Volta
Person1743 – 1803

Toussaint Louverture

Formerly enslaved leader of the Haitian Revolution who took control of Saint-Domingue but was seized by Napoleon's expedition and died in a French prison

Born enslaved on a Saint-Domingue plantation, he learned to read, gained his freedom and joined the uprising of 1791. His able command defeated Spanish and British forces and brought the whole island under his control, and in 1801 he issued a constitution naming himself governor for life. Fighting the expedition Napoleon sent to restore slavery, he was seized at a parley in 1802 and shipped to France. He died the next year in a cell at the Fort de Joux, but his lieutenants won Haitian independence in 1804.

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1 related event

  1. 1
    1791 – 1804Haitian Revolutionleader

    Enslaved Africans in French Saint-Domingue rose up, destroyed slavery and won independence as Haiti in 1804 — the first state founded by a slave revolt and the first independent country in Latin America.

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  • Islamic Empires and the Atlantic World1500 – 1800

    Three centuries in which the Ottomans of Suleiman I, the Mughals of Akbar and the Safavids of Abbas I flourished and then faltered, while across the Atlantic the slave trade and colonies transformed the Americas, leading to American independence

  • Revolutions and Nation-States1776 – 1871

    From the Declaration of Independence to the German Empire — a century in which liberalism and nationalism toppled the old order in Europe and the Americas and built nation-states