It's a prophetically stormy night in Sandeman, 1791.

Rain lashes the clearing as dozens gather in the dark, breath held, nerves tight as wire.

A drumbeat rises, slow at first, then urgent, echoing the tension

rippling through the enslaved masses of the island. Beneath the trees, Bukman's voice

cuts through the storm, and Cecile Fateman's invocation seems to crack open the night itself.

For generations, uprisings have flared and died here, but not this time.

Tonight, boughs are sworn, spirits called, and fear gives way to something sharper.

At Boer Cayman, the breaking point has finally come, and revolution is about to ignite.

On the island the French called Sand a Man, half a million enslaved people laboured under a regime so brutal it was never meant

to be survived. But beneath the plantation, something was stirring. Whispers of revolt, where

previous generations had fallen short, spread through the enslaved population. In 1791, under the shadow of a voodoo ceremony,

leaders like Bookman and Fateman lit the spark that would become an inferno.

What followed was the only successful slave revolution in history,

one that carved the world's first black republic from fire and blood, defeating the

might of Napoleon's army in the process. From the heart of revolutionary Haiti, this is after dark. I'm I'm going to be. Hello there, my name's Anthony.

And I'm Maddie.

And today we are learning about a history we have long wanted to do on After Dark.

The Haitian Revolution of 1791 to 1804 was the final and most decisive in a long line of

revolts by the enslaved in the French colony of San de Mang, culminating in the elimination

of slavery in the colony and the founding of the Republic of Haiti. It's a violent and bloody

history that arguably deserves more attention than it has previously had.

And luckily, we have scholars working in the field who are giving it the attention it deserves.

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