The Haitian Revolution — what prompted it
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Question
What was Saint-Domingue?
Answer
The French colony on the western third of Hispaniola (today's Haiti) — the richest colony in the world in the late 1700s, built on plantation agriculture.
Question
Roughly how many enslaved people lived in Saint-Domingue by 1789, compared to free colonists?
Answer
About 500,000 enslaved people versus roughly 40,000 free colonists — close to a ten-to-one ratio.
Question
What was the Code Noir?
Answer
A 1685 French royal law that regulated slavery — it set rules for treatment and harsh punishment of enslaved people, giving legal cover to brutality.
Question
What was maroonage?
Answer
The practice of enslaved people escaping to live in hidden, independent communities, often in Saint-Domingue's mountainous interior.
Question
Name an early maroon leader and roughly when he was active.
Answer
François Mackandal, who organised raids on plantations from hidden maroon communities in the 1750s, decades before the 1791 uprising.
Question
What was Vodou's role before the revolution?
Answer
A faith blending African traditions (with some Catholic elements) that gave enslaved people from different backgrounds a shared identity and helped unify resistance.
Question
What happened at Bois Caïman in August 1791?
Answer
A Vodou ceremony, traditionally linked to leaders including Dutty Boukman, said to have preceded the mass uprising that began on the night of 22-23 August 1791.
Question
What did the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man proclaim?
Answer
That "men are born and remain free and equal in rights" — ideals of liberty and equality from the French Revolution.
Question
How did grands/petits blancs and enslaved people/gens de couleur differ in reading 1789's ideals?
Answer
Colonists applied 'liberty and equality' only to themselves; enslaved people and free people of colour argued the same words justified their own freedom and rights.
Question
Who was Vincent Ogé and what happened to him?
Answer
A free man of colour who demanded political rights for gens de couleur in 1790-91; France refused and he was brutally executed in 1791.
Question
What are the three interlinked causes of the Haitian Revolution covered in this micro?
Answer
Brutal plantation slavery, existing enslaved resistance (maroonage and Vodou), and the ideals unleashed by the 1789 French Revolution.
Question
For Q1 [6] on content, what must you always do with a source?
Answer
State precisely what its content shows, then explicitly link that content to the inquiry question — not just summarise it.
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Topic 2.1 hub
The Haitian Revolution (c.1780–1825)
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