If the theme of revolutionary violence is situated at an abstract remove in Das Erdbeben in Chili, it has a far more direct textual bearing in Die Verlobung in St. Domingo. Here again we are dealing with the tragic story of star-crossed lovers, as the “Verlobung” of the story's title between Swiss nobleman Gustav von der Ried and the young Mestiza Toni is played out against the backdrop of the latter stages of the slave rebellion on Haiti in 1803. The up-to-date setting is atypical—Kleist's tales and dramas usually avoid the particular reality of contemporary events and are, instead, displaced to earlier times. With Die Verlobung, however, he opts to abandon this temporal distancing, quoting a chapter from current European history and underscoring the direct causal connections to the Revolution.

The narrative of the slave uprising is by now familiar, and can be very briefly outlined here. Long-since established as France's most lucrative overseas colony, Haiti became a locus of intense political debate after 1789, as revolutionary faith in new concepts of liberty and equality sparked heated discussions concerning the rights and status of colonial slaves. In 1791 the French National Assembly proclaimed equality for mulattoes, and three years later the National Convention passed a decree emancipating all slaves from bondage. In late 1801, however, Napoleon decided to rescind these egalitarian measures and sent an expeditionary force led by General Leclerc to reconquer the island and reintroduce slavery.