France–Haiti relations are foreign relations between France and Haiti. Both nations are members of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, United Nations, and the World Trade Organization. History The first French to arrive to Haiti were pirates who began to use the island of Tortuga (northern Haiti) in 1625 as a base and settlement for raids against Spanish ships. In 1663, French settlers founded a colony in Léogâne, on the western portion of Hispaniola. After the Nine Years' War in 1697, the Spanish Empire ceded the western portion of Hispaniola with the signing of the Treaty of Ryswick that same year. France named the colony Saint-Domingue. The colony was France's most productive and richest colony, and was made to grow primarily tobacco, indigo, sugar, cotton, and cacao. France used the labor of slaves from Africa, as a result of the near extinction of the Taíno people. Independence From 1789 to 1799, France underwent a revolution. The revolution in France had great implications in Haiti. In August 1791, slaves in the northern region of Haiti staged a revolt which would be known as the Haitian Revolution. In 1793, France sent as an envoy Léger-Félicité Sonthonax to maintain control and stabilize the colony from the revolution. In February 1793, Haitian leader Toussaint Louverture joined Spanish forces in fighting the French. In October 1793, Sonthonax emancipated the slaves in all of Haiti. In May 1794, Louverture left the Spanish army after they refused to free their slaves in the eastern part of Hispaniola. In 1801, Louverture defeated the Spanish in Santo Domingo and emancipated the slaves of the territory. In 1802, General Napoleon Bonaparte sent 40,000 French and Polish troops to Hispaniola. Soon afterwards, Napoleon's brother-in-law General Charles Leclerc asked to meet Louverture to discuss terms. It was a deception and Louverture was seized and deported to France where he died in April 1803. After the death of Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines stood as leader of the independence struggle and continued battling French forces. After the battle of Battle of Vertières in November 1803, France abandoned all hope of retaining control over the colony. On 1 January 1804, Dessalines declared independence for Saint-Domingue and renamed the new nation 'Haiti'. France officially acknowledged Haitian independence in 1824. Post Independence In 1825, French King Charles X demanded Haiti reimburse and compensate France for the loss of money and trade from Haiti's independence. France threatened to invade