I finished the Haitian Revolution season of the Revolutions podcast. I think it's the best factual podcast I've ever listened to. It's surprisingly hard to like to a specific season, so I've put up
lightly-edited version of
Jeffrey Percival's index, which appears to no longer be up. Or, you can search for Revolutions episodes starting with "4." in your podcast app.
I know nothing about the Haitian Revolution beforehand, and you don't have to either. It's quite the ride and both amazing and sad.
For the slaves to be able to organize while slaves and eventually take the nation was incredible. And the nature of humans to pull the ladder up once they themselves is fascinating and devastating to see in this history.
To have a healthy country, you have to get yourselves non-enslaved to even start. And that's huge feat accomplished by no one but the Haitians. But after that, you need equality, both materially and opportunity-wise. Haiti started with a military-first government and didn't get out a privileged-warrior-class situation until the 2000s.
Having a sustainable government vision
and escaping from slavery is a lot to ask. Here in the US, we're seeing that sustaining equality and the educated populace needed to sustain a democracy is maybe too hard for us. (Incidentally, pretty much every time the US appears in the history of Haiti, it's bad.)
Anyway, you should give it a listen!