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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