We can debate the brutality of slavery all day long. I never said it was a good thing. But, when Haiti slaughtered white women and children, they sealed their fate which led to the treaty that made them pay.
Countries negotiate with what power they have and Haiti had none by the time the 1825 treaty was done. Are we going to revisit all the Indian treaties from the 18th and 19th centuries?
They treated me bad isn’t going to fly with people when you are genociding a race because of their color. AND if they are white women and children, white countries aren’t coming to your aid. Not for treaties or anything else!
In 1825 though, the successor Bourbon regime in France sent a fleet of gunboats to Haiti and demanded a massive indemnity based not on French lives lost but on the value of the slaves and their earnings lost to France. In return, Haiti was recognized by France and not attacked. With defaults and refinancing, impoverished Haiti had to make payments until 1947, a cumulatively crushing burden that did great and enduring damage to Haiti's development.
If there is such a thing as an odious debt, that qualifies. Modern France is correctly embarrassed by the subject.
“We can debate the brutality of slavery all day long”
Not really - here we’re talking about the brutality of FRENCH slaves IN Haiti in the 1700s - it was considered brutal by the Standards of the day, not by today’s standard (where it would be incredibly brutal).
Slavery is using a person without pay and forcing them to do some work - but it doesn’t HAVE to be brutal.
Some slave-owners in English colonies were not —> read the biography of Olaudah Equiano - a man who was enslaved as a 11 year old by Africans and then later sold to people who took him to the Carribean: he describes different types of slave owners:
To me, it would seem logical that you want to treat the slaves kindly so that they don’t rise up. You would also see better returns and you’d have less “replacement cost”.
Many of the slave-holders did understand this.
But we KNOW that in Haiti, they did not - the brutality was remarked upon by French observers of the time