Jean-Pierre Boyer (15 February 1776-9 July 1850) was President of Haiti from 30 March 1818 to 13 February 1843, succeeding Alexandre Petion and preceding Charles Riviere-Herard.
Biography[]
Jean-Pierre Boyer was born on 15 February 1776 in Port-au-Prince, Saint-Domingue to a free French father and a Guinean slave mother. He served as a battalion commander of the French Army during the French Revolutionary Wars before joining the slave army during the Haitian Revolution, and he allied with mulatto Andre Rigaud during the power struggle against Toussaint L'ouverture. Boyer returned to Haiti in 1802 alongside Rigaud and other mulatto leaders, assisting Charles Leclerc's 82,000 troops in restoring French rule to the colony. Alexandre Petion chose Boyer as his successor as the president of South Haiti, and he took power in 1818 after Petion died of yellow fever. In 1825, Boyer paid money to France in recompense for the French government's loss of its slaves, as he believed that only Haiti restoring relations with France would lead to full Haitian independence from Europe. In 1820, Henri Christophe committed suicide as his military revolted against him, leading to Boyer reuniting North Haiti and South Haiti as one republic. On 30 November 1821, people in Spanish Haiti rose the Haitian flag, and Boyer later secured Spanish Haiti's incorporation into Haiti instead of them aligning with Gran Colombia. He ruled the whole of Hispaniola until 1843, when he was overthrown in an uprising against his unpopular rule, which had resulted from the poor economic state of the country. He died in Paris, France in 1850 in exile.