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In 1789 the French West Indian colony of San Domingo supplied two-thirds of the overseas trade of France and was the greatest individual market for the European slave-trade. It was an integral part of the economic life of the age, the greatest colony in the world, the pride of France, and the envy …

Warfare in St Domingue continued throughout the 1790s. Napoleon was determined to restore plantation slavery and to use St Domingue as a base for operations in the region. A huge new French army arrived, their main success being to lure L’Ouverture to a miserable death in France. But they faced a b…

The West Indian slave colonies had emerged, from the mid seventeenth century onwards, on the back of imported Africans toiling primarily on the sugar plantations. The sugar industry became a remarkable source of wealth and material well-being for those involved; for shippers and traders, for mercha…