Actually, there seems to be a fair bit of evidence that the Haitian Revolution was on everybody’s minds in the early and mid 1800’s. Kant called it the greatest sign of Enlightenment, and there’s some new scholarship showing that Hegel was reading and thinking about it. This is fascinating and cool, and reminds me of reports I’ve read of a Yiddish translation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin–in which they all convert to Judaism at the end.