Hispaniola

Toussaint L’Ouverture, the Genius Who Embodied the Enlightenment

Enslavement by the Enlightened in Revolutionary Times
In 1789, the year of the French Revolution, Saint Domingue, now Haiti, was the world’s richest colony. The source of this wealth was the exploitation of half a million black slaves who furnished the labor for the sugar, indigo, cotton, cocoa, coffee, and tobacco extracted from over 2,000 plantations.