Saint-Domingue

Saint-Domingue was a French colony on the western third of Hispaniola, in the area of present-day Haiti. French buccaneers and settlers established themselves on the western coast and on Tortuga during the seventeenth century, and the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697 formally recognised French control. The colony became the most profitable in the Caribbean, producing sugar, coffee, indigo and cotton on plantations worked by enslaved Africans who by the late eighteenth century vastly outnumbered the white population. Its society was divided among white planters, free people of colour and the enslaved, and the port of Cap-Français, later Cap-Haïtien, served as capital before Port-au-Prince rose in importance. In 1791 a Vodou ceremony at Bois Caïman helped launch a widespread slave uprising. The French Revolution's abolition of slavery in 1793 brought parts of the colony under republican control, and Toussaint Louverture emerged as its leading figure. Napoleon sent an expedition to restore French authority and slavery; after fierce resistance and yellow fever destroyed much of the army, the last French troops withdrew in late 1803. On 1 January 1804 the colony declared independence as Haiti.