1840 to 1841 · Haitianspan

Schoelcher becomes the first European abolitionist to visit Haiti

A fact-finding voyage through the Caribbean ends with the independent black republic itself.

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1841 to 1860 · Haitianspan

Nineteen years of negotiating with Rome

A pope who would not die easy, a bishop on a nearly successful mission, and a Concordat in 1860.

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1841 to 1862 · Diasporaspan

A woman said to be of Haitian descent shapes a French poet's whole aesthetic

Jeanne Duval was with Baudelaire for over twenty years and nobody checked her origins.

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February 1841 · Diasporamonth known

A black physician lectures New York on Toussaint

James McCune Smith's lecture is reprinted in the black press through the following autumn.

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7 May 1842 · Haitian

The Septentrional fault moves and shakes the whole of Hispaniola

Sixty prisoners walked out of the wrecked jail at Gonaives before the fire started.

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7 May 1842 · Haitian

An earthquake and tsunami erase the Christophean capital

Cap-Haitien falls in minutes, killing about ten thousand and ending the north's remaining prosperity.

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7 May 1842 · Haitian

An earthquake at five in the evening shakes the whole island

The disaster arrives in the same year the reform opposition turns into a conspiracy.

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1843 · Haitianyear only

An earthquake opens a waterfall that becomes sacred ground

Sodo appears in the Central Plateau and Danbala is given a shrine within the year.

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1843 to 1915 · Haitianspan

Twenty two presidents, eleven of them lasting under a year

One retired peacefully. Four died of natural causes in office. The rest were thrown out.

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1843 to 1848 · Haitianspan

Acaau's piquets demand land, prices and a black president

The oligarchy answered a peasant war by installing black figureheads it could govern behind.

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13 March 1843 · Haitian

The woman called the president of two presidents leaves on a corvette

Thirty six years inside the palace ended with a boat to Kingston and four months to live.

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4 April 1843 · Haitian

Herard enters Port-au-Prince as provisional president

Pestel in February, Jeremie four days later, then Leogane in March finish a twenty-five-year presidency.

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1843 · Haitianyear only

The 1843 revolution splits the elite and opens the colour question

A quarrel inside the mulatto class lets the black masses into the political field.

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1843 to 1847 · Haitianspan

Ten risings in four years leave the state too broken to face outsiders

Regional revolt after the fall of Boyer left Haiti without a single voice to use abroad.

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1843 · Haitianyear only

Acaau forces provincial notables into the political structure

The counter-plantation wins a place in the state only when a general points a weapon at it.

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1843 to 1867 · Haitianspan

Peasant risings recruit army officers rather than fight them

The Piquets in the south and the Cacos in the north both link landless cultivators to men in uniform.

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1843 · Haitianyear only

Schoelcher blames the Haitian state for the ruin he sees

Colonies etrangeres et Haiti separates a people who won their freedom from a ruler who wasted it.

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1843 · Haitianyear only

Haiti loosens its rules on resident aliens in 1843

The foreign population never passed ten thousand and yet ran the import and export trade.

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21 August 1843 · Haitian

The legislature votes the widow Dessalines a hundred gourdes a month

Thirty seven years after Pont-Rouge, a passing general found the former empress destitute.

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10 October 1843 · Haitian

The most liberal charter Haiti had produced lasts about three years

A constituent assembly publishes its draft after Boyer resigns ahead of an advancing army.

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27 February 1844 · Caribbean

The Dominican independence day marks separation from Haiti and not from Spain

Twenty two years of Haitian rule became known in Dominican writing as the black years.

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June 1844 · Caribbeanmonth known

A census in Dominica is taken for the return of slavery

Four dead, three hundred jailed and six death sentences over a count of the population.

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1844 · Haitianyear only

Ardouin draws the line of his democracy at Acaau's demand for land

Petion's land distribution is praised, and the peasants who wanted more are denounced.

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1844 · Haitianyear only

Piquet leaders dress as Azaka to demand rights for black peasants

The straw hat and denim of the rural spirit become the uniform of an uprising.

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19 May 1846 · Diaspora

Suzanne Louverture dies in France at sixty seven

Forty three years of exile followed the day she lost any hope of seeing her husband again.

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1846 · Haitianyear only

Riche's first act is to strip Geffrard of the Jacmel command

Riche removes Geffrard, who is then court-martialled and pardoned by the future emperor.

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11 November 1846 · Haitian

Presidency for life returns after three years of crisis

The elite trims the 1843 liberties while keeping some of the changes that unseated Boyer.

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1847 to 1859 · Haitianspan

Soulouque breaks the understudy policy and arms the Zinglins

A parallel police, a state monopoly on coffee and timber, and the treasury opened.

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27 February 1847 · Haitian

Riche dies and the Senate goes shopping for a president it can steer2 sources

A death leaves the elite factions in the Senate without an agreed successor and hunting for a placeholder.

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1 March 1847 · Haitian

Deadlocked ministers pick a figurehead and get a ruler instead

Four days after Riche dies, the cabinet settles on Soulouque as a compromise president.

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1847 · Haitianyear only

Madiou publishes a history listing the colour of every actor

The book that forced the mulatto elite to write its own version of the past.

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1847 · Haitianyear only

A new president governs by keeping the dead man's cabinet

Soulouque spends his first months following the advice of ministers he inherited rather than his own.

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July 1847 · Haitianmonth known

Soulouque offers to resign, is refused, and rules as he pleases

The Senate's reassurance converts a frightened president into an unrestrained one.

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1848 · Haitianyear only

The army takes sixty five per cent of the Haitian budget

3,232,225 francs for soldiers in a country with almost no schools and few roads.

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March to April 1848 · Haitianspan

Soulouque destroys the political families of southern Haiti

Seven hundred survivors crowded into the British legation and a flag on the steps stopped the hunters.

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9 April 1848 · Haitian

A proclamation promising redress comes with the cabinet purge

News of revolution in Paris brings a reform petition and then a massacre.

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16 April 1848 · Haitian

A Sunday of killing in Port-au-Prince settles the colour question

Men of colour are shot on sight and the minister Ardouin is taken to prison.

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16 to 17 April 1848 · Haitianspan

Wholesale executions of the educated open a period of terror

Professors, merchants and doctors shot, some beneath the windows of the British consulate.

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16 April 1848 · Haitian

April killings in the capital end elite revolt for a decade

Massacres in Port-au-Prince break the mercantile and educated classes as a political force.

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May 1848 · Caribbeanmonth known

A crowd walks into Saint Pierre and abolition comes early

Fighting in northern Martinique forced the governor to free the slaves ahead of the decree from Paris.

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1848 · Caribbeanyear only

February 1848 puts the technical expert in charge of abolition

Schoelcher becomes undersecretary for the colonies and heads the commission that ends French slavery.

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1848 · Indigenousyear only

Madiou declares the Taino absorbed rather than exterminated

He says families kept unmixed blood into the mid-eighteenth century, then no Haitian belonged to the race.

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15 August 1848 · Haitian

Triumphal arches for a victory that collapses within weeks

Soulouque returns from Azua and San Juan to lit streets, then loses at Ocoa.

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November 1848 · Haitianmonth known

Soulouque executes Pierre Noire, leader of the southern piquets

Pierre Noire is executed, showing the new regime will not be captured by its black base either.

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1849 · Haitianyear only

A man looking for his horse reports the Virgin at Saut d'Eau

An emperor sends his cabinet to check, then decrees a church at Ville-Bonheur.

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March 1849 · Caribbeanmonth known

The first drive on Azua collapses and the emperor barely escapes

Haitian nationalism meets Dominican resistance and retreats, burning homes as it goes.

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1849 · Haitianyear only

Haiti's first invasion of the east dies of empty supply wagons

The army came within fifteen leagues of Santo Domingo and then turned round for want of provisions.

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1849 · Haitianyear only

An imperial charter shuts whites out, invites the diaspora in

Citizenship and property are closed to whites and opened to anyone of African or Indian descent.

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August 1849 · Haitianmonth known

Soulouque shoots Celigny Ardouin and his brother turns historian

The historian of the mulatto legend left the embassy in Paris after the execution.

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26 August 1849 · Haitian

Soulouque puts the crown on his own head and invents a nobility

The proclamation as Faustin the First is plain; the new aristocracy is not.

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26 August 1849 · Haitian

The Senate makes a former slave an emperor and he pretends to hesitate2 sources

Army officers petitioned, the chamber met, and Faustin I accepted the throne among public celebration.

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6 October 1849 · Haitian

A president elected for life is made emperor by a new constitution

The 1849 text converts Soulouque's life presidency into an empire.

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26 October 1849 · Haitian

A printed list of new nobles ties every local power to the throne

A printed list of appointees turns generals, merchants and Vodou leaders into visible members of the regime.

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