
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
