Slave Rebellion in Saint-Domingue

Background. Saint-Domingue was the most profitable French colony in the world and among the most profitable European colonies of the eighteenth century, producing 60% of the world's coffee and 40% of the sugar imported by France and Britain in 1789. Roughly one million people in France depended directly on its agricultural imports, with several million more relying indirectly on colonial trade.

Destabilization before the revolt. In October 1790 the wealthy free man of color Vincent Ogé demanded voting rights under the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Captured in early 1791, he was broken on the wheel and beheaded. His treatment was later cited by slave rebels as a factor in their decision to rise in August 1791 and resist treaties with colonists. The French government's May 1791 grant of citizenship to wealthy free people of color also produced further clashes with slave owners.

Immediate aftermath. In September 1791 surviving whites organized into militias and killed about 15,000 blacks in retaliation. By 1792 slave rebels controlled a third of Saint-Domingue. White refugees began fleeing to the United States during the 1791 insurrections, settling in Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, and Charleston in what became the United States' first refugee crisis.