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🇭🇹   BETA  ·  Istwanou is free during beta — free access continues until January 1, 2027 or when we reach 100,000 entries, whichever comes first.  ·  4,439 entries published  ·  95,561 entries away from the 100k milestone.       🇭🇹   BETA  ·  Istwanou is free during beta — free access continues until January 1, 2027 or when we reach 100,000 entries, whichever comes first.  ·  4,439 entries published  ·  95,561 entries away from the 100k milestone.       
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The Most Ambitious Haitian History Project Ever Built

Our History.
Decolonized.

One million entries. Five lenses. Six thousand years. One unbroken story.

Istwanou is building the most comprehensive, deeply sourced digital archive of Haitian and diasporic history ever assembled — drawn exclusively from authoritative academic sources, primary documents, and verified scholarship. Every entry cited. Every claim traceable. No mythology, no erasure.

Explore the Timeline About the Project
Progress Toward the Goal
0 of 1,000,000
0.444% complete  ·  995,561 entries to go
Browse All 4,439 Entries →

An archive this complete has never existed for Haitian history. Until now.

One million entries spanning prehistory to the present. Every date. Every figure. Every battle, treaty, uprising, ceremony, and cultural milestone — recorded, sourced, and made permanently accessible in one place.

This is not an encyclopedia. It is a living historical record, continuously updated as new research emerges, drawn exclusively from peer-reviewed scholarship, primary sources, and authoritative texts. No entry appears without a citation.

Future generations of Haitian descendants will have what no generation before them ever had: a single, reliable, searchable, complete record of who they are and where they come from.

Sourced exclusively from authoritative scholarship  ·  Every entry cited  ·  Continuously updated
Four Lenses

Four Ways of Seeing Haitian History

Each lens covers a distinct historical period — together they form one unbroken story.

🌿
Indigenous
Prehistory — 1492

The Taíno, Arawak, and indigenous peoples of Ayiti — their civilizations, cosmology, and enduring resistance from the earliest human presence through European contact and extermination.

🌍
African
African Kingdoms — 1502

African kingdoms, civilizations, and spiritual systems from antiquity through the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade — the world that was taken, and the cultures that survived the crossing.

⛓️
Pre-Revolutionary
1492 — 1790

Colonial Saint-Domingue, the plantation economy, the slave trade, marronage, Makandal, and three centuries of resistance building toward the moment everything changed.

🇭🇹
Haitian
1791 — Present

The Revolution, Independence, and the complete arc of Haitian national history — from Bwa Kayiman and Vertières to the present day. Politics, culture, sovereignty, and survival.

Timeline

Recent Entries

View All 4,439 Entries
Why This Matters

One million entries. That's not just an archive.
That's a statement.

Haitian history has been systematically marginalized, distorted, and erased by the forces that profited from its suppression. The story of the first Black republic — the only nation born from a successful slave revolt — deserves more than footnotes in European accounts of the colonial era.

Istwanou is the answer to that erasure. Every entry is drawn from authoritative, peer-reviewed scholarship and primary sources. Every claim is traceable. Every citation is verifiable. This archive will grow, be corrected, and be updated as new research emerges — because history is never finished, only more fully understood.

When this project reaches one million entries, it will be the single most comprehensive record of Haitian and diasporic history ever assembled. That speaks volumes — not just about Haiti, but about what becomes possible when a people refuse to let their story be told by others.

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