My small parish in upstate NY was “twinned” with a rural Haitian parish far from PoP after the massive earthquake. Many years later we are still helping them. With our help they have rebuilt their well, one room school, their thatched ‘health clinic.’ People are hardworking & ambitious for their children but even there the Gangs control the main roads. Why does Santo Domingo thrive and Haiti fester?
Haiti's debt to France was in the low millions, not $21 billion. Of course, Haiti had difficulty paying. Subsistence farming (as in Haiti) does not produce hard currency exports. The US occupation after 1915 was actually highly beneficial (to Haiti). After the Americans left, the country went downhill. To put this is perspective, the other part of Hispaniola (the Dominican Republic) is thriving.
Thanks for reading and for your comments. Yes, indeed, the DR is such a contrast. The reparations paid by Haiti to France are estimated at anywhere between $20 billion and $30 billion in today's terms.
You have done an excellent job of packing a complicated history into a small space.
I am of Basque -Creole heritage and have read everything that I can get my hands on about Haitian history. Fortunately, the French slaveholders were a literate bunch. Unfortunately, the record is necessarily one-sided and often ridiculously melodramatic.
Haiti’s legacy is the most extreme example of the legacy of the unique violence of chattel slavery. One finds the offspring of violence everywhere that the European system existed, including the American South.
American involvement doubled the Haitian tragedy. The racist Wilson sent equally racist soldiers to Haiti to « fix » the nation’s problems by trying to reconstruct the despised plantation system, something America tried to do in a more benign fashion in Cuba. In effect, Wilson exported Jim Crow to Haiti. I am sure that you know the history of Americans teaching Haitian kids in English and how Americans jettisoned the French tradition of classical learning in favor of a southern system of agricultural skills.
I am of the opinion that we will never solve the problem of the violence that Europeans left behind through the slave system, including in the United States. There are differences between British, French, and Spanish slavery. In my opinion, the British and French legacies are quantifiably worse.
Thank you so much for reading and for your thoughtful and insightful observations on Haiti's tragic legacy. It's so true that the cultural trauma that comes from systemic violence is desperately hard to overcome for any society. The DRC indeed. However, one can but hope for some reckoning – with more time (more than a few centuries), the ability to share experiences across the world and a sober acknowledgement of the pain from those who inherited the profits of that legacy.
Let me quote from Wikipedia "Haiti paid 112 million francs to France, about $560 million in 2022". Even $560 million is probably an overestimate. Each franc is worth far less than an dollar. In real life, Haiti is richest nation on Earth, in excuses.
Just to address the issue of what was paid in real time and what it's estimated to be worth in today's terms:
In 2020, Marlene Daut, Professor of African Diaspora Studies at the University of Virginia, wrote the following: “Contemporary assessments, furthermore, reveal that with the interest from all the loans, which were not completely paid off until 1947, Haitians ended up paying more than twice the value of the colonists’ claims. Recognizing the gravity of this scandal, French economist Thomas Piketty acknowledged that France should repay at least $28 billion to Haiti in restitution”.
And two years ago, The New York Times conducted an exercise it claimed "leading historians say is a first" in which it "spent months sifting through thousands of pages of original government documents, some of them centuries old and rarely, if ever, reviewed by historians. We scoured libraries and archives in Haiti, France and the United States to study the double debt and its effect on Haiti, financially and politically". The NYT's tabulation of "how much money Haitians paid to the families of their former masters and to the French banks and investors who held that first loan to Haiti, not just in official government payments on the double debt but also in interest and late fees, year after year, for decades".
You (and Wikipedia) are right that Haitians paid about $560 million at the time, but as the paper said, "that doesn’t nearly capture the true loss”.
As the report noted: “If that money had simply stayed in the Haitian economy and grown at the nation’s actual pace over the last two centuries — rather than being shipped off to France, without any goods or services being provided in return — it would have added a staggering $21 billion to Haiti over time, even accounting for its notorious corruption and waste".
The paper said that when it shared its findings and analysis with 15 leading economists and financial historians "who study developing economies and how public debt affects their growth", all but one agreed with the $21 billion estimate.
The $21 billion number comes from Thomas Piketty (a leftist). Here are the actual facts. In 1838, Haiti's debt to France was reduced to 90 million francs. The franc to dollar conversion ratio was around 5.75:1 (back then) or around $15.65 million. Since the population of Haiti back then was a bit less than 1 million, we are talking about a trivial debt per-person.
I've already addressed what the amount Haiti paid is estimated to be worth in today's terms. So I'll just say this to address the apparent thrust of your argument: Regardless of the amount, no one should ever have to pay for their own freedom. Let's leave it at that. Thanks.
If other countries similar to Haiti were successful, the payments excuse might be plausible. They (the other countries) are not . Let me offer a few example. One country has no natural resources (not even enough water) and was occupied by a deadly foreign army in WWII. The country is Singapore and it is only 38 times richer than Haiti. Another comparison is Japan. Japan has earthquakes, typhoons, and very rugged terrain. It was occupied by a foreign army after WWII (not as deadly). It is "only" 16 times richer than Haiti.
The $21 billion is the product of academia and should not be trusted as even remotely accurate.
S. Pinker mentions this. I will elaborate. For better or worse (certainly worse), academia is a bastion of intolerant, religious, anti-science, anti-truth thinking these days. Consider two propositions, “sex is a spectrum” and “race has no biological basis”. Neither statement is evenly remotely true. However, 99% of students and faculty would affirm the “truth” of these statements, at least publicly. Like it or not, universities have become deeply irrational. It is somewhat unclear if the race nonsense or the sex nonsense is more deeply held. This academic insanity is somewhat new (perhaps not, see below). From “Sex is a Spectrum” (https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2021/08/07/sex-is-a-spectrum/) a comment by Spencer
“Lol. I introduce students every semester to various non-overlapping or barley overlapping graphs by sex. Every year their jaws drop further. Twenty years ago barely an eyebrow was raised.”
The converse point is that universities were deeply religious and intolerant even years ago. The famous book “The Blank Slate” was written in 2003. The Summers affair (at Harvard) is from 2006. The Pinker/Spleke debate is from 2005. It was clear then (and still is) that Spelke was/is a liar. Was she ever punished for lying? Of course, not.
Of course, these problems are by no means limited to Harvard. Over at Yale, a talk was given on 'The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind'. The speaker (Dr. Aruna Khilanani) explicitly fantasized about killing innocent white people and then was offended because Yale would not give her the recording. The following is from her speech.
“I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body, and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step. Like I did the world a fucking favor. (Time stamp: 7:17)”
These issues are by no means limited to elite universities. At University of Southern Maine, an instructor (Christy Hammer) dared to say that there are two sexes All but one student (21 of 22) walked out in protest. The one student later caved to the fanatics. Of course, Hammer was entirely correct.
My small parish in upstate NY was “twinned” with a rural Haitian parish far from PoP after the massive earthquake. Many years later we are still helping them. With our help they have rebuilt their well, one room school, their thatched ‘health clinic.’ People are hardworking & ambitious for their children but even there the Gangs control the main roads. Why does Santo Domingo thrive and Haiti fester?
Haiti's debt to France was in the low millions, not $21 billion. Of course, Haiti had difficulty paying. Subsistence farming (as in Haiti) does not produce hard currency exports. The US occupation after 1915 was actually highly beneficial (to Haiti). After the Americans left, the country went downhill. To put this is perspective, the other part of Hispaniola (the Dominican Republic) is thriving.
Thanks for reading and for your comments. Yes, indeed, the DR is such a contrast. The reparations paid by Haiti to France are estimated at anywhere between $20 billion and $30 billion in today's terms.
You have done an excellent job of packing a complicated history into a small space.
I am of Basque -Creole heritage and have read everything that I can get my hands on about Haitian history. Fortunately, the French slaveholders were a literate bunch. Unfortunately, the record is necessarily one-sided and often ridiculously melodramatic.
Haiti’s legacy is the most extreme example of the legacy of the unique violence of chattel slavery. One finds the offspring of violence everywhere that the European system existed, including the American South.
American involvement doubled the Haitian tragedy. The racist Wilson sent equally racist soldiers to Haiti to « fix » the nation’s problems by trying to reconstruct the despised plantation system, something America tried to do in a more benign fashion in Cuba. In effect, Wilson exported Jim Crow to Haiti. I am sure that you know the history of Americans teaching Haitian kids in English and how Americans jettisoned the French tradition of classical learning in favor of a southern system of agricultural skills.
I am of the opinion that we will never solve the problem of the violence that Europeans left behind through the slave system, including in the United States. There are differences between British, French, and Spanish slavery. In my opinion, the British and French legacies are quantifiably worse.
Thank you so much for reading and for your thoughtful and insightful observations on Haiti's tragic legacy. It's so true that the cultural trauma that comes from systemic violence is desperately hard to overcome for any society. The DRC indeed. However, one can but hope for some reckoning – with more time (more than a few centuries), the ability to share experiences across the world and a sober acknowledgement of the pain from those who inherited the profits of that legacy.
Let me quote from Wikipedia "Haiti paid 112 million francs to France, about $560 million in 2022". Even $560 million is probably an overestimate. Each franc is worth far less than an dollar. In real life, Haiti is richest nation on Earth, in excuses.
Thank you for this.
Just to address the issue of what was paid in real time and what it's estimated to be worth in today's terms:
In 2020, Marlene Daut, Professor of African Diaspora Studies at the University of Virginia, wrote the following: “Contemporary assessments, furthermore, reveal that with the interest from all the loans, which were not completely paid off until 1947, Haitians ended up paying more than twice the value of the colonists’ claims. Recognizing the gravity of this scandal, French economist Thomas Piketty acknowledged that France should repay at least $28 billion to Haiti in restitution”.
And two years ago, The New York Times conducted an exercise it claimed "leading historians say is a first" in which it "spent months sifting through thousands of pages of original government documents, some of them centuries old and rarely, if ever, reviewed by historians. We scoured libraries and archives in Haiti, France and the United States to study the double debt and its effect on Haiti, financially and politically". The NYT's tabulation of "how much money Haitians paid to the families of their former masters and to the French banks and investors who held that first loan to Haiti, not just in official government payments on the double debt but also in interest and late fees, year after year, for decades".
You (and Wikipedia) are right that Haitians paid about $560 million at the time, but as the paper said, "that doesn’t nearly capture the true loss”.
As the report noted: “If that money had simply stayed in the Haitian economy and grown at the nation’s actual pace over the last two centuries — rather than being shipped off to France, without any goods or services being provided in return — it would have added a staggering $21 billion to Haiti over time, even accounting for its notorious corruption and waste".
The paper said that when it shared its findings and analysis with 15 leading economists and financial historians "who study developing economies and how public debt affects their growth", all but one agreed with the $21 billion estimate.
The $21 billion number comes from Thomas Piketty (a leftist). Here are the actual facts. In 1838, Haiti's debt to France was reduced to 90 million francs. The franc to dollar conversion ratio was around 5.75:1 (back then) or around $15.65 million. Since the population of Haiti back then was a bit less than 1 million, we are talking about a trivial debt per-person.
I've already addressed what the amount Haiti paid is estimated to be worth in today's terms. So I'll just say this to address the apparent thrust of your argument: Regardless of the amount, no one should ever have to pay for their own freedom. Let's leave it at that. Thanks.
If other countries similar to Haiti were successful, the payments excuse might be plausible. They (the other countries) are not . Let me offer a few example. One country has no natural resources (not even enough water) and was occupied by a deadly foreign army in WWII. The country is Singapore and it is only 38 times richer than Haiti. Another comparison is Japan. Japan has earthquakes, typhoons, and very rugged terrain. It was occupied by a foreign army after WWII (not as deadly). It is "only" 16 times richer than Haiti.
The $21 billion is the product of academia and should not be trusted as even remotely accurate.
S. Pinker mentions this. I will elaborate. For better or worse (certainly worse), academia is a bastion of intolerant, religious, anti-science, anti-truth thinking these days. Consider two propositions, “sex is a spectrum” and “race has no biological basis”. Neither statement is evenly remotely true. However, 99% of students and faculty would affirm the “truth” of these statements, at least publicly. Like it or not, universities have become deeply irrational. It is somewhat unclear if the race nonsense or the sex nonsense is more deeply held. This academic insanity is somewhat new (perhaps not, see below). From “Sex is a Spectrum” (https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2021/08/07/sex-is-a-spectrum/) a comment by Spencer
“Lol. I introduce students every semester to various non-overlapping or barley overlapping graphs by sex. Every year their jaws drop further. Twenty years ago barely an eyebrow was raised.”
The converse point is that universities were deeply religious and intolerant even years ago. The famous book “The Blank Slate” was written in 2003. The Summers affair (at Harvard) is from 2006. The Pinker/Spleke debate is from 2005. It was clear then (and still is) that Spelke was/is a liar. Was she ever punished for lying? Of course, not.
Of course, these problems are by no means limited to Harvard. Over at Yale, a talk was given on 'The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind'. The speaker (Dr. Aruna Khilanani) explicitly fantasized about killing innocent white people and then was offended because Yale would not give her the recording. The following is from her speech.
“I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body, and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step. Like I did the world a fucking favor. (Time stamp: 7:17)”
These issues are by no means limited to elite universities. At University of Southern Maine, an instructor (Christy Hammer) dared to say that there are two sexes All but one student (21 of 22) walked out in protest. The one student later caved to the fanatics. Of course, Hammer was entirely correct.