Prometheus 6

This is NOT the story you hear about Haiti. But it's the one you SHOULD hear.

In November 1803 the former slaves won what proved to be the war's final battle, and on 1 January 1804 declared the independent republic of Haiti. It was Latin America's first independent country and the only nation ever born of a slave revolt. The Haitian Revolution, Dubois writes, was 'a dramatic challenge to the world as it then was. Slavery was at the heart of the thriving system of merchant capitalism that was profiting Europe, devastating Africa, and propelling the rapid expansion of the Americas.' Independent Haiti had few friends. Virtually all the world's powers sided with France against the self-proclaimed Black Republic, which declared itself a haven not only for runaway slaves but also for indigenous people from the rest of the Americas (the true natives of Haiti had succumbed to infectious disease and Spanish slavery well before the arrival of the French). Hemmed in by slave colonies, Haiti had only one non-colonised neighbour, the slaveholding United States, which refused to recognise its independence.

Haiti's leaders were desperate for recognition, since the island's only source of revenue was the sugar, coffee, cotton and other tropical produce it had to sell. In 1825, under threat of another French invasion and the restoration of slavery, Haitian officials signed the document which was to prove the beginning of the end for any hope of autonomy. The French king agreed to recognise Haiti's independence only if the new republic paid France an indemnity of 150 million francs and reduced its import and export taxes by half. The 'debt' that Haiti recognised was incurred by the slaves when they deprived the French owners not only of land and equipment but of their human 'property'.

The impact of the debt repayments - which continued until after World War Two - was devastating. In the words of the Haitian anthropologist Jean Price-Mars, 'the incompetence and frivolity of its leaders' had 'turned a country whose revenues and outflows had been balanced up to then into a nation burdened with debt and trapped in financial obligations that could never be satisfied.' 'Imposing an indemnity on the victorious slaves was equivalent to making them pay with money that which they had already paid with their blood,' the abolitionist Victor Schoelcher argued.

By the late 19th century, the United States had eclipsed France as a force in Haitian affairs. A US military occupation (1915-34) brought back corvée labour and introduced bombing from the air, while officials in Washington created the institutions that Haitians would have to live with: the army, above all, which now claims to have the country 'in its hands', was created by an act of the US Congress. Demobilised by Aristide in 1995, it never knew a non-Haitian enemy. It had plenty of internal enemies, however. Military-backed governments, dictatorships, chronic instability, repression, the heavy hand of Washington over all: this state of affairs continued throughout the 20th century.

hat tip to Jeanne D'Arc at Body and Soul