Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free Haiti trivia questions with answers. Haiti was the first Black republic, the only nation ever founded by a successful slave revolt, and the second independent country in the Americas. This Haiti trivia quiz covers all of it: the Taíno name that means land of high mountains, Saint-Domingue and the 1791 uprising, Toussaint Louverture, Dessalines and King Henri Christophe, the Citadelle, the 1825 indemnity to France, the US occupation, the Duvaliers, Aristide, the 2010 earthquake and the 2021 assassination of Jovenel Moïse. It is not only history. There are questions on Haitian Creole and Vodou, soup joumou and griot, Barbancourt rum, konpa music, Wyclef Jean and Sweet Micky, the flag and the national motto, the highest peak, the longest river, the 1974 World Cup team, and Haitian-born names like Michaëlle Jean and Edwidge Danticat. It works for Haitian Flag Day on 18 May, Haitian Heritage Month, a classroom unit or a family quiz night. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference source, and the questions run from easy to genuinely hard, so beginners and Haitians alike will find something to argue over.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Haiti shares the island of Hispaniola with which other country?
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic, which is Spanish-speaking and larger than Haiti, occupies the eastern part of Hispaniola; the two states share the island's only land border.
Q 02What is the capital and largest city of Haiti?
Port-au-Prince
Port-au-Prince was founded in 1749 and became the colonial capital in 1770; its metropolitan area today holds well over two million people.
Q 03The name Haiti comes from the Taíno language and means what?
Land of high mountains
Ayiti, meaning land of high mountains, was the Taíno name for the whole island; the revolutionaries restored it at independence in place of the colonial name.
Q 04What are the two official languages of Haiti?
French and Haitian Creole
Almost every Haitian speaks Creole, while only a minority are fluent in French, which long dominated schools and government.
Q 05In which year did Haiti become the only country established by a successful slave revolt?
1804
Independence was proclaimed on 1 January 1804, making Haiti the second independent nation in the Americas after the United States and the first founded by a successful slave revolt.
Q 06The Haitian Revolution began with a mass slave uprising in which year?
1791
The uprising broke out across the northern plain on 22 August 1791, days after the Bois Caïman Vodou ceremony led by the priest Dutty Boukman.
Q 07Before independence, Haiti was a European colony known by what name?
Saint-Domingue
Saint-Domingue, the western part of Hispaniola ceded by Spain in 1697, was by the 1780s the most profitable colony in the Americas, producing much of Europe's sugar and coffee with enslaved labour.
Q 08Where was Toussaint Louverture jailed after deportation, dying there in 1803?
Fort de Joux, France
He was held in a cold mountain fortress in the Jura and died there in April 1803, less than a year before the independence he had fought for.
Q 09Who declared Haiti's independence in 1804 and became its first emperor?
Jean-Jacques Dessalines
Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Louverture's former lieutenant, crowned himself Emperor Jacques I within months of independence and was assassinated at Pont-Rouge in October 1806.
Q 10Which Napoleonic general capitulated after losing the Battle of Vertières?
Donatien de Rochambeau
Donatien de Rochambeau, who took command after Leclerc died of yellow fever, lost at Vertières on 18 November 1803 and agreed days later to evacuate the colony.
Q 11Which revolutionary leader crowned himself king of northern Haiti in 1811?
Henri Christophe
Henri Christophe ruled the north as King Henry I from 1811, created a nobility of dukes and counts, and shot himself in 1820 as his army mutinied.
Q 12The Citadelle Laferrière and the Sans-Souci Palace were named UNESCO World Heritage Sites in which year?
1982
UNESCO inscribed the National History Park, covering the Citadelle, Sans-Souci and Ramiers, in 1982; the palace itself had been wrecked by an earthquake in 1842.
Q 13In 1825 Haiti agreed to pay an indemnity to which country in exchange for recognition of its independence?
France
Q 21Haitian president Jovenel Moïse was assassinated at his home in the capital in which year?
2021
Moïse was shot dead at his residence in Pétion-Ville on 7 July 2021 by a hit squad of mostly Colombian ex-soldiers; the killing plunged Haiti into deeper political crisis.
Q 22What is the national currency of Haiti?
The gourde
Prices are often quoted in "Haitian dollars", an informal unit worth five gourdes that dates from a time when the currency was pegged to the US dollar.
Q 23What is the highest peak in Haiti?
Pic la Selle
Pic la Selle, at about 2,680 metres, crowns the Massif de la Selle south-east of the capital, and its slopes hold some of Haiti's last stands of pine forest.
France, under Charles X, demanded 150 million francs (later cut to 90 million) in 1825 to recognise Haitian independence, a debt Haiti finished paying only in 1947.
Q 14The American occupation of Haiti that began in 1915 lasted until which year?
1934
US Marines landed in July 1915 and the last of them withdrew in August 1934 under Franklin Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy, ending a 19-year occupation.
Q 15What was the nickname of François Duvalier, dictator of Haiti from 1957 to 1971?
Papa Doc
Papa Doc came from François Duvalier's earlier career as a physician in rural public-health campaigns; he had himself declared president for life in 1964.
Q 16What was the name of the feared death squad that enforced the Duvalier regime?
The Tonton Macoute
The Tonton Macoute, officially the Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale, took their name from a Haitian folk bogeyman, Uncle Gunnysack, who carries off children in a sack.
Q 17What was the nickname of Jean-Claude Duvalier, who ruled Haiti from 1971 to 1986?
Baby Doc
Baby Doc, Jean-Claude Duvalier, was only 19 when he inherited the presidency for life in April 1971, and he fled into exile in February 1986.
Q 18Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who served several terms as Haiti's president from 1991, had earlier been what?
A Salesian priest
Aristide was a Salesian priest, expelled from the order in 1988 over his fiery liberation-theology sermons to the capital's poor, before winning the December 1990 election.
Q 19The catastrophic 2010 Haiti earthquake, which struck on 12 January, had what magnitude?
7.0
The magnitude 7.0 quake struck at 4:53 pm on 12 January 2010; the presidential palace, parliament and cathedral all collapsed and much of the capital was levelled.
Q 20The epicentre of the 2010 earthquake was near which town, about 25 km west of the capital?
Léogâne
Estimates put the death toll anywhere from around 100,000 to more than 300,000, making it one of the deadliest earthquakes ever recorded.
Q 24What is the longest river in Haiti, and on the whole island of Hispaniola?
Artibonite
The Artibonite runs about 320 km from the Cordillera Central across the border into Haiti, where it fills the Péligre reservoir and irrigates the country's main rice valley.
Q 25Which is the largest of the islands lying off Haiti's coast?
Gonâve
Île de la Gonâve, about 60 km long, lies in the bay west of the capital and supports tens of thousands of people despite having scant fresh water.
Q 26The island of Tortuga off Haiti's north coast was famous in the 17th century as a haven for what?
Pirates
French buccaneers based there raided Spanish shipping, and the island later lent its name to the pirate port in the Pirates of the Caribbean films.
Q 27Haiti is divided into how many departments, its largest administrative units?
10
Haiti has had 10 departments since Nippes was carved out of Grand'Anse in 2003; they are further split into arrondissements and communes.
Q 28Where does Haiti rank among Caribbean countries by area?
Third
Around 11.4 million people live in a country slightly smaller than the US state of Maryland.
Q 29From the remains of which ship did Columbus build La Navidad on Haiti's coast in 1492?
The Santa María
The Santa María, Columbus's flagship, ran aground on Christmas Day 1492; timbers from the wreck built La Navidad, whose 39 men were all dead when he returned in 1493.
Q 30Haitian Creole is a creole language based mainly on which European language?
French
Its vocabulary is largely French but its grammar owes much to West African languages, and it is spoken by more than 13 million people worldwide.