Portal:Haiti

The recorded history of Haiti began in 1492, when the European captain and explorer Christopher Columbus landed on a large island in the region of the western Atlantic Ocean that later came to be known as the Caribbean. The western portion of the island of Hispaniola, where Haiti is situated, was inhabited by the Taíno and Arawakan people, who called their island Ayiti. The island was promptly claimed for the Spanish Crown, where it was named La Isla Española ("the Spanish Island"), later Latinized to Hispaniola. By the early 17th century, the French had built a settlement on the west of Hispaniola and called it Saint-Domingue. Prior to the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), the economy of Saint-Domingue gradually expanded, with sugar and, later, coffee becoming important export crops. After the war which had disrupted maritime commerce, the colony underwent rapid expansion. In 1767, it exported indigo, cotton and 72 million pounds of raw sugar. By the end of the century, the colony encompassed a third of the entire Atlantic slave trade.

In 1791, slaves staged a revolt which led to the Haitian Revolution. André Rigaud, leader of the revolution, forced the French to withdraw. When Toussaint Louverture declared independence in 1802, Napoleon sent an invasion force to coerce the Haitians. After the death of Toussaint while in imprisonment by the French, the Generals Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Henri Christophe, and Alexandre Pétion laid heavy battle against Charles Leclerc, the leader of the French invasion. As the tide of the war turned in favor of the Haitians, Napoleon abandoned the invasion, which led to Dessalines declaring the independence of Haiti in 1804. Dessalines orchestrated a massacre of the remaining French population in Haiti, resulting in over 5,000 deaths. Men, women, and children were killed as revenge for Napoleon's invasion. Whites were hanged from gallows along the coast, signaling to passing ships that Haiti had purged itself of Europeans. (Full article...)

• ...that Restavec refers to a social system in Haiti whereby parents unable to care for their children send them to relatives or strangers, where they receive food and housing (and sometimes an education) in exchange for light housework.
• ...that in 2007, the Haitian national football team beat recent FIFA World cup finalists Trinidad and Tobago 2-1, to win the Caribbean Cup for the first time.
• ...that La Visite National Park is one of the two national parks in Haiti. It is located in the southeast of the country and contains the country's highest mountain, Pic de la Selle.

A fishing boat being built in Cap-Haïtien.