Pétion's Aid to Simón Bolívar

Between 1815 and 1816, Alexandre Pétion sheltered Simón Bolívar in Haiti and provided him with ships, arms, soldiers, and supplies for renewed independence campaigns in South America. Pétion's condition was that Bolívar abolish slavery in the territories he liberated. The aid was decisive in enabling Bolívar's return to Venezuela, and Bolívar honored the condition in several of the territories he freed. The episode placed Haiti at the center of hemispheric liberation struggles and revealed Haiti's post-independence antislavery foreign policy, even as Haiti remained diplomatically excluded from the postcolonial order it helped create.