From a citation in Wikipedia, which says it came from the French archives, "According to the 1788 Census, Haiti's population consisted of nearly 25,000 whites, 22,000 free coloureds and 700,000 slaves."
I have found evidence in The Times of London, which has wonderful archives back to 1785, that the French colony on the island of Hispaniola, then known as Saint-Domingue, was the most lucrative in the Caribbean, and the steady re-supply of kidnapped forced workers kept the money rolling in.
When I was in Haiti 4 weeks after the calamitous earthquake in 2010, the folks walking by that I saw from the bus looked like folks strolling through the streets of Lagos. Very possible they were related. The magnitude of the crime of African enslavement is so enormous that it is impossible to grasp, except by understanding that left behind in West Africa were many mothers weeping, understanding their sons and daughters were gone forever, but bitterly grieving the sudden disappearance of daughters gone to the river to wash clothes and sons gone to the fields to harvest maize.
The existence of Saint-Domingue came from tragedy, and the magnificent efforts of kidnapped Africans to create a free country is a story I never tire of hearing. The efforts of European countries to continue oppressing Haiti
