Toussaint Louverture

Toussaint was born around 1743 in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, present-day Haiti, probably on the Bréda plantation near Haut-du-Cap. Sources differ on his year of birth, his date of birth (traditionally 20 May 1743) and his birthplace. His parents were enslaved people of West African origin.

As a boy he learned to look after horses and cattle on the plantation. That he was freed at some point is established, but sources differ on when: older biographies assume he remained enslaved until 1791, whereas a marriage and baptismal record from 1776–1777 shows he was already free. As a free man he kept working at Bréda and, according to biographers, also had land of his own and a few enslaved workers.

In August 1791 a great uprising of enslaved people broke out in northern Saint-Domingue. Toussaint joined as secretary and lieutenant to Georges Biassou and later became a commander himself. At first he negotiated for better conditions; over the years the complete abolition of slavery became his goal.

In 1793 he fought on the Spanish side, which operated from the eastern part of the island. After the French National Convention abolished slavery in February 1794, he chose France in May 1794. Historians differ on his motives: some stress his conviction, others his self-interest. He then fought the British troops and, in 1799–1800, the southern leader André Rigaud.

As governor-general he restored the plantation economy with paid labour under strict discipline. In 1801 he took Santo Domingo and abolished slavery there. The constitution of 7 July 1801 made him governor for life with the right to name his successor, forbade slavery forever and recognised Catholicism as the only public religion. Saint-Domingue remained formally a French colony.

Around 1789 Saint-Domingue was the richest colony in the Atlantic world, with sugar and coffee plantations that depended on the labour of an estimated 450,000 enslaved people, alongside tens of thousands of white colonists and free people of colour. Society was sharply divided between large and small white planters, free people of colour and the enslaved.

The French Revolution (1789) brought debates on rights and citizenship, and the National Convention abolished slavery on 4 February 1794. Under Napoleon policy changed: in May 1802 a law maintained slavery in colonies that France regained after the Peace of Amiens and restored the slave trade; slavery was then reinstated in Guadeloupe. This fuelled distrust of the French expedition.

Under Toussaint's rule the British occupation of parts of Saint-Domingue ended in 1798 and in 1801 the whole island came under one authority. He upheld the abolition of slavery and extended it to the eastern part, but kept the plantation system going by obliging the formerly enslaved to work. Many workers resisted this, for example in the revolt of his nephew Moïse (1801).

In 1801–1802 Napoleon sent an expedition of more than twenty thousand men under his brother-in-law, General Leclerc, to restore French authority. After months of fighting Toussaint made an agreement in May 1802. His arrest in June did not end the resistance: in the autumn of 1802 Dessalines and other generals turned on the French again, partly from fear that slavery would be restored.

Toussaint died on 7 April 1803 at Fort de Joux. According to testimonies he received hardly any medical care or heating there; causes of death mentioned include exhaustion, malnutrition, a stroke, pneumonia and tuberculosis. Leclerc had died of yellow fever in November 1802; the fight continued under Dessalines, whose troops defeated the French at Vertières on 18 November 1803.

On 1 January 1804 Dessalines proclaimed the independence of Haiti. The Haitian Revolution is often described as the only uprising of enslaved people that led to an independent state. C.L.R. James wrote The Black Jacobins about him and the revolution in 1938; historians continue to debate his relationship with France, his labour policy and his style of government.