It has the incredible honour of being the first island in the Americas to abolish slavery after a successful slave revolt led by Toussaint Louverture and eventually declared sovereignty on Jan 1st 1894 under his successor Dessalines. The French then laid claim to the most westerly point of the island and they brought the first slaves to Haiti for labour on the sugar plantations planted by the French. The indigenous Taino people seem to have been the original residents of the island, but the first European settlers landed in the 1400’s claiming the island for Spain and it remained part of the Spanish Empire until the 17th Century. However, there is a huge Haitian diaspora with many residents relocating to the USA, probably due to the fact that it has the lowest Human Development Index in the world. The republic shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic and despite only occupying three eighths of the island, it has a staggering population of 11.4 million making it the most populated island in the Caribbean Sea. Reading this incredible debut novel at university sparked a lifelong interest in the history of Haiti and its people. To learn more about how and for what purposes Amazon uses personal information (such as Amazon Store order history), please visit our Privacy Notice. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie Preferences, as described in the Cookie Notice.

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