First Empire of Haiti

The First Empire of Haiti was the monarchy established by Jean-Jacques Dessalines after Haiti won independence from France in 1804. On 22 September 1804 Dessalines was proclaimed Emperor Jacques I by the generals of the revolutionary army and was crowned in October. The constitution of 1805 divided the country into six military divisions and made the crown elective, with the emperor choosing his successor. Dessalines ruled as an authoritarian figure, ordering the massacre of much of the remaining white population and imposing forced labour on the plantations to revive the economy. Dessalines and Henri Christophe built forts against a feared French return, and in 1805 the emperor led a campaign into Spanish Santo Domingo. His policies alienated both the black and mixed-race elites, and he was assassinated in October 1806 near Port-au-Prince. The empire then split into a northern state under Henri Christophe and a southern republic under Alexandre Pétion.