Saint-Domingue was at the center of the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, because people enslaved in this French Caribbean colony launched the Haitian Revolution, which ended slavery, defeated French colonialism, and created Haiti, the second independent nation-state in the Americas. Beyond this extraordinary achievement, the factors that helped bring about the Haitian Revolution were also important in other aspects of the Atlantic revolutionary age. Saint-Domingue had the largest enslaved population in the Caribbean and developed a white superiority ideology that was unique in the region. It had an unusually large free population of color, with leaders who tried to claim their civil rights. The colony’s planters had a unique preoccupation with slave poisoning, which they traced to an escaped slave named Macandal. The colony experienced unique environmental stresses, including an anthrax outbreak that killed thousands of people. Saint-Domingue’s sugar and molasses tempted North Americans to break British colonial trade laws, which helped produce the American Revolution. The colony also led the Caribbean in the capitalistic production of sugar and coffee, which were at the heart of Europe’s consumer revolution. Saint-Domingue’s indigo dye and cotton helped launch industrial textile manufacturing.

French Revolutionary principles and mobilization methods radicalized colonial Saint-Domingue (the future Haiti) even more profoundly than France itself. The collapse of absolutism set all factions in competition – leading to standoffs between elite planters and gens de couleur (free men of color) over voting rights, while conflicts between French abolitionists and colonial lobbyists also destabilized the social order. All sides, however, sought to mobilize social movements along recent revolutionary lines – organizing corresponding societies to make their pressure felt. The slave revolt that began the Haitian Revolution erupted amid near-civil war, as the fundamental questions of the era could not be contained by the small, repressive elite that had long controlled the colony.