 However, competing claims and settlements by the French led to the western portion of the island being ceded to France in 1697, which was subsequently named "Saint-Domingue".French colonists established lucrative sugarcane plantations, worked by vast numbers of slaves brought from Africa, which made the colony one of the richest in the world.In the midst of the French Revolution (1789–99), slaves and free people of color launched the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), led by a former slave and the first black general of the French Army, Toussaint Louverture.