1803 to 1810 · Caribbeanspan

Refugee planters turn eastern Cuba into coffee country in seven years

Sixty coffee estates on the whole island in 1800, and half a million plants in one district by 1807.

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1803 to 1808 · Diasporaspan

Twenty five thousand people cross the Windward Passage to Cuba

They rebuilt at Baracoa and Santiago and changed how the eastern province farmed.

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1802 to 1803 · Pre-Revolutionaryspan

The soldiers who were nursed hang the women who nursed them

Invitations to a ball ended with funeral music and the coffins of the guests' own husbands.

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19 January 1803 · Haitian

Petion moves that Dessalines command everyone, and the generals agree

A council of war replaces improvised local risings with one chain of command.

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2 February 1803 · Diaspora

Wordsworth's sonnet replaces Toussaint's army with abstractions

Sympathy arrives exactly when the revolutionary has become powerless.

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February 1803 · Haitianmonth known

Rebel columns storm Jacmel shouting the name of a French general

The battle cry at Jacmel invoked Moreau, Bonaparte's republican rival, as an appeal to French soldiers.

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night of 17 February 1803 · Haitian

Insurgent barges cross to Tortuga and destroy the best hospital

Tortuga's convalescent centre, built for 150,000 francs, is taken by boats and local help.

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7 April 1803 · Pre-Revolutionary

Woodward has Louverture dying of tuberculosis in a Jura fortress

The article names tuberculosis as the cause and notes the body never came home.

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7 April 1803 · Pre-Revolutionary

Three months of war end in a French prison cell for Louverture

The editors make the 1801 constitution the direct cause of the expedition and the death.

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April 1803 · Haitianmonth known

Toussaint dies in the Jura still waiting for a hearing

A seventy-five page memoir written in prison never received a single reply.

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April 1803 · Haitianmonth known

A false report of Toussaint's death arrives after it has come true

London papers announced his death in January; he actually died in April, as the story crossed the ocean.

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May 1803 · Haitianmonth known

Rochambeau throws funeral balls and imports man-hunting dogs

Told that Britain was at war again, the French command settled on extermination and spectacle.

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18 May 1803 · Haitian

On Petion's proposal the flag loses its white band at Arcahaie3 sources

Bellegarde credits the two-colour flag to the man who called the assembly, not to the man who tore the cloth.

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18 May 1803, disputed · Haitiandate disputed

Haiti's Flag Day commemorates a scene that probably never happened

Girard finds that neither the date nor the place of the flag's creation survives archival checking.

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May 1803 · Haitianmonth known

A rebel captain sinks his barge rather than lose its colours

The French admiral's report describes the banner on the sunken barge as black and red, not blue and red.

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May 1803 · Haitianmonth known

Two strips of cloth joined at Arcahaie become a country's flag

One version says she used her own hair for thread, and both versions start with a tearing.

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1803 · Haitianyear only

Fouchard says Louverture's refusal is why Napoleon sold Louisiana

The invasion of the United States needed forty thousand Haitian soldiers, and they were not offered.

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1803 · Haitianyear only

News of a dead general in Haiti puts Louisiana on the market

Once Saint-Domingue was lost the North American granary had nothing left to feed.

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1803 · Diasporayear only

A travelling waxworks puts Toussaint on show in the slave states

Davenport and Bishop showed a life-sized black general from New Jersey to Rhode Island.

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summer 1803 · Pre-Revolutionaryseason

A Haitian general promises Cuba not to export the revolution

Geffrard assures the Spanish governor of Santiago that the slave revolt will stay at home.

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August to September 1803 · Haitianspan

Rebel envoys first say the word independence to foreign governments

Missions to Jamaica and Cuba in late 1803 carry the first clear statements of an independent aim.

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27 to 30 August 1803 · Pre-Revolutionary

British envoys spend four days at Gonaives with a rebel general

War between France and Britain has resumed, and all three factions in the colony ask Jamaica for help.

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1 October 1803 · Diaspora

The Times decides the captured Toussaint was a tool of white men

Racial labels shift with military fortune, and Dessalines becomes a mulatto.

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October 1803 · Caribbeanmonth known

A travelling tribunal in Martinique burns the convicted where they stand

Poisoning, arson and stealing canoes were tried together, with no appeal.

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October 1803 · Haitianmonth known

Bunel tells Dessalines the war is about autonomy, not race

A white Frenchman offers the rebel commander shipping, diplomacy and advice about unity.

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17 October 1803 · Caribbean

The British take Les Cayes by starvation and sell it to the insurgents

A blockade, not a battle, ends the siege, and the Union Jack comes down within a day.

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18 November 1803 · Haitian

Vertieres ends the expedition sent to restore slavery

Capoix breaks the French line, Rochambeau surrenders, and the fleet leaves on 4 December.

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18 November 1803 · Haitian

The battle that ends the war waits ninety years to be remembered

Vertieres was not part of the national story before the 1890s and only became central in the 1950s.

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19 November 1803 · Haitian

The French leave Cap Francais without signing a surrender3 sources

An evacuation agreement in eight articles hands over the forts and says nothing about sovereignty.

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21 November 1803 · Haitian

Rochambeau's signature cancels the Treaty of Ryswick

Casimir dates the undoing of French title on Hispaniola to the capitulation, not to independence.

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29 November 1803 · Haitian

Three generals declare independence in November, sign in January

The army makes Dessalines governor-general for life with power over law, peace and war.

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29 November 1803 · Haitian

Three generals proclaim independence and mail it to Philadelphia

The first proclamation of independence is aimed at American readers, not Haitian ones.

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4 December 1803 · Haitian

The last French sail from the Mole where Columbus had anchored2 sources

Five days after the victors enter Cap-Francais, the occupation of the island by Europe ends where it began.

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