1793 to 1857 · Haitianspan

News stops travelling at the speed of the person carrying it

Word of the rising in Saint-Domingue needed Jamaica and five weeks to reach Europe.

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1793 to 1794 · Africanspan

Mungo Park finds Koran verses sewn into horns on the Niger

One charm against shot, one against poison, one against fire, one against drowning.

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January 1793 · Caribbeanmonth known

France licenses privateers and puts black captains in command

Guadeloupe's corsairs took 1,800 prizes in four years while Britain sold captured black sailors.

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21 January 1793 · Haitian

The execution of Louis XVI pushes the insurgents into Spanish service

A guillotine in Paris rearranges the alliances of a Caribbean slave war.

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12 April 1793 · Haitian

Sonthonax and Polverel try to crush the revolt by land and sea

The commissioners' combined assault fails and drives them toward emancipation.

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6 May 1793 · Haitian

Galbaud lands at the Cape to take a command he is refused

Two French authorities in one colony, each certain the other is illegitimate.

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5 May 1793 · Haitian

The commissioners blame the planters and enforce the old code

No new law, just enforcement of the old one, read aloud in Kreyol every Monday morning.

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June 1793 · Caribbeanmonth known

A priest rides out and Jean-Francois refuses the French on his knees

Jose Vazquez confronts the general, who hands over the unopened French recruitment letter.

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June 1793 · Haitianmonth known

Macaya sacks Le Cap for the republic, then swears to Spain

Asked to come back, he replied that he was the subject of three kings and named Kongo first.

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June 1793 · Haitianmonth known

The burning of Le Cap killed between three and ten thousand people

Popkin calls it the most murderous urban conflict in the Americas; Geggus doubts it was decisive.

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June 1793 · Haitianmonth known

Le Cap burns and the commissioners arm the insurgents to hold it2 sources

Galbaud's men take the arsenal, prisons open, and thousands under Pierrot enter the city.

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20 June 1793 · Haitian

Popkin credits white sailors with setting emancipation in motion

The crisis that produced abolition, on this reading, had little to do with slavery at all.

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21 June 1793 · Haitian

France offers freedom to any insurgent who will fight for the Republic

Rebels get one week to present themselves for enlistment and walk out as free citizens.

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21 June 1793 · Haitian

The burning of Cap Francais becomes a large sheet for sale in Paris

Chapuy's engraving of the June 1793 fire was published the following year at more than half a metre wide.

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1793 · Haitianyear only

A mulatto general frees the man who will crown himself emperor

Andre Rigaud emancipates Soulouque, enslaved since 1789, in the second year of the revolt.

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1793 · Pre-Revolutionaryyear only

Emancipation is decreed in 1793 but not inside British lines

Girard notes slavery continued in the west and south under English occupation for five more years.

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1793 to 1794 · Africanspan

The only contemporary witness to Bois-Caiman wrote in exile

Dalmas, a surgeon who fled to the United States, framed the ceremony as African barbarism.

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1793 · Haitianyear only

Spain puts the slave insurgents on its payroll as royal auxiliaries

Godoy's government offered money, land, uniforms and recognised freedom for the fighters and their families.

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summer 1793 · Haitianseason

War is what abolished slavery in the colony, and Klooster omits it

Geggus faults a book about war for missing war's role in the one revolution that ended slavery.

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1793 · Pre-Revolutionaryyear only

Raimond's memoir blames colour prejudice for every colonial crisis

A speech given in defence of free men of colour in 1791 becomes the founding text of a genre.

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1793 · Haitianyear only

Three categories of absentee planter, and no list ever drawn up

A property scheme collapses into blanket confiscation because no register was ever drawn up.

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1793 · Haitianyear only

The Dokos maroons attack free coloureds and sell black captives

The colony's one surviving maroon community fought on almost every side except the insurgents'.

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mid July 1793 · Diasporamonth known

Fifty ships of refugees land at Baltimore and one man sails back

Newport Bowers watched the wharves fill with the ruined and decided to see the Cap himself.

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11 July 1793 · Haitian

Freed soldiers may free their wives if they marry in a fortnight

Wedding festivals are to become festivals of liberty, with the owners compensated by the state.

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25 July 1793 · Haitian

The Legions of Equality are told to drive everyone else back to work

Freedom in the South is extended on condition the freed enforce discipline on those still enslaved.

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August 1793 · Haitianmonth known

Rebels claimed a king had freed them, not the rights of man

Geggus finds little evidence that Caribbean insurgents used the language of the rights of man.

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August to October 1793 · Haitianspan

Abolition arrives as a bid to outbid Spain for the insurgents

Sonthonax freed the colony's slaves to keep it French, and Paris then freed 600,000 people.

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1793 to 1794 · Haitianspan

France frees its slaves seventy years before the United States does

Sonthonax proclaimed emancipation under invasion and Paris ratified it and extended it to Guadeloupe.

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27 August 1793 · Haitian

Polverel gives abandoned estates in common to soldiers and cultivators

The first time former slaves in Saint-Domingue were granted property rights, and it went nowhere.

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27 August 1793 · Haitian

A cornered commissioner frees the slaves because he needs an army2 sources

Sonthonax proclaimed general emancipation in Saint-Domingue as a recruiting measure under siege.

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29 August 1793 · Haitian

The Turel proclamation was aimed at planters and written in French

Girard disputes the habit of reading Toussaint's August 1793 text as a call for abolition.

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29 August 1793 · Haitian

Sonthonax frees everyone after swearing slavery would never end3 sources

Commissioners sent only to enforce rights for free men of colour end up freeing everyone in the north.

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29 August 1793 · Haitian

The first emancipation act in the Americas is a regimented work code

Fick calls Sonthonax's proclamation a prototype for every labour code that followed it.

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August 1793 · Haitianmonth known

Abolition is declared in the colony as a wartime necessity

With invasion under way and whites inviting England in, the commissioners freed and armed the enslaved.

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29 August 1793 · Haitian

From a mountain camp Toussaint announces himself and takes a new name

The Camp Turel proclamation ends two years of deliberate obscurity.

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August to October 1793 · Haitianspan

Commissioners abolish slavery to outbid Spanish recruiters

Emancipation arrives as the third of three pressures, not as a policy chosen in advance.

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29 August 1793 · Haitian

Sonthonax abolishes slavery to outbid Spain and hold the colony

Three things had to coincide: an undefeated rising, a European war, and an abolitionist in charge.

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22 September 1793 · Haitian

Polverel opens registers for owners to free people voluntarily

On the Republic's first anniversary he tries to reconcile emancipation with property rights.

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October 1793 · Diasporamonth known

The British enter Gonaives and record a black Spanish general

Toussaint's first appearance in British documents is as a misspelt name.

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31 October 1793 · Haitian

Polverel frees the West and South and lets workers elect drivers

Common ownership is quietly dropped, and the text is mostly about conditions and compensation.

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31 October 1793 · Haitian

Polverel writes the labour code that ties freedom to the plantation

Emancipation arrives with a rule book: stay on the estate, take a share of what is left after costs.

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24 November 1793 · Haitian

A Les Cayes prison list sorts the free into citizens and Africans

Soldiers are entered as citizen, field workers as africain, on the same page on the same day.

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