Toussaint Louverture

This entry explores the life of François Dominique Toussaint Louverture (c1743-1803), who was the pre-eminent leading figure in the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804, the only successful slave revolt in recorded history. Toussaint remains an international inspiration, seen by many to be one of the greatest fighters for national liberation who ever lived, for his critical role in the abolition of slavery in French colonial Saint-Domingue, the Caribbean’s wealthiest colony, and in laying the foundation for the birth of Haiti, the first independent black republic outside Africa and the second independent state in the Americas. Toussaint was the military and strategic genius who built and led an army composed overwhelmingly of former enslaved Africans and people of African descent to victory after victory under the banner ‘Liberty or Death’ over the European imperial professional armies of France, Spain and Britain.