Haiti

Haiti is a country located on Hispaniola Island in the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica and south of the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. It occupies three eighths of the western part of the island, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. To the southwest of it lies the small island of Navassa, claimed by Haiti but contested as a federal territory of the United States. With an area of ​​27,750 square kilometers (10,714 sq mi), Haiti is the third largest country in the Caribbean by area and has a population of 11.4 million, making it the most populous country in the Caribbean. The capital is Port-au-Prince.

The island was originally inhabited by the indigenous Taino peoples of South America. The first Europeans arrived on December 5, 1492 during the first voyage of Christopher Columbus, who initially believed he had found India or China. Columbus subsequently established the first European settlement in America, La Navidad, in what is now the northeastern coast of Haiti. The island belonged to Spain and was called La Hispaniola, which was part of the Spanish Empire until the beginning of the 17th century. However, competing claims and settlements from the French resulted in the western part of the island being ceded to France in 1697, which was later named Saint-Domingo. French colonists established lucrative sugarcane plantations employing huge numbers of slaves brought from Africa, making the colony one of the richest in the world.

At the height of the French Revolution (1789–1999), slaves and free people of color began the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), led by a former slave and the first black general of the French army, Toussaint Louverture. After 12 years of conflict, Napoleon Bonaparte's forces were defeated by Louverture's successor Jean-Jacques Dessalines (later Emperor Jacques I), who, on January 1, 1804, proclaimed the sovereignty of Haiti, the first independent state in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the second republic in Russia. America is the first country to abolish slavery and the only nation in history to be founded as a result of a successful slave revolt. With the exception of Alexander Petion, the first president of the republic, all of Haiti's early leaders were ex-slaves. After a short period during which the country was divided in two, President Jean-Pierre Boye unified the country and then tried to bring the whole of Hispaniola under Haiti's control, which provoked a long series of wars that ended in the 1870s when Haiti officially recognized power. Haiti. independence of the Dominican Republic.