He warded off French invasions but embraced the cultural model of the French gentility. He helped free Saint-Domingue’s slaves yet immediately restricted their rights in the interests of protecting the island’s sugar production. He strove not only for abolition and independence, but to build Saint-Domingue’s economic might and elevate his own social standing. In 1802, he was exiled to France, dying soon after as one of the most famous men in the world, variously feared and celebrated as the “Black Napoleon.”Īs Girard shows, in life Louverture was not an idealist, but an ambitious pragmatist. Louveture’s ascendency was short-lived, however. By 1801, he was general and governor of Saint-Domingue, and an international statesman who forged treaties with Britain, France, Spain, and the United States-empires that feared the effect his example would have on their slave regimes.

In 1791, the unassuming Louverture masterminded the only successful slave revolt in history.

In Toussaint Louverture, Philippe Girard reveals the dramatic story of how Louverture transformed himself from lowly freedman to revolutionary hero. Yet he managed to secure his freedom and establish himself as a small-scale planter. Born into bondage in Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), the richest colony in the Western Hemisphere, he witnessed first-hand the torture of the enslaved population. Toussaint Louverture’s life was one of hardship, triumph, and contradiction. The definitive biography of the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture, leader of the only successful slave revolt in world history

Philippe girard toussaint louverture