page_title: White Haitians
section_title: Haitian Revolution
hierarchical_section_title: White Haitians / History / Saint-Domingue / Haitian Revolution
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Incendie de la Plaine du Cap. - Massacre des Blancs par les Noirs. English: "Burning of the Plaine du Cap - Massacre of whites by the blacks". On August 22 1791, slaves set fire to plantations, torched cities and massacred the white population.
context_page_description: White Haitians are Haitians of predominantly European and in some cases Levantine descent.
context_section_description: When the French Revolution started, the ideas of freedom among men spread in Saint-Domingue. Blacks, and the majority African descendants such as Jean-Jacques Dessalines, rebelled against their white French masters. The rebels killed more than a thousand French people in 1791. In order to preserve their lives, they fled Saint-Domingue. The wealthy grand-blancs returned to France or went to French Louisiana, but the petit-blancs who did not have many resources were compelled to move to the eastern side of Hispaniola, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Notably, there were many sang-melés — some of which fled from Saint-Domingue — who settled in neighboring islands (mostly Puerto Rico and Cuba).
  Most French colonists died or fled Saint-Domingue during the Haitian Revolution and the surviving remainder were either annihilated in the 1804 Haiti Massacre or were thought to be of some use to the country's development, such as doctors, teachers, and engineers. These colonists were considered valuable and were not to be harmed in any way. Prior to the U.S. occupation of 1915 it was hard for white foreigners to become Haitian citizens due to restrictions on owning land in Haiti. Exceptions were made for Germans, Poles, and Frenchmen who had fought with the rebels against France in the war and their descendants. White foreigners could become citizens only by marrying Haitians.
caption: Burning of the Plaine du Cap in 1791, France Militaire, 1833
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