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1805-05-20

1805-05-20: (Dessalines Promulgates Haiti’s First Constitution, Declaring Haiti a Black Nation, Forbidding White Land Ownership, and Establishing the Legal A…

Haitian

1805-05-20: (Dessalines Promulgates Haiti’s First Constitution, Declaring Haiti a Black Nation, Forbidding White Land Ownership, and Establishing the Legal Architecture of a Republic Born From the Ashes of the World’s Most Brutal Slave Colony): On May 20, 1805, Dessalines promulgated Haiti’s first constitution as an independent nation. The document declared Haiti a Black nation and explicitly forbade white people from owning land on Haitian soil, a provision that stood as a direct inversion of the colonial order in which only white people had enjoyed full property rights. The constitution established Catholicism as the state religion and codified the centralized authority that Dessalines already exercised in practice. At the same time, Christophe initiated construction of the Citadel in the mountains above Cap-Haïtien, a massive stone fortress designed to defend the new republic against a French invasion that the entire nation expected and that never came.