Haiti, site of the only successful slave revolt in the Americas

Such was the staggering global significance of the only successful slave revolt ever mounted in the Americas. As a direct result of what the Haitian revolutionaries did to free themselves, France lost two-thirds of its world trade income. Napoleon Bonaparte, with uncharacteristic despair, declared France done with empire, and a financially strapped French government offered to sell the Louisiana territory to the United States for the bargain price of $15 million. ...It is not overstating to suggest that across the globe the Haitian revolutionaries with their magnificent victory had, to paraphrase Martinican writer Frantz Fanon, "set afoot" a new black woman, man, child.

From An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President (2007), by Randall Robinson 
Bass Library, Yale University
New Haven, CT 


More about Haiti: Mountains Beyond Mountains, by Tracy Kidder. That account of Paul Farmer's quixotic and successful quest to create a clinic from nothing in the Haitian outback transformed the way I look at my own responsibilities. I read it this spring and haven't been the same since.