18 January 1810 · Diaspora
A governor counts eight hundred armed men and calls them a risk
Their conduct had been correct, he wrote, and they should be carefully watched.
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October 1810 · Diasporamonth known
After a private loss, Marie Bunel finally goes back to Haiti
Eight years of prospering in Philadelphia end after an illness, a child's burial and a jar of preserves.
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26 March 1811 · Haitian
Christophe answers his rival's re-election by making himself king
Seventeen days after Petion is returned to office, the north stops being a republic.
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1811 · Haitianyear only
A constitutional law makes the north a kingdom under the Code Henry2 sources
The editors call the 1811 text an amendment whose only purpose is to install royalty.
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1811 · Caribbeanyear only
A Havana carpenter uses portraits of black rulers to recruit rebels
Aponte's picture book of revolutionary leaders followed Christophe's coronation the same year.
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1811 · Diasporayear only
Two 1811 risings led by men who had lived through the Haitian war
Deslondes leads the largest revolt in North American history while a Haitian veteran plots in Martinique.
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1811 to 1812 · Caribbeanspan
A speech in Cadiz sets off revolts across the Spanish Caribbean
A deputy's 1811 abolition proposal reached the colonies as a rumour that freedom had been granted.
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the reign of Christophe · Haitianyear only
Christophe distributed land late and to very few soldiers
Geggus reverses the book's claim that the northern king gave land early and to all his troops.
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1811 · Haitianyear only
Christophe crowns himself and manufactures a Haitian nobility
The northern state becomes a kingdom with princes, dukes, counts, barons and knights.
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18 February 1812 · Haitian
An emergency sale of state land becomes a general auction
Petion asks to sell a few sugar estates in 1812, and by 1814 the whole public domain is for sale.
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24 February 1812 · Haitian
The Code Henry builds courts, schools and compulsory labour together
One legal package creates a supreme court, a state press, a state church and forced farm work.
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1812 · Haitianyear only
Ardouin accuses Christophe of setting out to exterminate the mulattoes
The same historian insists the civil war had nothing to do with colour.
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1812 · Haitianyear only
The Code Henry binds cultivators and renames runaways as vagabonds
Christophe's rules tie farmers to the land, and escape stops being marronage in law.
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the reign of Christophe · Haitianapproximate
The Code Henry bars plantation workers from marrying outsiders
A corps called the Royal Dahomey enforces a labour code that binds workers by family ties.
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1812 · Caribbeanyear only
Aponte's Havana plot is the clearest case of Haitian influence
Geggus grants the example while arguing the wider influence has been overstated.
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1812 · Haitianyear only
A band of well born rapists and the word that outlived them
Haitian Creole names the crime after a man who was walking the capital nine years after independence.
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1814 · Caribbeanyear only
Orfila names toxicology and leaves the colonial poison trials out
His case studies are European accidents while hundreds stand trial in Martinique and Suriname.
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17 March 1814 · African
A king crowned eleven years into his reign, by the only priest who could reach him
Twenty five thousand baptisms in eight months, and the capital had gone twenty years without a priest.
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1814 · Haitianyear only
Vastey redefines colonial as the massacre or enslavement of blacks
Christophe's secretary seizes a neutral term and reverses a proslavery formula against its author.
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20 December 1814 · Haitian
Christophe's secretary cites the dead plotter to prove Haiti is safe
Fifteen years on, the kingdom uses Louverture's betrayal as a diplomatic character reference.
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1815 to 1821 · Diasporaspan
American papers advertise Vastey's books from Baltimore to Boston
A dozen dated advertisements show early Haitian writing circulating widely in the Atlantic press.
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1815 · Diasporayear only
The peasants keep what they took and everyone else gives it back
At the Restoration the one group whose gains survived was the one nobody had led.
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1815 · Diasporayear only
An English architect draws the drums of Congo Square
Latrobe's sketches record two Yoruba drums and one Dahomean, played in the open in an American city.
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8 January 1815 · Diaspora
Refugees make up a quarter of the men defending New Orleans
The French consul had listed seventy five exemptions from militia duty and got one taker.
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1815 to 1816 · Haitianspan
Beaten at Cartagena, Bolivar refits in Haiti and sails back armed
Petion supplies weapons, money and men, then insists the newspapers say nothing about it.
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31 December 1815 · Caribbean
Bolivar lands at Port-au-Prince and has an army within days
Petion meets him the next morning and promises full support in arms, ships and men.
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1816 to 1831 · Caribbeanspan
Slaves rebel to enforce emancipation laws never actually passed
Barbados, Demerara and Jamaica all rose demanding a freedom decree the government had not issued.
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1816 to 1831 · Caribbeanspan
Three British Caribbean revolts demand a law that was never passed
Barbados, Demerara and Jamaica rose insisting that emancipation had already been granted and hidden.
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1816 to 1843 · Indigenousspan
Two constitutions naturalise people of African or Indian descent
Affiliation with aboriginal peoples was written into nineteenth-century immigration law.
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3 January 1816 · Haitian
A royal manifesto calls the schools nurseries for statesmen
Christophe gives the signal for a state education policy and names what it is supposed to produce.
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18 February 1816 · Caribbean
Petion refuses Bolivar's monument and asks for emancipation instead
The price of Haitian arms was the freedom of the slaves of Spanish America.
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28 February 1816 · Haitian
Petion refuses the title of author of American liberty
Instead of the title Bolivar offered, he asks for the freeing of every enslaved person the Liberator reaches.
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31 March 1816 · Caribbean
Seven ships fitted out in Haiti sail for the Venezuelan coast
Sutherland supplied a thousand guns and thirty thousand pounds of powder for the first Los Cayos expedition.
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2 June 1816 · Haitian
Any African or Indian who settles in the republic becomes Haitian
Petion's revision grants nationality after a year and creates two chambers.
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1816 · Haitianyear only
Free men of colour, not ex-slaves, exported the revolution
Petion aided Miranda and Bolivar while the northern ex-slave leadership stayed home.
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1816 · Haitianyear only
Petion's supplies to Bolivar help end slavery in South America
The same example that armed Bolivar also froze Cuban ambitions for independence all century.
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18 September 1816 · Haitian
Christophe's foreign minister asks London for English and for light
The comte de Limonade writes to the British and Foreign School Society on the king's behalf.
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13 October 1816 · Caribbean
Bolivar nearly joins a Spanish guerrilla's invasion of Mexico
Mina proposes at Sutherland's house that they take New Spain first and then free New Granada together.
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October 1816 · Caribbeanmonth known
A Cuban spy poses as a smuggler and befriends Bolivar
Carlos Preval, sent from Cuba, walks into the revolutionary circle at Port-au-Prince.
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18 December 1816 · Caribbean
Bolivar leaves Haiti for the last time and reaches Barcelona
Spanish agents had tried to lure away his sailors, and his Haitian backers held firm.
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1817 · Haitianyear only
Christophe keeps thirty two thousand men under arms in a country at peace
France withheld recognition until 1825 and both Haitian states armed against its return.
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18 April 1817 · Caribbean
Mina lands in Mexico with a printing press and wins his first battles
He set up a press at Soto la Marina to print proclamations before marching inland.
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1817 · Haitianyear only
The fortress is done and 150 foreign ships load in the north
Wilson claims 200,000 men were pressed onto the works and 20,000 died building it.
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27 October 1817 · Caribbean
Mina is taken by royalist cavalry and shot a month later
No Mexican patriot leader would serve under a Spaniard, so he fought on alone until he was caught.
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November 1817 · Diasporamonth known
Haiti invites free Black Americans to come and be citizens
The free soil policy is advertised abroad, unlike the aid to Bolivar, which was kept quiet.
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29 November 1817 · Haitian
On the independence anniversary the king argues racial equality
Manigat dates the anniversary of the first official proclamation of independence to 29 November.
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circa 1818 · Africanapproximate
Gezo deposes Adanzan and the deposition is slowly erased
A document of 1820 states it flatly. By 1864 visitors were told Adanzan had never reigned.
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1818 to 1821 · Diasporaspan
Two French doctors try to expose a New York physician's Haitian past
The attack forced him to write down what he had seen at Trou Coffy in 1791.
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1818 · Haitianyear only
A woman schooled in France opens Haiti's first mixed boarding school
Ten years later she closed it and turned to running a daily newspaper for forty two years.
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1818 to 1843 · Haitianspan
Boyer keeps black officials out of office and schooling for the elite
Twenty five years in which the colour question acquired a hard institutional edge.
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29 March 1818 · Haitian
Petion dies at forty-eight and the peasants mourn Papa Bon-Coeur2 sources
Worn down by Christophe, by his own circle and by a private grief, he stopped resisting illness.
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29 March 1818 · Haitian
Petion dies and hands his successor a presidency for life
The 1806 constitution as amended in 1816 let the president pick the man who would follow him.
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15 April 1818 · Caribbean
France bans the slave trade twenty four years after ending slavery
The decree signed during the Hundred Days changed nothing on the water.
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28 December 1818 · Haitian
A royal chamber of public instruction is named in the official gazette
Dukes, counts and barons are made inspectors of the academies and national schools by name.
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1819 to 1869 · Diasporaspan
Marie Laveau marries a man from Saint Domingue
Her first husband carried the Haitian connection into the most powerful spiritual house in New Orleans.
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