Which Caribbean revolution defeated Napoleon's army and founded the first Black republic?

The Haitian Revolution, 1791 to 1804 - the only slave revolt in history to produce a state. Saint-Domingue was the most profitable colony on Earth, supplying a large share of the world's sugar and coffee on the labour of some half a million enslaved people, and it beat successive French, Spanish and British expeditions.

Napoleon sent an army in 1802 to restore slavery, and lost most of it - to the fighting and to yellow fever. That defeat is why he sold Louisiana to the United States the following year: without Saint-Domingue there was no point holding a North American breadbasket to feed it. A slave rebellion therefore doubled the size of the United States.

France then charged Haiti for its own independence. In 1825 a fleet arrived demanding 150 million francs in compensation to former slaveholders for their lost property, under threat of invasion; Haiti paid, borrowing from French banks to do it, and serviced the debt into the twentieth century. A New York Times investigation in 2022 estimated the drain at tens of billions in foregone growth. The United States, with its own enslaved population, refused to recognise Haiti until 1862.