Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time for more details about In Our Time

and for our terms of use, please go to bbc.co.uk slash radio4.

I hope you enjoy the program.

Hello, in the late 18th century, the French colony of Sandemang in the Caribbean was among

the richest countries in the world, supplying Europe and America's insatiable appetite for sugar.

But its wealth came at a high price. It was a plantation economy and ran one of the

most brutal slave regimes in the world.

By 18 or four of the slaves it was an up, thrown out the French and established their first,

the first independent nation in Latin America under the name Haiti.

The Haitian revolution was the only successful slavery built in history, an inspiration for

generations of people living under forced slavery in the new world, and a test case for

enlightenment ideas about liberty, equality and the defeat of tyranny.

But it was also an extraordinary brutal conflict that saw the Caribbean island drawn into

a global war between Napoleon and France and our enemies Britain and Spain.

We're going to discuss the Haitian revolution at Tim Lockley, reader in American studies

at the University of Warwick, Karen Salt, fellow in English in the School of Languages

and Literature at the University of Aberdeen, and Kate Hodson, post doctoral research

fellow in French at the University of Liverpool.

Tim Lockley, can you give us a sketch of the Caribbean in the late 18th century about the

time when we come into play towards the very end of the 18th century?

Yes, the Caribbean had for the previous sort of 150 years been developed by European powers

into a plantation, so it's a plantation economy is based on the island starting in Bob

...