Haiti: the legacy of colonialism

[DMB]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/ben_macintyre/article6995750.ece

In 1825, in return for recognising Haitian independence, France demanded indemnity on a staggering scale: 150 million gold francs, five times the country’s annual export revenue. The Royal Ordinance was backed up by 12 French warships with 150 cannon.

The terms were non-negotiable. The fledgeling nation acceded, since it had little choice. Haiti must pay for its freedom, and pay it did, through the nose, for the next 122 years.

...Historical accountancy is an inexact business, but the scale of French usury was astonishing. Even when the total indemnity was reduced to 90 million francs, Haiti remained crippled by debt. The country took out loans from US, German and French banks at extortionate rates. To put the cost into perspective, in 1803 France agreed to sell the Louisiana Territory, an area 74 times the size of Haiti, to the US, for 60 million francs.

...The debt was not finally paid off until 1947. By then, Haiti’s economy was hopelessly distorted, its land deforested, mired in poverty, politically and economically unstable, prey equally to the caprice of nature and the depredations of autocrats. Seven year ago, the Haitian Government demanded restitution from Paris to the tune of nearly $22 billion (including interest) for the gunboat diplomacy that had helped to make it the poorest country in the western hemisphere.

Does anyone know more about this history?

[Nontoxic]

I have been attempting to understand why they are so poor. You may find this article interesting and perhaps helpful. It provides a glimpse of the history and present challanges.
http://news.discovery.com/history/why-is-haiti-so-poor.html

I think the most likely problem is the following:
http://www.heritage.org/Index/Ranking.aspx

So the United States occupied this country from 1915 to 1936 to restore order, I wonder what made us give up and pull out.

[Valheru]

I sincerely hope nobody is going to try to blame the fuck-up the quake caused, on the French. :rolleyes:

[sohy]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/opinion/22danner.html

I found the above editorial pretty interesting.


Alas, the first such republic, the United States, despite its revolutionary creed that “all men are created equal,” looked upon these self-freed men with shock, contempt and fear. Indeed, to all the great Western trading powers of the day — much of whose wealth was built on the labor of enslaved Africans — Haiti stood as a frightful example of freedom carried too far. American slaveholders desperately feared that Haiti’s fires of revolt would overleap those few hundred miles of sea and inflame their own human chattel.

For this reason, the United States refused for nearly six decades even to recognize Haiti. (Abraham Lincoln finally did so in 1862.) Along with the great colonial powers, America instead rewarded Haiti’s triumphant slaves with a suffocating trade embargo — and a demand that in exchange for peace the fledgling country pay enormous reparations to its former colonial overseer. Having won their freedom by force of arms, Haiti’s former slaves would be made to purchase it with treasure.




The new nation, its fields burned, its plantation manors pillaged, its towns devastated by apocalyptic war, was crushed by the burden of these astronomical reparations, payments that, in one form or another, strangled its economy for more than a century. It was in this dark aftermath of war, in the shadow of isolation and contempt, that Haiti’s peculiar political system took shape, mirroring in distorted form, like a wax model placed too close to the fire, the slave society of colonial times.


At its apex, the white colonists were supplanted by a new ruling class, made up largely of black and mulatto officers. Though these groups soon became bitter political rivals, they were as one in their determination to maintain in independent Haiti the cardinal principle of governance inherited from Saint-Domingue: the brutal predatory extraction of the country’s wealth by a chosen powerful few.

[Alex]

You could push the origins of dire poverty in Haiti further back - i.e. to the existence of the slave trade.

[DMB]

You could push the origins of dire poverty in Haiti further back - i.e. to the existence of the slave trade.

Indeed yes. And it was in that epoch, when Haiti was turned over to sugar production, that most of the deforestation occurred.

[HinduWoman]

If they had been paying that debt then no wonder they are so poor.
The decades of dictatorship encouraged by American capitalists haven't helped either.

[Haswell]

most countries involved in the slave trade managed a recovery of sorts. Haiti's main problem is the years of being screwed over by Papa Doc and then Baby Doc in turn.

Had either of those still been around during this earthquake, I'll guarantee you they would have been 'taken under the protection' of the 82nd Airborne.