What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever accomplished? Do you remember all the pain and stress that accompanied it? Or how good you felt when you were victorious? Well today, I would like to tell you a story of one of the most difficult and impressive accomplishments in history.

The Plantation Blazer is the drink I have made for you based on the Haitian Revolution of the late 18th century. It is made with orange juice, cognac, and Haitian rum, and is as delicious as this story is incredible.

The Haitian Revolution is one of the most complex wars I’ve studied. You could easily spend years diving into each faction involved in the war, from their histories and motivations to their actions and where they ended up. But we don’t have time for that.

So let’s start with Hispaniola.

The island of Hispaniola, which contains the nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic today, was among the first islands encountered by Christopher Columbus and his men in 1492. The land was colonized by the Spanish in hopes that the natural resources would bring riches to the kingdom. But since they were so heavily focused on mining, and mining in Haiti wasn’t generating the resources they expected, they instead turned their attention to the more promising lands in Mexico and Peru.

Enter the French.

With the Spanish focused elsewhere, the French moved into the island and built plantations for their three biggest cash crops: indigo, coffee, and sugar cane. The French colony of Saint Domingue became one of the wealthiest colonies in the Americas, accounting for 33% of French foreign trade.

But these were plantations, and plantations needed laborers, so they brought in slaves from Africa.

Sadly, the slaved on these plantations were treated brutally. Far worse than the worst stories you’ve read about North American slavery in your history books. You see, in the North American colonies, the slaveholders planned on keeping their slaves around for as long as possible. However, in Saint Domingue, the slaveholders didn’t see individual slaves as investments. If one died, they’d just buy another.

So the slave drivers and plantation owners worked them to death. It was so common that it resulted in a steady stream of new slaves being brought to the colony.

Life in Saint Domingue was rough, to say the very least. And things were about to get a whole lot more complicated when the French Revolution began.

At the time there were five different ethnic and economic groups on the island highly invested in Saint Domingue politics, the grande blancs (big whites, plantation owners), petite blancs (small whites, lower class), the affranchis (mixed race), the free blacks, and the slaves. Today, we’re just going to focus on two: the free blacks and the slaves.

Saint Domingue was driven primarily by class and commerce. When the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen was presented in the national assembly following the French Revolution, free blacks began to seek more economic sovereignty and equality while whites looked to maintain their power and better their position.

It was a perfect recipe for intense racism and free blacks did not appreciate it. They realized the only way to achieve true liberty and equality was through armed resistance.

It was a powder keg, and it blew. They took up arms.

All the time, the slaves were watching. They made up 80% of the island’s population and, if free blacks could fight for themselves, they could as well.

Many abandoned their plantations and fled to the mountains. The ones who stayed wished they had gone. And as cruelties somehow managed to increase against them, full-scale revolts began in 1791.

The African slaves were strong and proud. They might have even been chiefs and warriors when they were captured by warring tribes and slave traders. They weren’t the kind of men to take abuse lying down. So, when the opportunity for freedom and revenge came, they pounced. They led revolts, burned down plantations, and killed their owners, the slave drivers, and anyone else who was white.

This is when Toussaint Louverture came onto the scene. Toussaint was a former slave who was freed at 33, and he was organized. He would lead the slave revolt against the Europeans, leading them to victory in 1804.

It was the first time in history where a slave uprising took a nation. They were free and had their own nation to prove it.