January 1st

== Information

What:
Haiti gains independence from France.

Year:
1804

Where:
Haiti

Event and Significance
Today, Haiti is somewhat of a background nation. It is geographically small, has only a third world economy and a small military, but at the time this event was extremely important. Haiti had been for years struggling for independence in what was known as the Haitian Revolution. The first and most immediate consequence of Haiti's official independence was the end of this revolution. However it also had more important changes to history.

One of these involved the extremely famous historical figure, Napoleon Bonaparte. After seizing control of France and becoming Emperor, Bonaparte had dreams of creating a strong empire of colonies in the Americas. He planned to use Haiti as both an economic and military stronghold for him to take control of British, Spanish and Portugese colonies. With Haiti's independence he no longer had the ability to use it for his planned conquests. This also meant that, with his dreams of a great empire in the Americas crushed, Napoleon turned his attention to conquests closer to home, which would soon lead to the Napoleonic Wars.

Another perhaps even more significant result of this was that because of slaves having heavily involved in this revolution almost immeadiately after independence, Haiti became the first nation in history to outlaw slavery. This tide of anti-slavery thoughts and ideas would later spread to Europe, then to other nations in the Americas such as the US and Mexico.

One last result was the fact that this was only the second time that a colony rebelled against its motherland and gained independence. The only nation that beat Haiti to it was the United States with its official independence being granted in 1783. These two nations would start a series of revolutions in the Americas creating independent states that would later grow to include Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina and several other Latin American nations. These revolutions would later be the model upon which many other revolutions, both sucessful and unsucessful, around the world would build such as in Vietnam, Algeria, Indonesia, The Philippines and Cuba.