mid 19th century to the 1920s · Africanspan

Sleeping sickness and rinderpest arrive just before the Europeans do

Reid dates the demographic collapse of eastern and central Africa to the decades of partition.

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1850 · Africanyear only

Fifty six chanters perform the history of Dahomey in public

A British official counts them at the annual customs and calls them the kingdom's only school.

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1850s · Haitiandecade

The cocomacaque becomes the emblem of Haitian policing

A palm stave in the hands of soldiers doing the work of a police force that barely existed.

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1850 · Haitianyear only

Soulouque makes himself emperor and the European press finds its cartoon

Daumier drew him lowering a journalist into boiling water.

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the 19th century · Haitian

A German snake charmer poster travels the world and turns into Danbala

The same image surfaces in West Africa, India and the Americas under different names.

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September 1850 · Caribbeanmonth known

Cholera lands at Port Royal and kills a tenth of Jamaica

A medical officer sent from England found the death rate thirty three times the European one.

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after 1850 · Haitianyear only

Foreign merchants re-enter the trade the bourgeoisie lived on

Losing its monopoly over circulation makes control of the state the only remaining base of class power.

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4 July 1850 · African

Gezo tells a British envoy that captured prisoners are his whole revenue

Britain wanted palm oil grown instead. He answered that his women were soldiers.

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19 April 1851 · Caribbean

Three powers hand Soulouque an ultimatum and he outlasts all three2 sources

Britain, France and the United States demand peace, then discover they want different things.

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April 1852 · Haitianmonth known

A coronation in the Champ de Mars costs 150,000 dollars in regalia

Sixty-five nobles created, none of them given land or income to live on.

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18 April 1852 · Haitian

A hundred thousand dollar crown for a tent seating eight thousand

The coronation at the Camp de Mars imports its regalia and its splendour from abroad.

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1853 · Diasporayear only

Fifty years on, Beard finds Haitian history already needs recovering

Beard writes because the only English memoir of Toussaint has long been out of print.

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1853 · Haitianyear only

A coronation staged with a priest the Pope never authorised to attend

Faustin I extracts a cleric for his crowning while conceding nothing to Rome on a concordat.

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1853 · Haitianyear only

Saint-Remy publishes the wrong manuscript and adds a plural

The edition historians have used for generations rests on a secretary's tidied French copy.

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2 September 1854 · Caribbean

A New York paper stresses Dominican blackness to stop United States recognition

A rival writer answered by shrinking the African share of the same population.

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1854 · Indigenousyear only

Emile Nau writes the Taino into the ancestry of the Haitian nation

The chiefs of Hispaniola are enlisted as fellow victims of the same conquest.

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1854 · Diasporayear only

A black emigration convention sends its own envoy to Soulouque

The Fugitive Slave Law pushed black leaders to reconsider leaving, and Holly went to Haiti to negotiate.

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1855 · Haitianyear only

The second invasion of the east breaks the empire's credit

A badly run campaign fails, and confidence in the empire does not recover.

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1855 to 1856 · Haitianspan

Three defeats in the east strip an emperor of his authority

The third Dominican invasion returns with heavy losses and the regime never recovers its authority.

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17 December 1855 · Caribbean

The second invasion east ends with two grandsons of kings shot

Las Matas taken, St Thome lost, and the treasury carried home intact.

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1856 · Haitianyear only

Defeat at Sabana Larga ends the Haitian hope of one island

After 1856 Haitian governments stopped trying to control the eastern part of Hispaniola.

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June 1856 to June 1857 · Haitianspan

The widow Dessalines shuts her door to the emperor Faustin

They shot her stepson on a false charge, then tripled her pension; she declined to draw it.

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8 to 9 August 1858 · Haitian

The first empress dies at Gonaives and the government stays away

The press ignored it for eleven days, then printed four lines in the second column.

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22 to 23 December 1858 · Haitian

The one man Soulouque trusted raises revolt at Gonaives

Geffrard flees by canoe and issues an act of forfeiture itemising the emperor's thefts.

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23 December 1858 · Haitian

Six men in a canoe take Gonaives and proclaim the republic restored

Geffrard slips out of the capital ahead of arrest, lands with a handful of men and raises his standard.

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27 December 1858 · Haitian

Defilee's son saves Fabre Geffrard from death

A police officer under Soulouque was the son of the woman who buried Dessalines.

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January 1859 · Haitianmonth known

Betrayal from inside, not popular rising, ends the Haitian empire

Faustin makes little attempt to defend himself against Geffrard and sails for Jamaica.

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15 January 1859 · Haitian

Monarchy in Haiti ends in one afternoon at the French legation

His troops desert on the march, Soulouque takes refuge, and sails for Jamaica that day.

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15 January 1859 · Haitian

An emperor surrenders after a siege his enemy refused to press

Geffrard held ten thousand men two miles from the capital hoping Faustin would abdicate instead.

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14 April 1859 · Haitian

A president strikes the imperial crown three times with a gavel

Geffrard opens the chamber by condemning the diadem of Soulouque and sending it to a museum.

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1859 · Haitianyear only

The restored republic revives 1846 and the presidency for life

The old constitution returns with the Senate choosing the president and the president choosing the Senate.

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4 August 1859 · Haitian

Geffrard sets his terms: fifteen dollars a head, citizenship in a year

Haiti offered land on credit, exemption from nine years of military service and freedom of worship.

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December 1859 · Haitianmonth known

Haiti buries John Brown in effigy in its national cathedral

After the execution the capital hangs black bunting, drops flags to half staff and holds a state funeral rite.

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