And to get a sense of it, here is an excerpt of an article by one of the authors, Denis Diderot, considered one of the primary actors in the Enlightenment. No man has received from nature the right to command others. Liberty is a gift from heaven, and each individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he enjoys the use of reason. And so when we get into the Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson, he borrows heavily from these ideas of the Enlightenment. Now, the Haitian Revolution was partially inspired by these ideas of the Enlightenment, but they were also helped by the fact that France was undergoing its own revolution at the time, and it was not in the position to exert strong control over a far-flung colony. The French Revolution lasts from 1789 to 1799, at which point Napoleon Bonaparte takes control of France and starts the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon tries to keep control, what would eventually be Haiti, was an incredibly valuable resource.