Enslaved and in debt: the French roots of Haiti's struggles

Establishing an independent Haiti: a timeline

This map and timeline shows the history of the Caribbean Island nation of Haiti and its fight for independence. In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue and crashed one of his ships, the Santa Maria, along reefs near the island nation...

What was the impact of the Haitian Revolution of 1791?

This 53-minute podcast explores the context surrounding the Haitian Revolution, a 13-year rebellion led by the then-French colony's enslaved population. The Spanish colonized the Caribbean island after Christopher Columbus landed on it in 1492,...

The colonial origins of Haiti/Dominican Republic divide

This 16-minute video explores the colonial origins of the modern-day split between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Haiti previously was the French-Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue, which was torn off the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo in 1697....

Why Haiti is in crisis

Haiti’s crisis is decades in the making. Burdened by colonial debt, political instability, and economic collapse, the country faces worsening conditions. Gangs now control much of Port-au-Prince, hunger has reached near-famine levels, and violence continues to escalate. Here’s how Haiti got here—and what’s happening now.

How armed groups became embedded in Haitian politics

This six-minute video explores the relationship between Haitian politics and armed gangs. As recently as June 2023, Haiti did not have a single elected official left in office; The 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse and the...

Who was the first (and last) king of Haiti?

This five-minute video explores the life of Henry Christophe, Haiti's first and last king. Christophe grew up enslaved, shuffled between Caribbean islands. In 1779, he was forced to fight alongside American revolutionaries in the Battle of Savannah...

The American Revolution became a template for a colonized world

The robust and radical transformation during the American Revolution created a template for dozens of future independence movements. Its key ideas of republicanism, individualism, and equality inspired revolutions in France, Haiti, Ireland, and more, paving the way for the broadly democratic world we know today.

Nineteenth-century, hand-drawn infographics on US slavery and race

In the second half of the 19th century, researchers studying the behavior of the millions of emancipated Americans after the Civil War used "information graphics" to cut through the noise of racially charged debate. In this collection from Stanford, you can see century-old, stunningly hand-drawn data visualizations showing racial demographics, the effects of emancipation on cotton prices, and more.

Read Truth's account of escaping slavery in 1826

After her enslaver broke his promise to free her, Truth left before dawn, carrying her infant daughter and a bundle of clothes. She later found refuge with the Van Wagener family, who paid her master $20 for her freedom and $5 for her infant daughter.

Pre-revolution Cuba was prosperous—and deeply unequal

On the eve of Castro’s 1959 revolution, Cuba ranked among Latin America’s most advanced societies, with high incomes and health outcomes. Yet stark racial, rural, and political inequalities—compounded by corruption and US intervention—made the system weak and primed for revolt.

The US has carried debt since 1791

After the Revolutionary War, the US owed $75M to nations like France. Debt builds when spending exceeds revenue, funding programs, wars, and economic recovery efforts. Most debt is domestic, like Social Security bonds, with foreign nations also holding a share.

Who died during the French Revolution of 1789?

This article examines the human cost of the 1789 French Revolution, during which up to 17,000 people were guillotined and many more were killed by other means. A majority of the guillotine deaths were meted out during the Reign of Terror, a...

That time British slavers killed enslaved people and filed for insurance reimbursement

In 1781, a British slave ship tossed 132 enslaved Africans overboard, leaving them to drown. This 52-minute podcast explores the context behind the massacre and its implications. The slavers of the ship named Zong sought insurance reimbursement for...

What's the role of forced prison labor in a land where slavery is illegal?

Companies across the South profited off the forced labor of people in prison after the Civil War. This hourlong investigative podcast episode explores the role forced (and often unpaid) prison labor has played in the US since slavery was abolished.

Pompeii’s ruins expose the brutal realities of Rome’s sex trade

Drawing on graffiti, slave collars, brothel art, and the story of “Eutychis, a Greek lass with sweet ways,” this piece reconstructs the violent, coercive world of Pompeii’s enslaved prostitutes—and how their owners controlled, renamed, and exploited them.

Learn about the violent history of the nutmeg industry

From the 1600s to the 1860s, the Dutch East India Company enslaved thousands of people on the Banda Islands, the world's only nutmeg source, forcing them to work on plantations under a system unlike anything seen in the Caribbean or American South.

Hamilton opposed slavery in principle but participated in the institution

Alexander Hamilton spoke against slavery, helped found the New York Manumission Society, and supported gradual emancipation while also participating in transactions involving enslaved people through his in-laws—and possibly within his own household, though historians debate this.

How a 19th-century aristocrat scammed the rich to buy fake Caribbean land

Nearly 200 years ago, Gregor MacGregor pulled off one of the most brazen real estate scams in history. A disgraced military leader, MacGregor sold plots of land in what is today Honduras, touting the country of Poyais as a new major region in South America. But no building was taking place, and instead of investing the proceeds of bond sales in construction, MacGregor was lining his pockets. Read the unbelievable story of MacGregor's exploits here.

France, Spain, and Britain formed a joint military alliance to force Mexico to repay its debts

In October 1861, the three powers signed the Convention of London and landed troops at Veracruz that December. Britain and Spain reached settlements with Mexico and withdrew. France refused and aimed to change the regime in power in Mexico.

An interactive investigation into drugs and migration in San Francisco

This interactive article investigates the connection between the boom in US migration from Honduras and drug dealing in San Francisco. A high concentration of Hondurans are fleeing Siria Valley, where poverty and national murder rates run high...

New Orleans' Congo Square birthed what would become jazz

The city's enslaved people congregated in the city square on Sundays, bringing together the musical traditions of their disparate cultures through drum circles, communal dancing, and call-and-response singing. The rhythmic style that evolved in the area would eventually give rise to ragtime and, subsequently, jazz.

Visualizing the history of money

Money is any medium of exchange used in payments for goods or services and can take many forms. From cattle and shells in ancient times to paper and blockchain today, money has taken many shapes and sizes. This infographic illustrates some of the major forms of exchange world cultures have used over the last 5,000 years.

How to get out of debt

This article provides a few helpful tips for getting out of debt, such as learning more about the debt itself and asking for better interest rates. It also explains the popular "debt snowball" and "debt avalanche" methods for getting out of debt. Curious to learn more? Read the full article here.

The aging electrical substations of Saigon

One of the overlooked influences of French colonialism in Vietnam lies in the capital city Saigon’s electrical infrastructure. Though France withdrew in the 1950s, many of the colonial-era substations built by the French company Compagnie des Eaux et Électricité are still operational today. Scroll through the article for images of these substations and an overview of their history.

The Harlem Hellfighters, WWI's longest-serving US regiment

The nickname was given to the 369th Infantry Regiment, an all-Black fighting force of Americans attached to the French Army during World War I. The group fought for 191 days, longer than any other regiment in the United States Army, and lost more men (1,500) than any other.

Explore an interactive map of battles from the American Revolution, along with detailed summaries of each engagement

The original copy of the Declaration of Independence is not a pristine document, and even features a smudged anonymous handprint in the bottom left corner.

The United States has had a tumultuous relationship with Cuba since its 1959 revolution, highlighted by a nuclear crisis and a decades-long trade embargo.

US consumers collectively owe more than $1T to credit card companies—almost as much as they owe in auto loans.

The rivalry between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson centered on federalism—the question of how much power the federal government should hold relative to the states.

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

Cultural norms about how to handle the bodies of loved ones in communities in West Africa have hampered Ebola responses.

The concept of phantom limbs, the perception that amputated limbs are still present, dates back to a French military surgeon in the 16th century.

During the French Revolution, a botanist's letter asking about "dear Rhus" (poison ivy) was intercepted, leading authorities to suspect he was conspiring with the Russians.

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

Hedge funds, the private investment firms that trade a wide swath of financial assets, make money by imposing steep fees on investors and from the fund's investment performance.

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

Some coin denominations have ridges etched on their sides, partly to prevent counterfeiting, in a practice called 'reeding.'

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

Watch contemporary footage covering the US-backed Shah of Iran fleeing the country in the face of the 1979 Iranian Revolution

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

Hurricanes, which rely on air consistently spinning in the same direction, cannot cross the equator because air curves in opposite directions north and south of it.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

In 2026, Finland was named the world's happiest country for the ninth consecutive year based on its wealth, social safety network, and high life expectancy, among other factors.

Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' is infamous for having some of the highest industrial pollution, toxic air emissions, and cancer risks in the US.

In 1963, a basement renovation in Turkey revealed a passageway to a hidden, multilevel underground city that once housed as many as 20,000 people

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'