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History of Haiti Internet Research
Project Topics:
19th c.
Haitian History (to 1915) Library of
Congress Country Studies: Haiti Christophe's Kingdom and Pétion's
Republic Decades of Instability, 1843-1915 The United States Occupation, 1915-34 Politics and the Military, 1934-57 Bob Corbett
Resources: Haitian 19th c History 1805-1915 Recent
Newspaper Articles: The Earthquake and After 2009-10 Alex
, Sparrow.
"The Devil in Haiti." Philosophy Helmet: Small Guide to Big
Ideas. N.p., n.d.
Web. 24 Sep 2010. <http://philosophyhelmet.com/the-devil-in-haiti>. 1825: The King of France demands payment from Haiti for the loss of property of French planters, for 150 million francs, or, in today’s money, $21 billion. From 1827, gunboats from France and Great Britain would frequently enter Haitian waters with the intention of intimidation. 1862: The United States finally recognizes Haiti, after fifty-eight years of hostility, as the Union was free of the slave states that refused to consider the Haitian Republic as anything other than a land of “rebel slaves.” 1872: German gunboats enter Haitian waters and stone-cold mug the Haitian government of fifteen thousand dollars. The Germans literally defecate on the Haitian flag. 1883: European empires and the United States had by this year drained a total of eighty million francs from the Haitian government by the threat of force. 1888: The United States backs a coup against the Haitian government. In 1891, Frederick Douglass resigns as US consul to Haiti over its hostile behavior towards Haiti. 1897: German warships again enter Haitian waters to demand payment, this time as indemnity for arresting a Haitian with a German father, for assault. The Germans demanded twenty thousand dollars, an apology to the German emperor, and a twenty-cannon salute. 1902: Since 1879, the Haitian government had lost 2.5 million dollars to the robbery of the European powers and the United States. Eighty percent of the national budget was given over to the repayment of “debts.” 1915 – 1934: The United States invades and occupies Haiti, and forces the government to sign a treaty making the nation a protectorate. In 1918, the US forces the Haitian people to approve a constitution drafted by FDR; the constitution includes the repeal of Dessalines’ ban against foreigners owning land. Once this restriction is lifted, Haiti is rapidly deforested by the foreign buyers, and its forests (revered in Voodoo) were replaced with foreign-owned rubber plantations. Rebellion against the US occupation in 1918 is suppressed with the murder of at least two thousand, perhaps as many as fifteen thousand, Haitians. Now that foreigners can own land, US investment enters Haiti to restructure the economy from the dignity of self-sufficient peasants with few exports to the desperation of a dispossessed proletariat working in desperate conditions. The US succeeded in retiring Haiti’s debt to the French, but also made it deeply indebted to the US. The US develops Haitian infrastructure – for exporting raw materials, not the use of its people – with forced labor. Forced labor includes reintroduction of the corvee, the feudal system of forced road-building, to build roads for the movement of US military forces. Haitians are used as cheap labor for other US Caribbean territories. FDR ends the occupation in 1934, but the United States maintains control of the nation’s customs houses until 1947. Said US General Smedley Butler of his long and distinguished military service, “I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.” 1937: Dominican dictator, Rafael Trujillo, reclaims territory ceded to Haiti under US arms, and massacres between eighteen thousand and thirty-five thousand Haitian peasants in a three-day period. 1957: The Haitian army ensures the election of Dr. Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier as president, ousting the popular reformer, Daniel Fignole. Duvalier forms the “Volunteers for National Security,” known to history as the “tontons macoutes,” named for an evil creature of voodoo myth. Duvalier is a client of the United States: US Marines would help suppress violence, USAID trucks would be used to shanghai peasants to Duvalier’s rallies, and the government gives Duvalier forty million dollars in his first four years, though he was briefly cut off during the Kennedy Administration. Duvalier also had the support of the Vatican, which gave him the power to appoint his own Catholic clergy. Duvalier’s macoutes kill unknown tens of thousands Haitians during his rule. Papa Doc was succeeded by his fat, fat son, “Baby Doc,” on arrangement with President Nixon, in 1971. The nineteen year-old dictator hired a US public relations firm to help him with his image. During the Duvalier period, US capital begins using Haiti as a seat of cheap “assembly industry,” sending parts to Haiti to be assembled into finished goods. The US had negotiated measures with Duvalier to ensure that the Haitian people would remain disciplined labor, i.e. poor, including a nearly non-existent minimum wage, the violent suppression of labor unions, and the absence of taxes, making sure that foreign companies could suck Haiti dry by repatriating profits to the home countries of those businesses. 1963: Haitians begin to leave Haiti for the first time. The United States denies the “boat people” landing on American shores political asylum, denying that they are politically persecuted. 1986: The Haitians finally overthrow the younger Duvalier. Celebrations included destroying a statue of Christopher Columbus, and renaming its plaza after Charlemagne Peralte, the leader of rebels against the US occupation. However, the Council of National Government was full of Duvalierists, and state violence reappeared in a new form. 1990 – 2004: The popular Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected president. Aristide had worked in the democratic movement and had suffered numerous attacks on his life by the previous government. The New York Times denounced him as “strident,” and would continue to run stories repeating the verifiably false claims of Haitian rightists. Aristide refused his ten thousand dollar salary, initiated a mass literacy program, distributed land to peasants, and confronted organized crime and political corruption. So of course he had to go. But in this case, the military regime proved unable to govern, and in 1994, Aristide returned, and wisely disbanded the military, depriving the ruling class and the United States the primary tool by which to overthrow Haiti’s democratic remnants. This is why the United States had to directly kidnap the Aristide family in 2004 after his recent election to a second term as president. The nation has been governed by UN Peacekeepers since then, composed of US, French, and Brazilian forces. 2010: An earthquake destroys the vast shanty-town that the Haitian capital has been reduced to as a result of two centuries of foreign plundering of the wealth of Haiti. Millions of Americans generously donate large sums of money. The US government sends thousands of soldiers to stem imaginary violence while preventing the arrival of aid to the island. Haitian 19th c History Corbett, Bob.
"The
History of Haiti." World History Archive. N.p.,
1995. Web. 24 Sep 2010.
<http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/index-aa.html>. Independence and
early post-revolutionary period: 1804-1818 · Part I: Introduction
and setting the problematic facing the nation · Part II Formation of
economic and social life and the struggle for international recognition
1818-1843 · The rule of
Jean-Pierre Boyer · The result of the Petion/Boyer years: Subsistance
farming · Comments by Jeffrey Altepeter Formation of the
governmental patterns 1843-1915 · 1843-1847: A
transition period · The rule of Faustin Soulouque (Emperor Faustin 1) March, 1847 to January 15, 1849 The
First U.S. Occupation 1915-1934 Corbett, Bob.
"The
History of Haiti." World History Archive. N.p.,
1995. Web. 24 Sep 2010.
<http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/index-aa.html>. The 1915
Intervention In Haiti Paper by the International Law
of War Association, n.d. In 1915 the National City
Bank of New York was the principle U.S. investor in Haiti. Its interests were
threatened by the Haitian government's issuance of inflationary currency.
Documentation for what ensued. Self-Determining
Haiti: The American Occupation By James Weldon Johnson, The
Nation, 28 August 1920. James Weldon Johnson's 1920 exposé for The
Nation, By Helena Hill Weed, The
Nation, 9 November 1921. How Haiti was
reduced to the state of a conquered province; how the process was prepared in
Washington long before intervention began; how little excuse there was for
American intervention, and how little America has accomplished there apart
from killing Haitians. Franklin Roosevelt
on Haiti: 1928 By Bob Corbett, 15 June 1995.
Roosevelt, who visited Haiti, reflects on it and its significance for US
foreign policy. Corbett, Bob.
"The
History of Haiti." World History Archive. N.p.,
1995. Web. 24 Sep 2010. <http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/index-aa.html>. Politics and the military,
1934–1957 The Library of Congress,
Country Studies, December 1989. The Garde was a new
kind of military institution in Haiti. It was a force manned overwhelmingly
by blacks, with a United States-trained black commander, Colonel Démosthènes Pétrus Calixte. Most of the Garde's
officers, however, were mulattoes. The Garde was a
national organization; it departed from the regionalism that had
characterized most of Haiti's previous armies. Paul Magloire: Military ruler behind Haiti's brief golden age
of peace By Greg Chamberlain, in The
Guardian, 20 July 2001. Obituary of General Paul Magloire,
who ruled as President from 1950 to 1956, which in the writer's view was a
period of unusual peace and efforts at modernisation
before the long dictatorship of the Duvalier family laid waste to Haiti. Corbett, Bob.
"The
History of Haiti." World History Archive. N.p.,
1995. Web. 24 Sep 2010.
<http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/index-aa.html>. Review of Elizabeth
Abbot, Haiti: The Duvaliers
and their Legacy By Bob Corbett, 1989. The Duvalier regime
in comparison with post-Duvalierist Haiti A dialog from Bob Corbett's
Haiti list, December 1995. Does the Duvalier father-son regime really
represent the The Library of
Congress, Country Studies, December 1989 The Library of Congress,
Country Studies, December 1989. Like many Haitian leaders, Duvalier produced
a constitution to solidify his power. In 1961 he proceeded to violate the
provisions of that constitution. His public recognition of voodoo and its
practitioners and his private adherence to voodoo ritual, combined with his
reputed practice of magic and sorcery, enhanced his popular persona among the
common people. 4 March 1996. Perspective of a
youthful player in a band regarding support for Duvalier. Jean-Claude
Duvalier, 1971–1986 The Library of Congress,
Country Studies, December 1989. The first few years after Jean-Claude
Duvalier's installation as Haiti's ninth president-for-life were a largely
uneventful extension of his father's rule. Jean-Claude was a feckless,
dissolute nineteen-year-old. By Michael Norton, AP, 7 February
2003. Haitians mark the anniversary of Jean-Claude Duvalier's toppled
dictatorship in 1986, searching for a way out of their latest political and
economic crisis. Some say the country is better-off than in the days of
brutal dictatorship under
Corbett, Bob.
"HAITIAN HISTORY -- TOPICS." Bob Corbett's Home Page.
Webster University, n.d. Web. 24 Sep 2010.
<http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/history/history.htm>. U.S. Library of Congress,
Country Studies, December 1989. Jean-Claude Duvalier left behind a hastily
constructed interim junta, controlled by the armed forces. The Council of
Government (CNG) the VSN, but it avoided the politically difficult measure of
effectively halting the VSN's activities. This nonfeasance prompted angry
mobs to murder known members of the VSN and set in motion a cycle of
instability from which Haiti had yet to recover. Though Duvalier is
Gone, Haiti Still Needs Help By Mark Danner, Institute of
International Studies, UC Berkeley, The New York Times, 19 May
1986. Three months have passed since the former President, Jean-Claude
Duvalier flew off into exile and, clearly, building the Just past ten on a
sunny morning last month in Port-au-Prince... By Mark Danner, The New
Yorker, 16 July 1990. The fate of the post-Duvalierist
opposition that took root since Duvalier's departure in 1986. Now Haiti is on
its fifth government. After the 1987 massacre, the U.S. stopped funding the
government, and the military put together another election, and Leslie F. Manigat became President for four months, until General Namphy deposed him. Namphy
lasted three months before being deposed by another general, Prosper Avril, who managed to reign for eighteen months, with
increasing brutality, before a popular uprising forced him to flee the
country in March 1990. Recent Haitian
Politics 1990-2010 Corbett, Bob.
"HAITIAN HISTORY -- TOPICS." Bob Corbett's Home Page.
Webster University, n.d. Web. 24 Sep 2010.
<http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/history/history.htm>.Links:
“Who is
Aristide?” from The Uses of Haiti
p. 133f. by Paul
Farmer
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