From 1791 to 1804, the country that had the biggest impact on the Haitian Revolution was France. In fact, the French Revolution was a significant catalyst to the Haiti’s own revolution despite having started a few years prior. At this point, France’s economy was still suffering after their involvement in both the American Revolutionary War and the Seven Years’ War. To combat the huge amount of debt they owed, France issued widely unpopular taxation schemes which ultimately caused more harm than benefit. Additionally, the heightened privileges enjoyed by the aristocracy and the clergy drew popular resentment. The increased civil unrest culminated in the Legislative Assembly voting to abolish the monarchy in Revolutionary France. The current king, King Louis and his queen, Marie Antoinette were imprisoned in 1792 and eventually sent to the guillotine after being …show more content…
However, even after the abolition of the monarchy, France still experienced violent bursts of political mayhem and eventually Napoleon established a dictatorship in 1799. Meanwhile, as the political conflict in France intensified, the National Assembly made extreme changes to French laws and on August 26th, 1789, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was published, declaring all men free and equal. Overall, what was occurring in France in the time around the onset of the Haitian Revolution, in that the slaves took inspiration from the French uprisings and applied them to their own goals. These events helped set the stage for 1791, when the first slave revolt occurred and signaled the beginning of the Haitian Revolution. In order to fully understand what took place in the Haitian Revolution, one must also be cognizant of why the revolution occurred in the first place. Before the Haitian Revolution, there were five distinct social groups on Saint-Domingue, now called Haiti. The white