In 1802, Napoleon sent a Polish legion of about 5,200 men to join the French forces in Saint-Domingue to put down the Haitian slave rebellion, having actually been told there was a revolt of prisoners there. The Poles had initially fought with Napoleon in the hope of receiving French support in restoring their own country’s independence from its partitioners and oppressors – Prussia, Russia and Austria – who had divided Poland between them in the late 18th century.
After arriving in Saint-Domingue following a gruelling journey across the Atlantic Ocean, and being thrown straight into battle, the Poles quickly learned that the French were, in fact, trying to brutally crush an uprising by enslaved Africans fighting for freedom from their ruthless white masters. Many sympathised with their struggle and joined the ranks of the revolutionaries against the French.
Today’s Polish Haitians (Poloné or La Pologne, in Haitian Creole) are Haitian people of Polish and African ancestry that dates back to those events, after which some 400-500 of these Poles are believed to have settled there after the war. They had been given special status as ‘Noir’ by the governor-general and emperor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and full citizenship under the Haitian constitution.
The Republic of Haiti sits in the Caribbean, occupying the western part of the island of Haiti, in the Greater Antilles archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. The Caribbean Sea surrounds it to the west and south, and the Atlantic Ocean to the north. A former French colony, it is, at the time of writing, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere due to a debilitating mix of corruption, political instability and vulnerability to natural disasters, including hurricanes and earthquakes.
In the 15th century the island was inhabited by the Caribbean and Arawaks, but in 1492 it was ‘discovered’ by Christopher Columbus and as Hispaniola it became part of the Spanish colonial empire. During the 16th century the indigenous population was almost completely wiped out. The western part of the island was occupied by French pirates who founded Portde-Paix in 1644. In 1697, under the Treaty of Rijswijk, part of the island where present-day Haiti is located passed into French rule as Saint-Domingue.
The Haitian Revolution, which spanned the years
