On the 6th of December, 1492 Christopher Columbus landed in the northwest area of Haiti at a natural harbor at the present day city of Mole St. Nicolas. Within fifty years it is estimated that almost half a million Taino Arawak Indians, indigenous to the island, had died, enslaved by the Spaniards to work in their gold mines. This genocide led to the abolishment of Indian slavery, which incidentally led to the rise in the African slave trade that would create the foundations for the current demographics of the island of Hispaniola. With the indigenous population decimated and its resources of gold dwindling, the Spanish began to lose interest in the island. With the island sparsely populated and neglected by its colonizers, it began to attract pirates from Britain and France. They first settled on the island of Tortuga off the northwest coast and slowly moved eastward. The Spaniards remaining moved to the eastern side of the island, to what is now the Dominican Republic. With the British outnumbered, the French began more aggressively settling the island. This shift laid the groundwork for the Treaty of Ryswick, written in 1697, it formally divided the island between Spain and France, and recognized the new colony of Saint Domingue, which would eventually come to be called Haiti. The French maintained control over Saint Domingue for nearly a century, during which time it would become one of the richest colonies in the world. Exporting mostly sugar, but also coffee, indigo, and cotton – its exports would dwarf all the exports of the British Caribbean colonies combined. This prosperity of course was based upon slavery.
The class divisions of the colony were drawn on racial lines, with the white French settlers forming the upper crust, the mulattos forming a small middle caste that occupied a tense middle ground, and finally the majority population of African slaves forming the bottom caste. Mulattos were extended the same legal rights as the white elites. Yet social conventions did bind them to some degree. The black majority on the other hand was bound by the strict Code Noir, which stripped them of almost all rights. These three competing classes were held in check by the colonial governor and the support of the French military. When the French Revolution broke out, all three castes felt they could turn the situation to their advantage. The white French elites seeking further autonomy and economic control, the mulattos looking to achieve full political rights, and the slave majority taking the literal terms of the revolution to win freedom. For two years general unrest occurred as the whites and mulattos fought for power, while slaves were enlisted to fight for their masters. This dynamic was to change in August of 1791 when a voodoo ceremony in the forests of Bois-Caiman united slave leaders and formed the foundations for the only slave revolt in the world to successfully take power and keep it. Eventually led by a brilliant tactician, Toussaint Louverture, the slave rebellion was able to make and break alliances between competing factions to gain power. Maneuvering between the Spanish colonists in Santo Domingo to the west, French royalists, the white French elites, the mulattos, and the British army looking to take advantage of the unrest to capture the colony, Louverture was finally able to take full power in 1801 and declare himself Governor General.
The rise of Napoleon Bonaparte was to be the first major threat to the newly independent state. Napoleon did not like the idea of an army of slaves controlling France’s greatest colony and vowed to recapture it. He dispatched one of the largest forces to ever cross the Atlantic. A fleet of 86 ships bearing 22,000 French troops arrived on the shores of Saint Domingue. The slave army retreated before the massive and highly organized French to run guerilla campaigns from the mountain regions. Eventually, leading to a stalemate, Louverture surrendered and retired to his farm. The French realized they would never be able to reassert total control as long as Louverture was still alive, so they set a trap, arrested him, and imprisoned in France. From this, Louverture’s subordinate, Jean-Jacques Dessalines was to rise to power. The French forces, ravaged by yellow fever, were weakening. Dessalines, recognizing the opportunity, reorganized the slave army and drove the French from the colony in a bloody and quick campaign. Finally, on January 1st, 1804, Saint Domingue became Haiti, the world’s first black republic and the second free state in the Americas.
Although the French had gone, the style of rule – militaristic absolutism – was to remain. For the next century, every political ruler was automatically a military leader. In addition, the racial divides remained. With the upper crust of French elites gone, the mulattos and the black majority were to form two opposing sides which have been competing for power over the last two hundred years. The rule of Dessalines would only last for two years. In 1806, Dessalines was ambushed and killed for his attempts at securing absolute power. Henry Christophe succeeded Dessalines, but the mulattos to the south, unhappy with the continuation of absolute rule, broke away. From 1806 to 1820, Haiti was divided into two states, Christophe’s in the north and a mulatto controlled state in the south run by General Petion. Both states struggling to rebuild, were unable to revive the wealthy agrarian economies of the colonial era. Infrastructure began to decay and remote areas became isolated. Towns developed apart from rural countryside, and urban populations became culturally distinct from their rural counterparts. Unable to stem the dissolution of the plantation economies, Haitian exports dwindled and the country moved further into a subsistence state. A mulatto General from the south, General Boyer, took power after Petion’s death, and was able to reunite Haiti, as Christophe’s monarchy in the north crumbled and the self-labeled king shot himself. On the 17th of April, 1825, France negotiated with the reunified republic, and recognized Haiti as a sovereign nation, but this only occurred by Haiti paying a concession of 150 million francs to the disposed plantation owners of the colony. And so ironically, Haiti would become a recognized free state in a position of massive debt. This debt was to haunt Haiti up to modern times. As it established and maintain a long history of debt, and came to rely on loans from foreign nations, usually the United States to keep some sort of government in place.
Boyer’s government collapsed in 1843. It was destabilized by competing factions of mulatto elites and weakened by a series of natural disasters finished off by a massive earthquake in 1842 that destroyed villages and towns. A chaotic power struggle followed with five presidencies established in four years. It’s important at this time to point out external opinions of the young republic. Writers abroad viewed to the black republic through a racist lens; taking the constant power struggles and upheaval as evidence of black barbarism and an inability to create civilized self-government. In addition, the major power in the region, the United States, refused to recognize the nation for fear that acknowledging a free black state would destabilize its own system of slavery. Slowly Haiti would fall into further chaos. Between 1843 and 1915, the country witnessed twenty-two presidents, of which only one managed to finish his term in office. With Haiti racking up massive debts to foreign nations, specifically France and the US, and seemingly irreversible downward spiral of the violence, the US decided to invade the country in 1915. The Marines quickly established tactical control of the country. The US opted to control Haiti indirectly by putting in place a known Haitian president and by cooperating with the country’s elite. Resistance groups were formed over time, but ultimately failed in the face of and technological advanced and highly organized Marine force. During this time, the US continued to advance its own interests in the nation, using the American backed government to ousted German interests and put forth legislation allowing direct American investment and ownership in the nation. With the financial collapse of 1929, the United States began to withdraw from the country. Slowly putting in place more mulatto leaders to run the government and handing back control of the national bank and the generation of legislation. In 1934, the United States formally gave back independence to Haiti. In the end, US improvements to the nation did not last long. Infrastructure put into place during the period quickly decayed and the system of rule used by the Americans had only perpetuated the competition for power between the black majority and the mulatto elites, the latter largely benefitting from US occupation. The most significant legacy of the occupation, probably lies in the resentment that black intellectuals felt towards the mulatto power holders and their US backers. And a growing movement against powerful elites was born at this time. I won’t go into political back and forth that occurred between 1934 and 1957. The two important events during this time were the rise of the military as a political force and the growing underground movement of which a man named Francois Duvalier played a crucial role. In 1946 the US supported President Lescot, made a bid to extend his power, the reactionary backlash destabilized the government and the army stepped in to take control in a bloodless coup. The presidency of a man named Magloire ultimately failed, brought down by unrest and violence, supposedly orchestrated by the still shadowy figure of Dr. Francois Duvalier. An interim president put in place by the army failed almost immediately and the army declared that universal elections would be held on September 22nd, 1957. For this election, three candidates appeared – Louis Dejoie, Clement Jumelle, and Francois Duvalier. Of the three Duvalier was allowed to campaign freely while the other two were limited by military rulings. It was largely supposed the Duvalier was a military puppet, but nevertheless he won a majority of the vote in a peaceful election.
From 1957 to 1986 Duvalier and his son established dictatorial power of Haiti that was characterized by complete violent oppression of any opposition to power. This was maintained by the creation of a separate militia accountable only to Duvalier through which he was able to force the legislation and the army to do as he wished. He reorganized and fragmented the armed forces and armed a massive force of militia men, commonly referred to as the Toutons Macoutes. One of the major factors in Duvalier’s ability to maintain control was his ability to manipulate US aid for Haiti. The US, increasingly alarmed by the threat of communism and entering the throws of the Cold War, would come to essentially pay Duvalier millions in aid to prevent Haiti from falling to communism. The uneasy, nevertheless, unfaltering US support of Duvalier, would allow him to minimize outside threats and focus on the maintenance of power internally. The next twenty plus years would be marked by the back forth of uprising and revolt against Duvalier and his swift and violent reactions carried about the eagerly thuggish Toutons Macoutes. On the 21st of April, 1971, Francois Duvalier died and power passed to his young son Jean-Claude. Francois’s “fourteen year reign was the social and economic ruin of Haiti” (Ferguson 57). The country became the poorest in the western hemisphere and ranked as the worst in child mortality, illiteracy, and life expectancy. The consequential brain drain that resulted from Duvalier’s authoritarian rule had left a country without any professionals with which to manage its crises. The rule of the Duvalier was to slowly unravel under the reign of Jean-Claude. He made several political blunders, ousting or killing loyalists to his cause under fear of their potential threat to his power. His marriage to a mulatto elite would eventually allow the mulatto class to regain some power and Jean-Claude’s inability to maintain control over increasingly evident internal fractions amongst the powerful blacks that rose to power under his father and the mulatto elites associated with his wife would be his eventual undoing. His routing of Toutons Macoutes, limited his ability to control the militia and use it against any opposition from the army. But it also allowed for the rise of the Catholic church in voicing dissent to the regime, unable to use the crushing violence that his father was able to wield so easily, Jean-Claude could not quiet a growing resistance. Yet the final straw that caused the collapse of Duvalierism was the removal of US support under Ronald Reagan, Jean-Claude, could no longer play the theatrical games of showing the US that he was reforming Haiti, so that he could continue to receive the US aid he needed to prop up his government.
That essentially brings us up to modern times in Haiti. The country seems to be playing out the same histories over and over again. A US backed former priest came to power in 1990. And as Wikipedia seems to have the best synopsis of recent political events I will quote directly from there.
“In December 1990, the former priest
Jean-Bertrand Aristide won the
election. His mandate began on 7 February 1991. In August 1991, Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s government faced a
non-confidence vote within the Haitian Chamber of Deputies and Senate. 83 voted against him, and only 11 members voted in support of Aristide’s government. Following a Coup D'etat in September 1991 President Aristide flew into exile. In accordance with Article 149, of Haiti’s Constitution of 1987, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Nerette was named Provisional President and elections were called for December, 1991. These were blocked by the international community and chaos resulted extending into 1994.
In 1994, Haitian
General Raoul Cédras asked former
U.S. President Jimmy Carter to help avoid a
U.S. military invasion of Haiti.
[4] President Carter relayed this information to
President Clinton, who asked Carter, in his role as founder of
The Carter Center, to undertake a mission to Haiti with
Senator Sam Nunn,
D-
GA, and former
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman
Colin Powell.
[4] The team successfully negotiated the departure of Haiti's military leaders, and the peaceful entry of U.S. forces under
Operation Uphold Democracy, paving the way for the restoration of Jean-Bertrande Aristide as president.
[4]Aristide left the presidency in 1995. He was
re-elected in 2000. The election of 2000 was not recognized by the international community, which claimed that massive fraud had taken place[
citation needed]. The country continued to struggle. In 2004, after several months of popular demonstrations against him because of a poor economy and his corruption, and pressures exerted by the international community, especially by France, the USA and Canada, Aristide went into exile on 29 February 2004.”
Boniface Alexandre assumed interim authority. In February 2006, following
elections marked by uncertainties and popular demonstrations,
René Préval, close to Aristide and former president of the Republic of Haiti between 1995 and 2000, was elected.”
Haiti today remains a country ridden with strife. Over its two hundred year history, any progress made during a relatively stable regime was instantly undone by following periods of instability and violence. Its position as a weak and fragile state with a meager economy and poor infrastructure continues to factions to struggle back and forth as governments work to overcome significant obstacles to stability. The recent string of tropical storms in the summer of 2008 have plunged the nation into dire circumstances.
Bibliography:
Heinl, Robert D. and Nancy G. Heinl.
Written In Blood: The Story of the Haitian People 1492-1971. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978.
Ferguson, James.
Papa Doc, Baby Doc: Haiti and the Duvaliers. Oxford: Basil Blackwood Ltd, 1987.
Foster, Charles R. and Albert Valdman, eds.
Haiti - Today and Tomorrow: An Interdisciplinary Study. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984.
Works not cited in this paper, yet still a good reference for the interested reader:
Weil, Thomas E..
Area Handbook for Haiti. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1973.
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