And this abandonment by Napoleon of his dreams of Atlantic empire centered on Saint Domingue was the key to two of the greatest events of the nineteenth century. For Britain, France’s defeat in the Caribbean removed that country as a competitive threat in the plantation-centered world of the Atlantic, psychologically freeing the British to slowly work their way toward abolition. This was achieved not with the end of British slave trading, in 1808, but only thirty-five years later. Resolute in their desire for freedom, the Haitians were equally instrumental in placing America on the path to
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