Library of Congress
“St. Domingue: Prise De La Ravine Aux Couleuvres.” (Saint Domingue: Capture of Ravine-à-Couleuvres) Depiction of the Battle of Ravine-à-Couleuvres, 23 February 1802, during the Haitian Revolution, by Karl Girardet and Jean Jacques Outhwaite.
What’s happening in Haiti is a revolution. Opposition leaders have called for the resignation of President Jovenel Moise for corruption and a mismanaged economy. After months of protests asking the government to investigate accusations, including that allies of Moise have embezzled millions from a Venezuelan aid program to Haiti, they’ve pledged there will be no peace until the president steps down, and have deployed supporters to block streets and shut down businesses. Gas and food shortages and mushrooming inflation helped fuel those protests for the last three weeks in which several people have already died.
There has been no formal response from the White House regarding these protests, but it’s plausible to assume what the Trump Administration’s response will be—something similar to Donald Trump’s referral of Haiti as a “shithole” last year. His attitude is hardly unprecedented. It is indicative of American public policy surrounding Haiti since its founding—which continues to influence ongoing misery there today.
At the conclusion of the French and Indian War, the French ceded New Orleans and the rest of the Louisiana territory, to the Spanish with the Treaty of Fontainebleau in 1763. In the ensuing decades, the United States, newly independent from Britain, attempted numerous times to acquire the city as a key port for exporting materials to foreign markets. Spain never relented.
While New Orleans was a business matter to Napoleon, Haiti was also a personal one, built on thwarting black self-determination.
During this same period, the French colony of Saint Domingue, today called Haiti and a crown jewel of France’s empire, was undergoing a revolution. More than half of the sugar and coffee consumed in the Americas and Europe had been produced by the island, and the enslaved population was the largest in the Caribbean, about 500,000 people. In 1793, a formerly enslaved man, Toussaint L’Ouverture, seized government control and declared an end to slavery on the island. Over the next decade, L’Ouverture and his army successfully defended themselves from repeated attempts by both the French and the Spanish to retake the island.
The rebellion, deeply perturbing to U.S. politicians and especially slaveholders in the American south, led to increasing U.S. hostility toward the new island republic. Thomas Jefferson encouraged Napoleon Bonaparte to take back French control of the island. Napoleon’s sights were set on establishing French power in New Orleans, but he was compelled to recapture Saint Domingue too. While New Orleans was a business matter to the French despot, Saint Domingue was also a personal one, built on thwarting black self-determination.
“My decision to destroy the authority of the Blacks in Saint Domingue is not so much based on considerations of commerce and money,” Napoleon wrote, “as on the need to block forever the forward march of Blacks in the world.”
In 1801, Napoleon sent an army of 50,000 to Haiti to restore French rule. L’Ouverture was successfully captured, but partial Haitian victories combined with outbreaks of malaria and yellow fever among the invading troops, caused the French forces to dwindle. Ultimately, Napoleon abandoned his campaign for a French empire in the region, and ceded the Louisiana Territory, including New Orleans, to the United States. Jefferson offered $10 million for New Orleans in 1800; Napoleon sold all of Louisiana for $15 million in 1803.
In 1804, Haiti declared independence, becoming the hemisphere’s first independent black republic. The victorious islanders named their nation Haiti, the name the Taino inhabitants had for the territory before the arrival of the Spanish. Under Jean Jacques Dessalines, the country’s 1805 Constitution reaffirmed the abolition of slavery and erased color distinctions—all citizens of the nation were identified as black in the eyes of the law. Nothing signified this more symbolically than Dessalines ripping the white from the French flag to create a new one for Haiti.
But Haitians were caught between a rock and a hard place. The western powers colluded to never allow Haiti to rebuild, burdening it with war reparations or a threat of perpetual war. Haiti would never receive the opportunity to build its society using the riches of the land that western empires would continue to exploit.
Reparations to the French along with German occupation followed by an American occupation led to political instability and the installation of a series of dictators. Ironically, the French received almost double the francs in reparations from Haiti than they received in payment from the United States for the sale of Louisiana.
The U.S. did not recognize the sovereignty of the nation until 1862.
Successive U.S. governments denied Haiti’s place as the first true democracy of the western hemisphere; acknowledging the Haitian independence would mean facing its own failure to live up to its own declaration that all men and women are created equal. Acknowledging Haiti would have been a blow to racial capitalism and an admission that whiteness was not supreme over blackness.
The U.S. did not recognize the sovereignty of the nation until 1862.
Pundits and demagogues alike continue to generate false narratives such as Haiti’s history of “bad luck,” a progress-resistant culture, and even a “satanic pact.”
What is true is that the enormous natural wealth of Haiti was taken by the colonial West at the dawn of its freedom. The Western world could never forgive black people defeating a European power. It was never up to the Haitian people to determine their own course. Haiti is not a shithole, but it has been plundered of its resources and stripped of its liberty by Western powers, including the United States.
To quote an 1893 speech by Frederick Douglass: “Haiti is black, and we have not yet forgiven Haiti for being black or forgiven the Almighty for making her black.”