Saint-Domingue: Difference between revisions

After the Anglo- French victory in the Canto War (1850-1857) nearly bankrupted the French treasury, the imperial French government tried to raise funds by increasing taxes on sugar, coffee and perfume exports from Saint-Domingue and increasing import tariffs on produced goods from the NNL, British colonies or Mexico. This led to a series of riots against French imperial rule of the nation in the summer of 1859. The French responded by confiscating the land and assets of merchants who were believed to be rebellious; in response to this, a group of wealthy mixed race Saint Domingue elites set up an underground society to oppose French rule on the island called the New [[Order of Saint Domingue]]. This organization agitated against French rule by organizing black former slave Domingues to support independence in return for promising universal suffrage. After an incident of a drunk French soldier shooting and killing a Domingue woman in March of 1861, riots broke out in Saint Dominique which spread to all the major port cities. The rebels (under the direction of the New Order) hastily organized a militia called the Armée Populaire de Saint Domingue. At the same time pro-independence black sharecroppers and farmworkers in the interior of the island took up arms and sided with the rebels. After only 4 months of fighting the French military was kicked from the island and the rebels declared the independence of Saint Domingue to the world on August 16th 1861. Two months later the French returned and lay sieged to the island. After a long siege and a week of brutal street by street urban fighting the French took the city of Saint Dominique (known by the rebels as blueBlue Monday). In the Spring of 1862 the New Netherlands, South Tussenland, the British were starting to pressure the French to back down, with South Tussenland recognizing the independence of Saint Domingue and even sending aid to the rebels. The French offensive in the island stalled and the rebels started to regain land starting with the western coast and Port-au-Prince while the French were hemorrhaging money from this long drawn out war. After 18 months of rebellion the French military left the island the French government recognized the independence of Saint Domingue on October 9th 1862){{Nations of the World}}