The Root of Haiti’s Misery: Reparations to Enslavers

New York Times ^ | Nov. 16, 2022 | Catherine PorterConstant MéheutMatt Apuzzo and Selam Gebrekidan

[Cronos]

Coffee has been the fulcrum of life here for almost three centuries, since enslaved people cut the first French coffee plantations into the mountainsides. Back then, this was not Haiti, but Saint-Domingue — the biggest supplier of coffee and sugar consumed in Parisian kitchens and Hamburg coffee houses. The colony made many French families fabulously rich. It was also, many historians say, the world’s most brutal.

Ms. Present’s ancestors put an end to that, taking part in the modern world’s first successful slave revolution in 1791 and establishing an independent nation in 1804 — decades before Britain outlawed slavery or the Civil War broke out in America.

But for generations after independence, Haitians were forced to pay the descendants of their former slave masters, including the Empress of Brazil; the son-in-law of the Russian Emperor Nicholas I; Germany’s last imperial chancellor; and Gaston de Galliffet, the French general known as the “butcher of the Commune” for crushing an insurrection in Paris in 1871.

The burdens continued well into the 20th century. The wealth Ms. Present’s ancestors coaxed from the ground brought wild profits for a French bank that helped finance the Eiffel Tower, Crédit Industriel et Commercial, and its investors. They controlled Haiti’s treasury from Paris for decades, and the bank eventually became part of one of Europe’s largest financial conglomerates.

[Verginius Rufus]

Napoleon’s inability to reconquer Haiti led to his decision to sell the Louisiana territory to the United States, so the US benefited. But horror stories of the whites in Haiti being massacred made the slaveholders in the US afraid that the same thing could happen to them if they didn’t maintain control over the black population. Of course few slaveholders wanted to end slavery anyway.

[Rockingham]

France’s response was to demand cash from Haiti two decades after independence — not for French lives lost — but for the value of the slaves and the revenue they earned as slaves. Haiti is of course a miserable country today, with France’s predatory exactions a contributing factor to one degree or another.

[Jim Noble]

“after the Civil War they should have sent every freed slave that wanted to go back to Africa back”

There were great-great-great grandchildren of slaves brought to British North America in the 1600s living in 1865, with no meaningful connection to any African kingdom or population group.

Now it’s 170 years after that.

If you want to have a conversation about separation of ADOS, it’s going to happen inside the boundaries of the United States or it isn’t going to happen at all.

Their homes are not in Africa. Most of them have American lineage going back longer than most European-descended people living in America have.

I mean, the conversation started by NOI in the 1950s is going to resurface, by force of circumstance if for no other reason. Elijah Muhammad, if I recall correctly, asked for five states.

Which ones are you willing to give up?

[Rockingham]

Correct, My understanding is that the term slave came from the Latin Sclāvus (“Slav”), because Slavs were so often forced into slavery. The Latin term is said to be rooted in Byzantine Greek usage.

[NorthMountain]

Elijah Muhammad, if I recall correctly, asked for five states. Which ones are you willing to give up?

None of them. The people in question must learn to behave like human beings. No other option is compatible with the continued existence of The Republic.

[packrat35]

This is true, the leaders in Haiti knew it was a bad idea but let it happen because the people wanted blood. It doomed them. No way was any white country going to help Haiti in any way after that and it let france re-enter the picture to extract a bounty.

Without the slaughter, the US would probably not allowed France back into our sphere of influence AKA Monroe Doctrine. The only way France came back into our area was when we were distracted by the Civil War. And we ended that right after the war was over.

[ABN 505]

Jimmy Carter the “Crack house King”. What a legacy!

[packrat35]

The ones that did go back to form Liberia were never truly accepted as African and were violently overthrown in the 80’s with large numbers of them being massacred.

[Verginius Rufus]

Before the Civil War, there were cases where a slave was offered freedom if he would emigrate to Liberia but turned it down--the prospect of going there was scary. Colonization tended to be attended by high mortality rates. The actual colonists from the US who went to Liberia were not very numerous--and they were a small minority compared to the Africans already there.

During the Civil War, Lincoln tried to establish a colony of American blacks in Haiti but many of them died and the project was abandoned.

[Verginius Rufus]

The term "Slav" comes from the Slavic languages. Slava in Russian means "glory" or "fame" (cognate with Ancient Greek kleos--the Slavic languages are "satem" languages which have an S where the "centum" languages like Latin, Greek, and the Germanic languages have a K [which became an H in the Germanic languages--so English "hundred" is cognate with Latin "centum"]).

Russian slovo means "word."

Among Slavic groups you get ethnic names or place names like Slovak/Slovakia, Slovene/Slovenia, Slavonia, etc. Either people thinking of themselves as the glorious ones or the ones who speak intelligibly (unlike the Vlachs and Germans and other non-Slavs).

The Latin term would be formed from the word the Slavs used for themselves.

[Rockingham]

The late Latin and Byzantine terms for Slavs, usually referring to Slavic people in bondage and traded in the late Middle Ages, were transmitted into English as “slave.”

[Worldtraveler once upon a time]

--- "The modern Haiti is destroyed by the Clintons. The Clinton embargo shut down its light industry,90% of its economy, from which the Haitian economy has never recovered. Further incursions by the Clinton foundation plundered remaining resources."

That has been the point, all along....

[x]

I didn’t realize coffee was so important to Haiti. I thought of it as a sugar island. Most of Haiti’s coffee went to Europe, so I wonder if many Americans were aware of Haitian coffee.

A large part of Haiti’s problem was that the revolution chased the people who had some competence and ability out of the island. A more peaceful transition, if possible, might have been preferable.

One note: to pay off France, Haiti had to borrow money at high interest rates, so that debt to the bank wasn’t fully paid off until well after 1883.

[Cronos]

Not quite — haitian society before 1790 was:
- about 10% white - divided into
“big white” grand blancs - the slave and land owners
“little white” petits blancs - poorer Europeans many were ironically freed serfs or slaves from Berber states

- 5% mulattos

- 85% black slaves.

Slavery in Haiti was horrendously cruel - even by the standards of the time. The death rate was enormous and they had to keep importing slaves as so many died. The stories from horrified FRENCH people who visited the islands was that the slaveholders hung up men with heads downward, drowned them in sacks, crucified them on planks, buried them alive, crushed them in mortars, to consume faeces, flaying them with whips etc.

This was brutalization of people over decades - leading to the slave population who survived being brutal - NOT ALL - Toussaint Louverture was a notable exception who was a Francophile, but he was imprisoned by the French, leading to Dessaline coming to power.

Anyway, Dutty Boukman was a slave captured in Senegambia who reverted to Voudou and exacted retribution against the slaveholders.

NOTE that Toussaint Louverture first established a black-run French governate, but then NAPOLEON INVADED and re-established slavery. The Napoleonic troops were brutal.

The net result when Toussaint Louverture was captured and taken to France was that the radical Dessalines came to power.

Note that the whites supported the Napoleonic re-imposition of slavery.

After the haitians under Dessalines proclaimed independence, there were rumours that the white population would try to convince foreign powers to invade and reintroduce slavery - well, they had already done so, so i seemed plausible

NOTE: it was mainly the FRENCH whites targeted - the Poles, Germans and American merchants were spared.

WE need to consider this genocide in light of
1. the previous brutality of French slavery in Haiti (the only comparison could be to galley slaves)
2. the Napoleonic brutal re-imposition of slavery
3. the Napoleonic imprisonment of Toussaint Louverture, who had pursued a policy of live-and-let-live and wanted to be part of France
4. the support of the whtie population for Napoleonic re-enslavement

[Cronos]

packrat - regarding the Haitian GENOCIDE of white people, I wrote a post above

[Cronos]

Peter - the Dominican republic, despite sharing the same island of Hispaniola has

1. a different racial makeup
2. a very different slavery history
3. a very different post-colonial history

1. "different racial makeup" - The ethnic composition of the Dominican population is 70% mixed race, 18% white, and 12% black; while 95% of the Haitian population is black.

Here is a breakup of the maternal (Y) and paternal (mtDNA) breakdowns of the antilles

Dominicans are mixed-race and, subjectively speaking - extremely beautiful imho

Dania Ramirez is an example - and shows the mixing of races.

The Dominicans have forged their own culture that is heavily Hispanic.

2. "colonial history" - the Spanish didn't have the same kind of racial rigidity the French had. They intermarried. They also didn't create a whole-scale slave economy. NOTE that this is also why Santo Domingo was poor, while Saint-Dominique became the wealthiest colony in the New World - yes, it was richer and produced more wealth than the North American colonies combined

3. "post-colonial history" - Haiti had to brutally fight and fight and re-fight for its independence against a brutal French state (in comparison the English were far less brutal in their colonies) . That, coupled with the colonial history led to Haiti being a very militaristic state that controlled the entirety of Hispaniol from 1822 to 1844, ignoring the Dominicans Spanish language, Catholic religion and cultural differences, which led to the Dominicans fighting for freedom from Haiti in 1844 and the Dominicans seeing the HAITIANs, not the Spanish as oppressors

BOTH had innumerable coups, but since the 1960s the DR has been stable and corruption stable.

This is reflected in the GDP per capita growth since the 1950s

[Cronos]

DNA isn’t destiny.

Your upbringing, environment and choices play a role as important or sometimes more important than DNA

[Cronos]

OP - the Americo-Liberians didn’t become the most ruthless slave-owners, I would argue that the previous Dahomey tribes in west africa were worse.

But the Americo-Liberians, the freed slaves retained their ante-bellum southern culture, religion and language and became the elite for 100+ years until they were brutally killed or expelled in the 1980s.

By the time they were sent there, the people had no relationship with the local African culture - and their ancestors might have been from other parts of Africa. They were no longer really “Africans” culturally

[Cronos]

I don’t think the “white richer nations” would have helped a state founded by slaves. The USA would not, neither would the UK or Spain. The other states didn’t matter.

[Cronos]

Verginius is correct.

the endonym (i.e. self-term) for the Slavs is Slovianie meaning people who can speak (from Slowo, the word for, well, “word”). As an aside, the Slavic term for Germanic peoples is “Niemcy” or “mute-people” i.e. people who can’t speak. I find it hilarious to think of the early Slavs meeting the early Germanics and going “what the Czarnobog is this guy saying? He must be unable to speak” :)