The island of Saint-Domingue was made up of a mix of people including white Frenchmen, Creoles, free people of color, and slaves. Once sugar became one of the island's major cash crops, an estimated half a million African slaves were brought to work the land. These slaves outnumbered their white masters more than ten to one and made up the majority of the island's inhabitants. Even so, the island had the safest slave regime in the Caribbean thanks to cooperation between masters and freemen of color. Because of the difficult police work given to the freed men with little reward, communication between them and the white masters broke down. Now that the white slave owners were on their own, it was only a matter of time before the brutal treatment of the slaves led to a revolt. Once enslaved Africans received news of the revolution in France, they too began to demand freedom. After years of civil unrest and fierce fighting, Haiti declared its freedom from France in January 1804. What makes the Haitian Revolution more radical than the previous two is that it was led by slaves. Throughout previous revolutions, the primary goal was, essentially, for white men to be free from oppressive government rule. Little thought was given to the rights of slaves, even though they too were men. The fact that this group of people managed to remove colonial authority and establish their own country during this time period was particularly radical and unheard of