The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) is a slave revolt in what is at this time the French colony of Saint-Domingue.

It culminates in the elimination of slavery here and the founding of the Republic of Haiti.The Haitian Revolution is the only slave revolt that leads to the founding of a state.

Furthermore, it is generally considered the most successful slave rebellion ever to have occurred, and a defining moment in the histories of Europe and the Americas.

The revolt begins with a rebellion of black African slaves in April of 1791.

It ends in November of 1803 with the French defeat at the Battle of Vertières.

Haiti becomes an independent country on January 1, 1804, with Jean-Jacques Dessalines being chosen by a council of generals to assume the office of governor-general.

He orders the 1804 Haiti massacre of the white Haitian minority, resulting in the deaths of between three thousand and five thousand people, between February and April 1804.An independent government is created in Haiti, but the country's society remains deeply affected by patterns established under French colonial rule.

Because many white planters had provided for the mixed-race children they had by black African women, by giving them education and (for males) training and entrée into the French military, the mulatto descendants who along with the wealthy freedmen had been orchestrators of the revolution become the elite of Haitian society after the war's end.

Many of them had use their social capital to acquire wealth, and some already owned land.

Some had identified more with the colonists than the slaves.Their domination of politics and economics after the revolution creates another two-caste society, as most Haitians are rural subsistence farmers.

In addition, the nascent state's future will be compromised in 1825 when France forces it to pay one hundred and fifty million gold francs in reparations to French slaveholders—as a condition of French recognition and to end the nation's political and economic isolation.

Though the amount of the reparations will be reduced in 1838, Haiti will be unable to finish paying off its debt until 1947, the payments having left the country's government deeply impoverished, causing instability.