Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti and formerly known as Hayti is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and south of The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island which it shares with the Dominican Republic. To its south-west lies the small Navassa Island, which is claimed by Haiti but is disputed as a United States territory under federal administration. Haiti is the third largest country in the Caribbean by area, and is it the most populous country in the Caribbean. The capital is Port-au-Prince.

The island was originally inhabited by the indigenous Taíno people, who originated in South America. The first Europeans arrived on December 5, 1492 during the first voyage of Christopher Columbus, who initially believed he had found India or China. Columbus subsequently founded the first European settlement in the Americas, La Navidad, on what is now the northeastern coast of Haiti. The island was claimed by Spain and named La Española, forming part of the Spanish Empire until the early 17th century. However, competing claims and settlements by the French led to the western portion of the island being ceded to France in 1697, which was subsequently named Saint-Domingue.

In the midst of the French Revolution (1789–99), the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), was launched and led by a former slave and the first black general of the French Army, Toussaint Louverture. After 12 years of conflict, Napoleon Bonaparte’s forces were defeated by Louverture’s successor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines (later Emperor Jacques I), who declared Haiti’s sovereignty on January 1, 1804—the first independent nation of Latin America and the Caribbean, the second republic in the Americas, and the first country in the Americas to abolish slavery. Precipitating a long series of wars that ended in the 1870s, Haiti formally recognized the independence of the Dominican Republic.

Resource:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti