Life on the plantations

Why did enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue rise up in 1791?

Tap each cause to see how it connects to the revolt.

Saint-Domingue's hierarchy in the 1790s

Read it from the top down, and compare the sizes of the groups as well as their power.

What you need to know

• Saint-Domingue was a French colony. Its economy was built on enslaved people working on plantations.
• The island had ideal conditions for sugarcane, coffee, cacao and cotton, which were shipped to France and sold to other European countries.
• Enslaved people worked very long hours, especially at harvest time. The work was gruelling and relentless, with little chance to rest.
• Living conditions were often cramped and unsanitary, and that helped diseases spread among the enslaved population.
• Punishments for perceived wrongdoing were often severe and could include whipping, mutilation or even death.
• The grands blancs, the white French owners and overseers, used this brutality to keep control. It caused misery and dreams of revolt.
• Have a goFinish the sentence: the grands blancs used brutality to keep control, but it also caused ___ and dreams of ___ among the enslaved Africans.

  Misery; revolt.

  Brutality was meant to suppress resistance, yet it produced misery and dreams of revolt in the people it was used against.

• By the 1790s about half a million enslaved Africans lived there, far outnumbering the roughly 30,000 white French settlers.
• Around 30,000 free people of colour, free people of African descent, lived there too, with nowhere near the grands blancs' power or wealth.
• Have a goFree people of colour and grands blancs were each roughly 30,000 strong. Did similar numbers mean similar power?

  No. The free people of colour had nowhere near the grands blancs' power or wealth.

  Power sat with the hierarchy, not with the headcount: the grands blancs were at the top and governed the island.

• In 1791 a revolt broke out, assisted by free people of colour. It became the Haitian Revolution and destroyed many plantations.
• Britain relied on enslaved workers on Caribbean plantations such as Jamaica and Barbados, and many British elites grew very wealthy from it.
• Have a goA classmate says Jamaica and Barbados were French colonies, like Saint-Domingue. What would you tell them?

  They were Britain's Caribbean colonies, and Britain relied on enslaved workers there too.

  Saint-Domingue was French. Britain had its own Caribbean plantations built on enslaved labour.

• As details of the horrors reached the British public, opinion hardened, and campaigners like Olaudah Equiano and William Wilberforce worked for abolition.
• The 1807 Slave Trade Act banned buying, selling and transporting enslaved people throughout the British Empire. It did not free anyone already enslaved.

The big picture

Saint-Domingue's wealth for France was built on enslaved Africans forced to work in brutal conditions. Those conditions, and a huge gap in numbers and power, led to the 1791 revolt. Britain relied on enslaved labour too, and the 1807 Act banned the trade without freeing anyone already enslaved.

⚠ Watch out

Thinking the 1807 Act freed enslaved people. It banned the buying, selling and transporting of enslaved people across the British Empire, and those already enslaved remained the property of their owners. Also take care not to treat Saint-Domingue's conditions as a description of every plantation colony.

Memory hook

Four crops (cane, coffee, cacao, cotton), one workforce, and a workforce far bigger than the people ruling it. Trade ban, not freedom: the 1807 Act stopped the buying, selling and transporting, not the enslavement of those already enslaved.

Check yourself

Name two things that made life on a Saint-Domingue plantation harsh, and say how each one helped push enslaved Africans towards revolt.