The tragic hope of revolutionary Haiti

[sharminsumu]

Much of this debt to France was the legacy of what University of Virginia scholar Marlene Daut calls “the greatest heist in history”: surrounded by French gunboats, a newly independent Haiti was forced to pay reparations to his slave owners. You read correctly. It was the old one slaves from Haiti, not the French slave owners, who were forced to pay for repairs. Haitians have compensated their oppressors and their descendants for the privilege of being free. It took over a century for Haiti to pay off the reparation debts.

Haiti gained independence from France in 1804, and it was almost immediately made a pariah state by the world powers. It was an independent black-ruled nation – created by slaves who had cast aside their chains and fought their oppressors for their freedom – at a time when white-ruled nations applied brutal and racist systems of exploitation in the whole world.

had been the crown jewel of the French Empire. It was the most phone number library lucrative colony in the whole world. French planters forced African slaves to produce sugar, coffee, and other cash crops for the world market. The system seemed to be working well. That is, until the French and American revolutions helped inspire, in 1791, what became the largest and most successful slave revolt in the world. Against all odds, the slaves won. Former slaves sent slave owners rushing to France and America – and Haitians successfully repelled subsequent efforts to re-enslave them. Haiti was the first nation to permanently ban slavery.

But as a nation of freed black slaves, Haiti was a threat to the existing world order. President Thomas Jefferson has worked to isolate Haiti diplomatically and strangle it economically, fearing that Haiti’s success will inspire slave revolts in his country. With the invention and spread of cotton gin, slavery was becoming much more lucrative just as a free Haiti was born, and slave owners in the United States and other countries latched on and took over. extended the inhuman means of production. Haitian success was seen as a threat to this system for decades, and the United States did not officially recognize Haiti until 1862, when slavery began to be abolished.