Map and Timeline of the Haitian Revolution

This interactive map and timeline of the Haitian Revolution presents a unified narrative of the successful overthrow of colonial rule and establishment of a free and independent Haiti, led by former slaves. The timeline covers not only the events of the revolution beginning in 1791, but also historical background and events afterward leading to present-day boundaries. This project was developed for instructors at Phillips Academy Andover, providing a resource for an interdisciplinary course called The History and Literature of the Haitian Revolution, as well as for Mapping Haitian History, an online visual records site for Haitian historical and cultural sites.

Similar to previous work on a narrative map of the Jamaican slave revolt of 1760–61, this map provides spatial and temporal organization of people and events to help give an understanding of the complicated narrative of the Haitian Revolution. Symbols representing different types of events are placed over a contemporary map, underscoring the importance of the land itself in how events unfolded. The timeline is designed with two scales: one a series of "maps" that cover a range of related events (over spans of anything from centuries to months), and another showing the individual events within those periods.

Primary data for this map are stored in tables accessible and easily edited by the instructors, and then are built into a structured JSON format for the map to load. The front-end is built with React and includes a Leaflet map.