On 1 January 1804, the Republic of Haiti declared independence. “Haiti offered asylum to enslaved people who could reach its shores. The Haitian Revolution inaugurated an independent Haitian trade, which sent free Haitians on business around the Caribbean and encouraged enslaved sailors to desert to freedom. Enslaved people also escaped to Haiti by other means. For example, in the Bahamas in 1822, slaveholders complained that more than 100 enslaved men and women from the island of Grand Caicos had overwhelmed their drivers and overseers, taken their children with them, and stolen open boats to flee to Haiti. Once on land in the Black republic, any person of African descent was free and eligible for citizenship. It was Haitian policy never to permit the re-enslavement of Haitian citizens or refugees. Robin Blackburn writes that ‘Haiti had saved the honor of the New World revolutions’, coming closer to realising the universal rights proclaimed by American revolutionaries than American fo...