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They had lots of slaves that rose up and wanted freedom, and some even poisoned  their owners. They also started a slave rebellion.

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On September 7, 1822, Prince Dom gained independence for Brazil from Portugal leading to a two-year war of independence.

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Brazilian Independence | 3 Minute History

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Italy gained its independence through political maneuvering and military action. At that time, Austria controlled much of what is now Italy.

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Italian 1848 Revolutions | 3 Minute History

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While colonists began negotiating with enslaved people for increased rights, the rebels, led by Touissant Louverture, understood that without land ownership, they could not stop fighting.

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The Haitian Revolution was the only successful revolt by enslaved Black people in history, and it led to the creation of the second independent nation in the Western Hemisphere, after the United States. Inspired in large part by the French Revolution, diverse groups in the colony of Saint-Domingue began fighting against French colonial power in 1791. Independence was not fully achieved until 1804, at which point a complete social revolution had taken place where formerly enslaved people had become leaders of a nation.

Fast Facts: The Haitian Revolution

Background and Causes

The French Revolution of 1789 was a significant event for the imminent rebellion in Haiti. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was adopted in 1791, declaring "liberty, equality, and fraternity." Historian Franklin Knight calls the Haitian Revolution the "inadvertent stepchild of the French Revolution."

In 1789, the French colony of Saint-Domingue was the most successful plantation colony in the Americas: it supplied France with 66% of its tropical produce and accounted for 33% of French foreign trade. It had a population of 500,000, 80% of whom were enslaved people. Between 1680 and 1776, roughly 800,000 Africans were imported to the island, one-third of whom died within the first few years. In contrast, the colony was home to only around 30,000 White people, and a roughly similar number of affranchis, a group of free individuals composed mainly of mixed-race people.

Society in Saint Domingue was divided along both class and color lines, with affranchis and White people often at odds in terms of how to interpret the egalitarian language of the French Revolution. White elites sought greater economic autonomy from the metropolis (France). Working-class/poor White people argued for the equality of all White people, not just for landed White people. Affranchis aspired to the power of White people and begun to amass wealth as landowners (often being enslavers themselves). Beginning in the 1860s, White colonists began to restrict the rights of affranchis. Also inspired by the French Revolution, enslaved Black people increasingly engaged in maroonage, running away from plantations to the mountainous interior.

France granted almost complete autonomy to Saint-Domingue in 1790. However, it left open the issue of rights for affranchis, and White planters refused to recognize them as equals, creating a more volatile situation. In October 1790, affranchis led their first armed revolt against White colonial authorities. In April 1791, revolts by enslaved Black people begin to break out. In the meantime, France extended some rights to affranchis, which angered White colonists.

Beginning of the Haitian Revolution

By 1791, enslaved people and mulattoes were fighting separately for their own agendas, and White colonists were too preoccupied with maintaining their hegemony to notice the growing unrest. Throughout 1791, such revolts grew in numbers and frequency, with enslaved people torching the most prosperous plantations and killing fellow enslaved people who refused to join their revolt.

The Haitian Revolution is considered to have begun officially on Aug. 14, 1791, with the Bois Caïman ceremony, a Vodou ritual presided over by Boukman, a maroon leader and Vodou priest from Jamaica. This meeting was the result of months of strategizing and planning by enslaved people in the northern area of the colony who were recognized as leaders of their respective plantations.

Due to the fighting, the French National Assembly revoked the decree granting limited rights to affranchis in September 1791, which only spurred on their rebellion. That same month, enslaved people burned one of the colony's most important cities, Le Cap, to the ground. The following month, Port-au-Prince was burned to the ground in fighting between White people and affranchis.

The Haitian Revolution was chaotic. At one time there were seven different parties warring simultaneously: enslaved people, affranchis, working-class White people, elite White people, invading Spanish, English troops battling for control of the colony, and the French military. Alliances were struck and quickly dissolved. For example, in 1792 Black people and affranchis became allies with the British fighting against the French, and in 1793 they allied with the Spanish. Furthermore, the French often tried to get enslaved people to join their forces by offering them freedom to help put down the rebellion. In September 1793, a number of reforms took place in France, including the abolition of colonial enslavement. While colonists began negotiating with enslaved people for increased rights, the rebels, led by Touissant Louverture, understood that without land ownership, they could not stop fighting.

Throughout 1794, the three European forces took control of different parts of the island. Louverture aligned with different colonial powers at different moments. In 1795, Britain and Spain signed a peace treaty and ceded Saint-Domingue to the French. By 1796, Louverture had established dominance in the colony, though his hold on power was tenuous. In 1799, a civil war broke out between Louverture and the affranchis. In 1800, Louverture invaded Santo Domingo (the eastern half of the island, modern-day Dominican Republic) to bring it under his control.

Between 1800 and 1802, Louverture tried to rebuild the destroyed economy of Saint-Domingue. He reopened commercial relations with the U.S. and Britain, restored destroyed sugar and coffee estates to operating condition, and halted the wide-scale killing of White people. He even discussed importing new Africans to jump-start the plantation economy. In addition, he outlawed the very popular Vodou religion and established Catholicism as the colony's main religion, which angered many enslaved people. He established a constitution in 1801 that asserted the colony's autonomy with respect to France and became a de facto dictator, naming himself governor-general for life.

The Final Years of the Revolution

Napoleon Bonaparte, who had assumed power in France in 1799, had dreams of restoring the system of enslavement in Saint-Domingue, and he saw Louverture (and Africans in general) as uncivilized. He sent his brother-in-law Charles Leclerc to invade the colony in 1801. Many White planters supported Bonaparte's invasion. Furthermore, Louverture faced opposition from enslaved Black people, who felt he was continuing to exploit them and who was not instituting land reform. In early 1802 many of his top generals had defected to the French side and Louverture was eventually forced to sign an armistice in May 1802. However, Leclerc betrayed the terms of the treaty and tricked Louverture into getting arrested. He was exiled to France, where he died in prison in 1803.

Believing that France's intention was to restore the system of enslavement in the colony, Black people and affranchis, led by two of Louverture's former generals, Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henri Christophe, reignited the rebellion against the French in late 1802. Many French soldiers died from yellow fever, contributing to the victories by Dessalines and Christophe.

Haiti Independence

Dessalines created the Haitian flag in 1803, whose colors represent the alliance of Black and mixed-race people against White people. The French began to withdraw troops in August 1803. On January 1, 1804, Dessalines published the Declaration of Independence and abolished the colony of Saint-Domingue. The original indigenous Taino name of the island, Hayti, was restored.

Effects of the Revolution

The outcome of the Haitian Revolution loomed large across societies that allowed enslavement in the Americas. The success of the revolt inspired similar uprisings in Jamaica, Grenada, Colombia, and Venezuela. Plantation owners lived in fear that their societies would become "another Haiti." In Cuba, for example, during the Wars of Independence, the Spanish were able to use the specter of the Haitian Revolution as a threat to White enslavers: if landowners supported Cuban independence fighters, their enslaved people would rise up and kill their White enslavers and Cuba would become a Black republic like Haiti.

There was also a mass exodus from Haiti during and after the revolution, with many planters fleeing with their enslaved people to Cuba, Jamaica, or Louisiana. It's possible that up to 60% of the population that lived in Saint-Domingue in 1789 died between 1790 and 1796.

The newly independent Haiti was isolated by all the western powers. France would not recognize Haiti's independence until 1825, and the U.S. did not establish diplomatic relations with the island until 1862. What had been the wealthiest colony in the Americas became one of the poorest and least developed. The sugar economy was transferred to colonies where enslavement was still legal, like Cuba, which quickly replaced Saint-Domingue as the world's leading sugar producer in the early 19th century.

According to historian Franklin Knight, "The Haitians were forced to destroy the entire colonial socioeconomic structure that was the raison d'etre for their imperial importance; and in destroying the institution of slavery, they unwittingly agreed to terminate their connection to the entire international superstructure that perpetuated the practice and the plantation economy. That was an incalculable price for freedom and independence."

Knight continues, "The Haitian case represented the first complete social revolution in modern history...no greater change could be manifest than the slaves becoming masters of their destinies within a free state." In contrast, the revolutions in the U.S., France, and (a few decades later) Latin America were largely "reshufflings of the political elites-the ruling classes before remained essentially the ruling classes afterward."

"History of Haiti: 1492-1805." https://library.brown.edu/haitihistory/index.html

Knight, Franklin. The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism, 2nd edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

MacLeod, Murdo J., Lawless, Robert, Girault, Christian Antoine, & Ferguson, James A. "Haiti." https://www.britannica.com/place/Haiti/Early-period#ref726835

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The Haitian Revolution: Successful Revolt by an Enslaved People

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The Haitian Revolution was the only successful revolt by enslaved Black people. It led to only the second independent nation in the Western Hemisphere.

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Prince Dom Pedro declared Brazil’s independence from Portugal, founding the Empire of Brazil, which led to a two-year war of independence.

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Over time, the Portuguese realized that some European countries, especially France, were also sending excursions to Brazil to extract brazilwood, and the Portuguese crown decided to send large missions to take possession of the land by setting up hereditary captaincies, which were largely a failure.

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Giuseppe Mazzini and Massimo d’Azeglio demonstrated the intense liberal demands of the people, demands that overwhelmed the governments they were trying to create, they overlooked immediate threats both political and military.

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Let's find out more about The Revolutions of 1848 in Italy!

The Revolutions of 1848 in Italy were part of the widespread revolutionary wave that swept across Europe. With the rise of new ideas that influenced the reforms in the Papal States, the organised revolts broke out in other parts of the Italian Peninsula and Sicily.

A few small victories were achieved during the revolutions in Italy, but these were outweighed by the general failure to gain independence from foreign rule and drive out the Austrians. Nevertheless, the revolutions paved the way for an Italian unification that would materialise in the succeeding decades.

Overview of the Revolutions of 1848

In 1848 and early 1849, Europe witnessed its most widespread revolutionary wave now often referred to as the Springtime of Nations or the Year of Revolution. The increasingly radical widespread protests affected more than fifty countries with France, the states of the German Confederation, Italy, and the Austrian Empire having the most important revolutions. Whilst the uprisings had no significant coordination among their respective revolutionaries, they were brought about by similar contributing factors such as dissatisfaction with the poor governance and the negligence of the European monarchs towards the people, the emergence of new ideas such as nationalism, liberalism, and socialism in Europe, and the shared desire for reform of the middle and working classes. Most of the revolutions of 1848 generally failed and led to the conservatives regaining power. Nevertheless, they effectively catalysed significant reforms in various European states.

Features of the Revolutions of 1848 in Italy

At the outbreak of the Revolutions of 1848, Italy had separate kingdoms, duchies and states and was fragmented under foreign dominance: the Austrians in the north and the Bourbons in the south. In central Italy, the Pope personally controlled the Papal States. Like the rest of Europe, Italy suffered from economic depression brought about by crop failures and widespread unemployment. The desire to unify Italy was fueled by new ideas that emerged during the period. These conditions led to the Revolutions of 1848 in Italy.

Aims of the revolutions in Italy

Break away from the conservative leadership of the Austrians

Create a united and independent state

Significant figures of the revolutions

Giuseppe Mazzini: A native of Genoa, he was a key supporter of the Italian unification. He was a writer who founded a republican group known as the Young Italy that helped spread liberalism.

Pope Pius IX: He replaced his conservative predecessor in 1846. He declared amnesty to political prisoners and exiles of the Papal States and presented himself as a liberal pope.

Charles Albert: He was the liberal monarch of Piedmont, Genoa, Sardinia, Nice and Savoy. He had the potential and resources to build a strong army to stand up to the Austrians.

Klemens von Metternich: He was the Austrian foreign minister who saw Italian nationalism and liberalism as a threat to the Austrian Empire.

Joseph Radetzky von Radetz: He was the Austrian general commissioned to lead the army against the revolutionaries in Italy.

The upsurge of uprisings in Italy

Inspired by the liberal changes effected in Rome with the election of the new pope, the Revolutions of 1848 in Italy began in Sicily and affected other parts of Italy, particularly the Lombardy-Venetia, Piedmont, Tuscany and the Papal States.

On 12 January 1848, the people in Sicily demanded for a provisional government that was independent of the mainland.

The nobles called for the restoration of the constitution of 1812 including the principle of representative democracy and the centrality of Parliament in the government of the state. These changes were initially resisted by Ferdinand II of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies but were instituted eventually when revolts erupted in Salerno and Naples.

The king unwillingly granted a constitution that provided for an elected chamber of deputies, but placed no limits on the king's power and authority. Whilst the idea of creating a confederation of all the states of Italy was put forward by the Sicilian Parliament, it did not come to fruition that year.

Meanwhile, in the Lombardy city of Milan, an anti-Austrian campaign was launched in early January but was successfully dispersed by Austrian troops led by General Radetzky. With harsher taxes in effect in the region, the protests resurfaced on 18 March when news of the uprising in Vienna and the fall of Klemens von Metternich reached the city.

This became known as the Five Days of Milan. Backed by the clergymen, the people in the city took to the streets, raised barricades and urged the participation of the rural population. With the demonstration of Italian unity, a provisional government of Milan was formed.

Prior to the revolts in Milan, the other rulers in Italy followed in the footsteps of Ferdinand II in granting a constitution. Leopold II of Tuscany promulgated the Tuscan Constitution of 1848 on 17 February, Charles Albert of Piedmont-Sardinia proclaimed the Statuto Albertino on 4 March, and Pope Pius IX conceded The Fundamental Statute for the Secular Government of the States of the Church on 14 March.

On the contrary, the Austrian Empire refused to give in to popular pressure and instead, suppressed the opposition in Venice and Milan, as well as the student demonstrations in the university cities of Padua and Pavia. However, the Radetzky-led Austrian army lost nearly all of Lombardy-Venetia a few days after the Five Days of Milan and retreated into the Quadrilateral fortress.

Charles Albert grew popular as many regarded him as the liberal monarch willing to sacrifice power for the good of the people.

Although it was a risky decision, Albert declared war on Austria on 23 March. With many people on his side, he led the attack on Quadrilateral fortress from all sides. He gained more support from his fellow princes who pledged to send reinforcements.

Leopold II, Pope Pius IX and Ferdinand II sent troops to aid the Piedmontese army. This was instrumental in the Austrian defeat and the capture of Peschiera at the Battle of Goito. A few victories were won by the Piedmontese until the tide turned in favour of the Austrians.

Fearing a religious schism between Austria and Rome, the Pope withdrew his troops from the warfront. Tuscany and Naples followed suit. These damaged the position of the revolutionaries of Piedmont and Lombardy, as well as the popularity of Pope in the Papal States. On 9 August, Albert was forced to sign a truce with Austria known as the Salasco armistice. His army abandoned Lombardy, allowing the return of the Austrians to the region.

In the Papal States, Count Pellegrino Rossi was appointed by the Pope in September to oversee the government. His biased reforms cost him his life in November. His death was celebrated by the people in Rome. The Pope managed to flee to Gaeta in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

Without a local government in Rome, the leaders called for an Assembly to be elected on universal manhood suffrage. One of the elected people, Giuseppe Mazzini seized upon the opportunity to help create a new Roman Republic and took the office that was offered him in February 1849.

Under Mazzini's influence, taxes were abolished throughout the Papal States, freedom of religion was established and a large contingent of troops were sent to aid Albert in his fight against the Austrian Empire. However, these actions turned out to be counterintuitive for the state: the major source of income was eliminated and Rome was left extremely vulnerable to attack with the lack of sufficient troops at home.

On 12 March 1849, Albert denouncedthe truce with Austria. Although supported by Roman troops, he failed to defend Piedmont against the Austrian army at the Battle of Novara. He abdicated in favour of his eldest son, but the Statuto was preserved.

Following Novara, the Austrians requested the Venetians to surrender. Venice refused and initially attempted to resist the attacks. On 22 August, the city surrendered after suffering from damages and famine. A couple of months before that, the Papal States fell under the power of the French who aimed to restore the Pope, effectively ending the Roman Republic.
Image sources:

1. https://www.kollectium.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/0010116-600x471.jpg

2. https://www.italyonthisday.com/2017/03/the-five-days-of-milan-Risorgimento.html

3. https://alchetron.com/cdn/battle-of-novara-1849-6b545e47-4fa7-479a-9cd2-e8eb04df218-resize-750.jpeg

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The Revolutions of 1848 in Italy Facts, Worksheets & Features

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The Revolutions of 1848 in Italy were part of the widespread revolutionary wave that swept across Europe. With the rise of new ideas that influenced the reforms in the Papal States, the organised revolts broke out in other parts of the Italian Peninsula and Sicily.