Posted on 10/30/2024 7:18:20 AM PDT by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
it could be valued at $115 billion
On July 3, 1825, a French warship, accompanied by two other ships, sailed into the port of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital.
They were sent by Charles X, the newly installed king of France, to enforce an ordinance: In exchange for 150 million francs, and an enormous reduction in custom taxes on French goods, France would recognize its former colony’s independence.
trying to make socialism work, and voting for liberals
“the United States was an outlier: It freed people after the Civil War”
I know hindsight is 2020 but after the Civil War they should have sent every freed slave that wanted to go back to Africa back.
Very interesting. Thx for posting-OGINJ
Is there any discussion of the Dominican republic for comparison?
The Third World needs birth control and sterilizations. It’s the only way to defeat the cruel intergenerational cycle of poverty,
If slave importation had stopped in 1808, not many slaves in 1865 could go “back” to Africa, a place they had never been. Nevertheless, some did go to Liberia.
Everything bad in the world can be ultimately be traced back to the French.
By the 1850s, there were few slaves who were first generation.
Remember that the British started actively stopping slave ships in the early 1800s.
The USA did try that - in 1822, the American Colonization Society began sending free people of color to the Pepper Coast voluntarily to establish a colony.
I think if the USA offered to send people to Africa, they would have had a single-digit participation level. By that time, the black people were nativized, second or later generation Americans.
Southern slaveowners facing the looming prospect of civil war (with the likely result being hundreds of thousands killed) would very likely have been willing to negotiate a similar financial settlement.
Bill O’Reilly deemed President James Buchanan our worst president for needlessly failing to avoid civil war. Trump has similarly suggested that a settlement was likely possible, but for the poor quality of national (federal) political leadership at the time.
Too far back. Haitians should have picked a better path long ago.
married21 is correct. That’s why the term “African American” is odious - just as much as labelling someone “European American” would be odious
Better to categorize people by income and current location.
I think a black person in inner-city Cincinnati would have more in common with a white person in the same area and income level rather than with a black person living in rural Vermont.
Look up Liberia and Monrovia. Interesting stories.
I was there in the mid 70s and then again 20 years later. The place had deteriorated beyond belief.
Yes they should have.
Haiti’s poverty seems a mixture of France’s brutality, France putting huge amounts of debt on it but also corruption, military coups and not building its people resources.
Haiti was poor, but still a decent country before the Duvaliers took over. And the US looked the other way as long as the Duvaliers kept the Commies out.
That’s the first thing I thought of as well. The Dominican Republic is thriving while having a population descended from slaves. They behave differently and
expel Haitians when they find them.
I don’t know if it’s true but I read that Haiti’s real historical problem is that it was run by pirates for a long time. That’s their culture.
My point is (that I failed miserably to make is) if that offer had been provided after the Civil War it may have mitigated some of this reparations bull$hit we are hearing today.
“I was there in the mid 70s and then again 20 years later. The place had deteriorated beyond belief”
Oh I believe it.....look at what has now happened to South Africa now that the black Africans run everything.
Another example in a micro view is Habitat for Humanity houses.....many end up being drug dens.....make of that what you will.
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