

Girard calls the killing of the French planters a completed genocide

He argues Dessalines exceeded the Spanish and the French by combining intent with success.

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1 January 1804 · Haitian

Independence comes last, and its declaration says nothing of rights

Dessalines takes an Amerindian name to erase the colony and justifies secession solely by slavery.

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1 January 1804 · Haitian

The Declaration capitalises Indigène and demotes France

In a text whose French three times strips the capital from France, one word is always capitalised.

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January to February 1804 · Haitianspan

The day after independence the state takes all the French land

Cancelling the fleeing masters' gifts struck at the wealth of the people of colour.

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5 January 1804 · Diaspora

Haitian independence enters American print via a Philadelphia paper

From one paper the text reaches at least thirty-five towns in seven weeks.

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8 January 1804 · Diaspora

Saint-Jean Louverture dies at Agen aged thirteen

He said he could not outlive his father, and died a week after Haiti declared independence.

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14 January 1804 · Diaspora

Haiti offers forty dollars a head to bring its people home

A repatriation decree pays American captains and is addressed to the US Congress.

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January 1804 · Haitianmonth known

A decree turns every French estate into state land

Land held by France or by white owners becomes public property, and untitled holdings are seized too.

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17 January 1804 · Haitian

A British agent talks trade in Port-au-Prince after independence

Corbet arrives immediately after the declaration and comes back to Jeremie in February.

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25 January 1804 · Caribbean

A British agent reports carrying home a just-composed declaration

Edward Corbet's Jamaica report puts the text's completion after New Year, not on it.

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1803 to 1804 · Diasporaspan

Jamaica expels its French refugees and a thousand reach Louisiana

Governor Claiborne watched boat after boat come up the Mississippi through 1804.

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7 March 1804 · Haitian

The Acte reaches America in pieces, and the pieces arrive out of order

The long speech is printed first, in two different translations, weeks before the oath and the nomination.

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1804 · Diasporayear only

The Toussaint waxwork is remade into Othello in 1804

New owners in New York kept the collection, dropped the black general, and put Shakespeare in his place.

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18 March 1804 · Caribbean

A prize court sells 185 shipwrecked captives for 81,400 francs

A slaver flying Danish colours ran aground at Higuey and its cargo was auctioned by the French state.

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spring 1804 · Haitianseason

The promise to keep whites in the new nation ends in the 1804 killings

Dessalines first offered French residents a place, then ordered most of them killed within months.

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April 1804 · Haitianmonth known

Dessalines calls the massacre of whites a national reconciliation

The killing was presented as a blood seal on the union of two groups who had lately fought each other.

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28 April 1804 · Haitian

Dessalines answers the massacre reports by putting France on trial

A proclamation meant to seize the narrative lists Guadeloupe, Delgres and the daggers already sharpened.

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1804 · Haitianyear only

Dessalines starts the mountain fortress, not Christophe

Work on the Citadelle began in the year of independence and only resumed in force after 1811.

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1804 to 1806 · Haitianspan

A decree splits the whole population into soldiers and cultivators

If you were not in the army you were legally tied to a plantation, with soldiers posted to keep you there.

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1804 to 1806 · Caribbeanspan

French privateers take a hundred American ships, Cuba splits the prize

Ferrand could not reconquer Haiti, so he tried to strangle its shipping from Santo Domingo.

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1804 · Haitianyear only

The bill for independence: 560,000 dead or gone, exports destroyed

The colony lost over a third of its people and three quarters of its capacity to export.

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1804 · Haitianyear only

The independence act says fine words are what defeated the rebels

Boisrond-Tonnerre's declaration attacks the rights of man as a weapon that had been used against them.

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1804 · Haitianyear only

The state created in 1804 was never a republic

Geggus flags a persistent misdescription of the polity Dessalines founded.

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1804 · Haitianyear only

Boisrond-Tonnerre writes a history so the French cannot write it

Boisrond-Tonnerre publishes immediately after independence to fix an official version of the past.

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4 July 1804 · Diaspora

Black Philadelphians keep the Fourth of July for Haiti

Six months after independence, several hundred marched armed through the southern city.

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1804 · Haitianyear only

Dessalines refuses a Jamaican treaty that ranks Haiti below Britain

The governor offered a friendly commercial relationship on terms that assumed Haiti was not an equal.

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1804 to 1915 · Haitianspan

Twenty-six heads of state in 111 years and only one of them a civilian

Gerlus counts the presidencies and finds Michel Oreste the sole non-soldier, in office under a year.

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September 1804 · Haitianmonth known

Dessalines buys a Frenchman's whole cargo six hours after he lands

Months after the killings of Haiti's French residents, a white merchant sails in and clears 70,000 gourdes.

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8 October 1804 · Haitian

A Capuchin is procured to crown Dessalines as Jacques the First

Wood dates the coronation to October, where other accounts give September.

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8 November 1804 · Caribbean

A French general voids the freedom papers signed by black officers

A king could make a free person. A black general in arms could not.

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4 December 1804 · Caribbean

Haitian captives are shipped to Charleston and traded for rice

Ferrand put his takings from the exchange at a thousand to twelve hundred gourdes.

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1805 · Haitianyear only

The 1805 constitution mentions women exactly three times

Inheritance, an exemption for naturalized white women, and an allowance for the Empress.

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1805 to 1809 · Caribbeanspan

France holds Santo Domingo for six years after losing Haiti

Ferrand's garrison beat off Dessalines in 1805 and stayed until 1809, when the last troops left.

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6 January 1805 · Caribbean

A French decree licenses the seizure of Haitian children

Cross the border, take a child under fourteen, and the paperwork made the child yours.

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6 January 1805 · Haitian

A French general trades kidnapped Haitian children for Carolina rice

On the Feast of Epiphany a proclamation put a price on kidnapped Haitian children.

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6 January 1805 · Haitian

A French decree in Santo Domingo authorises the capture of Haitians

Dessalines circulated copies of the order among his own citizens before marching east.

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April 1805 · Caribbeanmonth known

A refugee planter becomes French agent at St Thomas

Appointed to handle prize cases, Lartigue instead lectures the Danish governor on the law of nations.

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2 May 1805 · Caribbean

Ships sail daily for Haiti despite a French threat of death

The proclamation was posted in the city, read by merchants and sailors, and simply ignored.

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28 May 1805 · Haitian

Dessalines gives children a legal standing without a wedding

Recognition by a parent, and not a marriage certificate, decided who could inherit.

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12 June 1805 · Haitian

Victoria Montou, called Toya, is buried by the emperor's guard

Dessalines wept on the gallery and said that only Claire was left to him now.

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20 June 1805 · Haitian

A bankrupt Jamaica merchant becomes Haiti's British creditor

Robert Sutherland was declared insolvent in London a year before he began lending to Haitian governments.

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1805 · Haitianyear only

Haiti's first constitution abolishes property in whiteness3 sources

By barring white ownership of land, the 1805 text attacks the legal engine of the colonial order.

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1805 · Haitianyear only

Citizenship that can be lost by leaving, on pain of death

Dessalines's charter makes nationality conditional and forbids holding two.

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1805 · Haitianyear only

The state stops paying for religion and Vodou gets room to grow

Three articles admit no dominant religion, tolerate worship, and fund no clergy at all.

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1805 · Pre-Revolutionaryyear only

A British officer accuses his contemporaries of silencing Haiti

Rainsford's history opens by asking why an event that changed the world has been eclipsed.

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1805 · Haitianyear only

Haiti bars whites from land and promises not to touch its neighbours2 sources

The constitution ties citizenship to blackness and promises not to touch the neighbours.

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1805 · Haitianyear only

Dessalines writes land sharing into the 1805 constitution

The 1805 charter splits land among those who fought and renounces everything French.

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1805 · Haitianyear only

Article 14 makes Poles and Germans black by act of constitution2 sources

The clause that declared all Haitians black also naturalised the Europeans who had changed sides.

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1805 · Haitianyear only

Dessalines marches on Santo Domingo with 20,000 men and fails

A French squadron arrives at the decisive moment, and Ferrand holds the east for four more years.

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1805 · Diasporayear only

Bahian militiamen wear Dessalines around their necks in 18052 sources

The men found with the emperor's portrait were free, and Geggus says that distinction matters.

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1805 · Haitianyear only

The 1805 census implies the population fell by a third

A decrease of 180,000 people, proportionally worse than Venezuela lost in twelve years.

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the last months of 1805 · Caribbeanseason

A snubbed agent invents a Caribbean-wide revolution

Told by Ferrand he had been useless, Lartigue produced a conspiracy running from Jacmel to Trinidad.

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1806 to 1810 · Haitianspan

The United States embargoes Haiti and fails to isolate its trade

The Vatican cut relations, recognition took decades, and the coffee kept moving.

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1806 · Caribbeanyear only

Emilie is burned a day after she is convicted

The dish was never eaten and nobody was harmed by it.

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1806 to 1812 · Haitianspan

Two states divide Haiti and hand out the land in opposite ways

Christophe leased the north to his generals and Petion titled the south to private owners.

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1806 · Haitianyear only

A drum from the war of independence stands one metre thirty eight high

Every time church or state moved against paganism, instruments like this one were burned.

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17 January 1806 · Haitian

Dessalines is killed at Pont Rouge after trying to share out the land

The generals who had acquired estates during the war turn on the emperor who wanted them divided.

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February 1806 · Haitianmonth known

France demands a US embargo on Haiti and a senator objects

Samuel White argued the surrender of Haitian trade would set a precedent against American sovereignty.

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1806 · Haitianyear only

Petion's senate takes the legislature and chooses the president

Article thirty-five restores Catholicism as state religion; the senate keeps everything else.

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1806 · Diasporayear only

The Logan Bill measures what Dessalines cost Haiti in Washington

Independence and the killing of the planters ended American tolerance.

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1806 · Haitianyear only

Defilee gathers the pieces and buries the founder in an unmarked grave

Early chroniclers called her mad; over time she has come to seem the only sane one.

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1806 · Haitianyear only

A London merchant turns Port-au-Prince into an arms depot

Robert Sutherland arrives to trade and within two years is selling weapons to revolutionaries.

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1806 to 1820 · Haitianspan

The cultivators who fought France refuse the state that follows

Thousands allied with Rochambeau rather than join Dessalines, and Goman held the south.

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1806 to 1820 · Haitianspan

Manigat replaces the ferocious tyrant with an enlightened despot

Madiou and Ardouin fixed Christophe as arbitrary and cruel; Manigat wants him out of legend.

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1806 to 1820 · Haitianspan

Two propertied factions fight for the state for fourteen years

Dupuy dates Haiti's structural weakness to a civil war between old affranchi owners and new Black owners.

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1806 · Haitianyear only

The state owns two thirds of the plantations and cannot work them

A report to the agriculture secretary describes vast state estates and private domains, all short of hands.

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1806 · Haitianyear only

Congress bans trade with Haiti two years late and for only four years

The United States never ruled on Haiti's status; it legislated on cargo instead.

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1806 · Haitianyear only

Dessalines is killed and the country splits into two warring states

The rift between northern ex-slaves and southern anciens libres lasted until 1820.

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1806 · Diasporayear only

Jefferson embargoes the country whose victory doubled his own

American merchants had armed the rebels; the president then banned trade to protect the slave South.

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20 July 1806 · Haitian

Dessalines tells an English merchant to take thirty percent or leave

The emperor haggled personally over a cargo at Jérémie and threatened to dissolve the deal.

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1 August to 9 September 1806 · Haitianspan

The treasury pays a thousand gourdes a day at Les Cayes

Dessalines refused to believe the figure until the treasurer produced the itemised account.

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15 August 1806 · Haitian

Haiti barters coffee for an audience with a British cabinet minister

Dessalines told Downie the state did not need the cargo; it needed access to Castlereagh.

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1 and 2 September 1806 · Haitian

Dessalines issues his tariff code in the province most hostile to him

An eighteen-page schedule taxed 527 imports, including fortepianos at 660 livres.

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1806 · Haitianyear only

Euphemie Daguilh names the centre of the conspiracy at Port-Salut

She kept her own informers, and begged Inginac to take command before the rising broke out.

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19 September 1806 · Haitian

Geffrard is born weeks after the father he never met dies

Nicolas Fabre Geffrard is born at L'Anse-a-Veau, orphaned before birth by a general of independence.

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8 October 1806 · Haitian

A British merchant asks the Royal Navy to patrol Haiti on his behalf

Sutherland wanted monthly naval visits to remind Dessalines whose interests were being watched.

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October 1806 · Haitianmonth known

The first emperor is lynched by his own officers outside the capital

Two years of forced labour under a new whip ended with a general uprising against Jacques the First.

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17 October 1806 · Haitian

A woman thought mad gives the murdered emperor a burial

Children were stoning the remains on the Place du Gouvernement when she asked whose they were.

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17 October 1806 · Haitian

Defilee gathers the emperor's remains into a sack

A beggar named Dauphin helped her carry what was left of Dessalines to the cemetery.

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17 October 1806 · Haitian

Dessalines is killed over land reform and the peasants withdraw3 sources

Mocombe dates the end of African purposive-rationality in the state to this assassination.

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17 October 1806 · Haitian

Dessalines is assassinated by a government that rested on force alone

Wood's verdict: he founded a nation and built it on compulsion.

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1806 · Haitianyear only

Manigat makes the land question the cause of the killing at Pont-Rouge

The authors of the coup admitted it themselves in the act they published afterwards.

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late 1806 · Haitianseason

Britain regulates trade with Haiti, which is recognition of a kind

The only empire not prohibiting the traffic, and its courts went further than its ministers.

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30 November 1806 · Haitian

Both factions rig the Constituent Assembly and the country splits

Christophe stacks the parishes, Petion stacks the villages, and neither can govern the other.

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December 1806 · Haitianmonth known

Christophe turns down a presidency stripped of power

Offered a four-year term the constitution had hollowed out, he marches on Port-au-Prince instead.

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18 December 1806 · Haitian

Haiti's civil war opens on a date and does not close for seven years

Constitutional manoeuvring reduced Christophe to a figurehead and the generals took it to the field.

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28 December 1806 · Haitian

A constitution designed to bind the executive elects Christophe to it2 sources

The reaction against Dessalines produced a presidency too weak for the man chosen.

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1807 to 1820 · Haitianspan

Christophe builds a monarchy to out-abolish imperial France

Destin reads the northern crown as a calculation about which powers would end slavery.

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1807 to 1820 · Haitianspan

Christophe allows one Vodou priest in the north and consults him

Louis Sangosse of Campeche was the single exception to a total prohibition.

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1807 · Diasporayear only

A raid near Santo Amaro produces the first record of the word Candomble

The charge concerned runaways, gunpowder and weapons, with nothing said about healing.

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3 January 1807 · Haitian

A soldier drafts a Haiti trade treaty from a Fleet Street coffee house

Downie told the War Office that recognition alone would win Britain almost exclusive access to Haitian trade.

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17 February 1807 · Haitian

Petion packs an assembly and Christophe answers with his own

A charter restricting the executive splits the country into two republics.

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9 March 1807 · Haitian

Petion is elected president in the south and the split hardens

The rival state in the south gets a legitimate head, leaving Christophe as ruler of a rump north.

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11 March 1807 · Haitian

The Senate impeaches Christophe and elects Petion in his place

Two constitutions, two governments, one island divided for thirteen years.

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11 March 1807 · Haitian

The Senate impeaches Christophe and makes Petion president instead

Two constitutions in four weeks split the country between a northern king and a western republic.

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20 April 1807 · Haitian

A law bans buying under ten carreaux and bolts the estates shut

Manigat finds the Republic of the South legislating against small property from the first year.

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1807 · Haitianyear only

Christophe's constitution suspends itself where troops are sent

Article forty-four lifts the charter wherever disturbances require the armed forces.

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1807 · Haitianyear only

Dupuy denies that Hegel took his master and slave from Saint-Domingue

The dialectic assumes mutual recognition, which colonial slavery never offered.

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1807 to 1818 · Haitianspan

Manigat corrects the story of Petion's agrarian policy

Leasing, concessions and sales, improvised day by day under pressure and without a plan.

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1807 to 1820 · Haitianspan

Christophe leases the north's estates and keeps his nobles on notice

Five-year tenancies, a quarter share for the labourer, and titles held only as long as the king is pleased.

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1807 · Haitianyear only

Petion and Christophe offer London the terms Dessalines had refused

Every other power had closed its ports, so the successors conceded what the founder would not.

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18 August 1807 · Caribbean

A woman produces a sixty eight year old paper to prove she is free

Under Ferrand a person's legal status came down to whether a document had survived.

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5 December 1807 · Caribbean

A French general fixes the price a person must pay for their own freedom

One hundred and fifty gourdes for an adult, fifty for a child under eight.

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1808 · Caribbeanyear only

A census counts seven thousand slaves next door to free Haiti

Thirty five per cent of them were recorded in the colony's two towns.

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1808 · Diasporayear only

Black Philadelphia makes New Year's Day a double anniversary

The date that ended the American slave trade was also the date of Haitian independence.

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7 November 1808 · Caribbean

Ferrand loses a third of his army at Seibo and shoots himself

A Spanish rising Ferrand refused to believe in destroys the last French force on Hispaniola.

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7 November 1808 · Caribbean

Ferrand walks into 2,100 waiting soldiers at Seybo and shoots himself

He expected a rabble to scatter at his appearance and met troops shipped from Havana and Puerto Rico.

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1809 · Diasporayear only

Nine thousand people from Saint Domingue land at New Orleans

The largest single landing came from Cuba, sixteen years after the first flight.

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1809 · Haitianyear only

Latin America's first land reform makes Haiti a nation of peasants

It also left an upper class with no way to earn without working, which it solved by taxing.

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12 March 1809 · Diaspora

A proclamation in Cuba sets neighbours to watch French residents

Committees in every town and parish decided which foreigners would be expelled.

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12 March 1809 · Diaspora

Cuba orders the French out and New Orleans receives them

Napoleon put his brother on the Spanish throne and Cubans took it out on refugees.

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May 1809 to January 1810 · Diasporaspan

Nine thousand refugees double the population of New Orleans

The mayor counted them off the boats from Santiago de Cuba and Baracoa and reported the total.

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May 1809 to January 1810 · Diasporaspan

Nine thousand refugees from Cuba double French New Orleans

One proclamation in Santiago produced the largest single movement of the whole diaspora.

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May 1809 to January 1810 · Diasporaspan

Nine thousand people land at New Orleans and double the city

The mayor sorted the arrivals into three legal categories of almost equal size.

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May to August 1809 · Diasporaspan

New Orleans hands out more refugee relief than it collects in property tax

Five storerooms behind the fish market, a blanket collection, and five thousand dollars.

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May to August 1809 · Diasporamonth known

The fish market storerooms are cleared to house arriving families

Private subscriptions raised in three months two thirds of a year of parish taxes.

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28 June 1809 · Diaspora

Congress waives the slave import ban for one group of arrivals

A representative quoted Dido receiving Aeneas, and the bill passed without a vote against.

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1809 to 1814 · Haitianspan

Petion breaks up the plantations and gives the land to soldiers

Two laws convert confiscated sugar estates into small peasant holdings.

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the years after independence · Haitianspan

Petion and Boyer let the plantation die, and Stein defends them

Blaming them for Haiti's economic fate ignores collapsing markets and the French indemnity.

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1809 to 1816 · Haitianspan

Manigat charges Petion with the first coup and the first rigged vote

The historian steps out of the Christophe and Petion quarrel by convicting both sides of something.

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1809 to 1814 · Haitianspan

Two land laws cut the colonial estates into soldiers' farms

Bellegarde's thesis: distributing the national domain is what made Haiti a nation of owners.

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1809 · Haitianyear only

Petion hands out the plantations and sugar exports stop for a century

Girard calls the land distribution a deeper change than any revolution or civil war of the century.

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6 July 1809 · Caribbean

The French sign away Santo Domingo and property is respected

Twelve days to evacuate, ten days to emigrate, and one clause that read as slavery.

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6 July 1809 · Caribbean

The last French government in Hispaniola signs its surrender

Twelve days to evacuate, a prisoner exchange, and one clause that quietly protected slaveholding.

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6 to 8 July 1809 · Caribbeanspan

Petion sells food to the besieged French garrison he once fought

Barquier appeals to Haiti for supplies, and the president who beat the French quietly obliges.

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August 1809 · Diasporamonth known

Six hundred men from Cuba are working at trades by August

Former estate owners were turning wood, baking bread and glazing windows within weeks.

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1809 · Diasporayear only

The flour returns of New Orleans bakers measure the new arrivals

Twenty six men declaring five hundred and twenty barrels became thirty four declaring seven hundred.

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the last months of 1809 · Haitianseason

Petion sells the state's land cheaply and creates the peasantry

Land goes to soldiers and officers as gifts and to thousands of ordinary people at prices they can meet.

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30 December 1809 · Haitian

The famous land grant is only an order, issued without a Senate

Five carreaux for a soldier, twenty-five for a colonel, and no implementing rules ever found.

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