HAITI | The Revolution the Enslaved Won: Crash Course on How Saint-Domingue Became Haiti
Crash Course World History, Haitian Revolutions
Crash Course published episode 30 of its World History series, Haitian Revolutions, on 16 August 2012. John Green presents; it runs about twelve and a half minutes.
The channel’s own description starts with the fact that explains everything after it. Enslaved people “made up nearly 90%” of the population of Saint-Domingue, “France’s most profitable colony” — and in 1789 they heard what was being said in Paris about liberty, equality and fraternity.
What followed, in the episode’s telling, was “not one but two revolutions,” with France, the rebels, Britain and Spain all fighting over the territory. Its verdict is delivered without ceremony: “Spoiler alert: the slaves won.”
The plural in the title is the point. This was not a single uprising but a sequence, and the people who had been held as property ended it on their own terms, against one of the great empires of the age. The episode’s chapters walk it through in order — the colony, slavery in Saint-Domingue, the radical petits blancs, and Toussaint Louverture’s leadership toward independence.
It is pitched at students and moves fast. For a Caribbean reader it is still worth the twelve minutes, because it treats Haiti not as a footnote to the French Revolution but as a revolution in its own right.
Video: CrashCourse (@crashcourse), “Haitian Revolutions: Crash Course World History #30”, presented by John Green, published 16 August 2012. Quoted passages are from the channel’s own published video description. WiredJA is not affiliated with Crash Course.
