The Haitian Revolution: Part 2

by Jack R. Johnson 08.2022

Image by Catherine McGuigan

After twelve bloody years, the rebellious slaves of Haiti led by Toussaint Louverture, managed to beat back Napoleon Bonaparte’s military, one of the greatest armies in European history. Haiti declared sovereignty on January 1st, 1804—the first country in the Americas to abolish slavery, and the only state in history established by a successful slave revolt. Despite this military victory, Haiti’s independence would be short lived. In the military sense, they had won their independence, but the European powers, as well as the United States made Haiti pay for its freedom again and again.

The French hardly conceded defeat, even though Napoleon lost more men in Haiti than at Waterloo. In 1825, a squadron of French warships once again loomed off Haiti’s coastline. Some 500 French canons were aimed at their ports. Effectively cut off from the rest of the world, Haitians faced the dour prospect of another decades long war whose ending was in doubt. They knew the world was against them.  American lawmakers in particular did not want enslaved people in their own country to be inspired by Haiti’s revolution. President Thomas Jefferson – fearing that slaves gaining their independence would spread to the United States-- sought the international isolation of Haiti during his tenure. He assisted the French blockade intended to punish Haiti and closed U.S. ports to all Haitian vessels. The U.S. slaveholders were terrified of that “contagion” known as “liberty.” 

Cut off from any assistance, and surrounded again by one of the world’s largest militaries, Haiti’s president Jean-Pierre Boyer decided to bow to the France’s outrageous demand-- a ransom payment for their freedom. According to the New York Times, “Haiti became the world’s first and only country where the descendants of enslaved people paid reparations to the descendants of their masters — for generations.” Worse, because the sum was so exorbitant for that period, some 150 million dollars (equal to about $21 billion today), Haiti was forced to borrow money in order to pay the “debt.” A French bank, Crédit Industriel et Commercial, serviced the loan and charged Haiti an exorbitant interest rate. Those funds in turn were used to finance the building of the Eiffel tower. Haiti did not finish paying off this so called “double debt” until 1947.

The New York Times recently tabulated how much money Haitians paid to the families of their former masters and to the French banks and investors and found “that Haitians paid about $560 million in today’s dollars.” They called the burden imposed on Haiti “perhaps the single most odious sovereign debt in history.”

As World War I began in Europe, France refocused on the war front and from 1910 to 1911, the U. S. took a financial interest in the small island. At the behest of President Wilson and the City National Bank, on December 17, 1914 eight United States Marines walked into the Haitian national bank and took custody of Haiti's gold reserve of about US $500,000 – the equivalent of $13,526,578 in 2022 dollars – for ostensible “safe-keeping in New York.” They insisted that Haiti was on the brink of defaulting on their debt despite consistent payments for the better half of a century. 

After Haitian president Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was assassinated in 1915, President Wilson sent the U.S. Marines to Haiti again, claiming the invasion was an attempt to prevent anarchy. In reality, the Wilson administration was protecting U.S. assets in the area (and being a bit paranoid about a possible German invasion.) As U.S.M.C. General Smedley Butler noted derisively, “I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues.” General Butler led the U.S. forces in Haiti, describing himself as a “racketeer for capitalism.”

The subsequent Haitian-American “Treaty” of 1915 created a Haitian military force, a gendarmerie, made up of Americans and Haitians and controlled by the U.S. Marines. The United States gained complete control over Haitian finances, and the right to intervene in Haiti whenever the U.S. Government deemed necessary. The U.S. Government also forced the election of a new pro-American President, Philippe Sudr Dartiguenave. 

The new Haitian constitution was written by a young Assistant Secretary of the Navy named Franklin D. Roosevelt. The document instituted martial law, required U.S. approval of all Haitian legislation, and erased longtime prohibitions against foreign investors buying land in Haiti. Under the authority of what many Haitians called the “Roosevelt Constitution,” white-owned firms, many from the United States, established sugarcane, cacao, banana, cotton, and tobacco plantations. This was coupled with the return of corveé—essentially, forced labor-- a labor regime that closely resembled slavery. The Haitian legislature did not want to pass this constitution, so President Wilson forced Haitian President Dartiguenave to dissolve the legislature, which did not meet again until 1929.

Finally, in 1934, to be consistent with President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy, the United States officially withdrew from Haiti while retaining economic connections. 

During the two decades of the U.S. occupation of Haiti, approximately 3,000 Haitians were killed by American Marine forces, while the occupiers suffered merely 16 fatalities. The Marine occupation left behind a powerful US-trained military that proved useful to future strong men in the country. The most notorious of which was Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier who would come to power on the back of this army in 1957. 

Today, the life expectancy for Haiti’s 10 million people stands at 63.5 years. More than half of the population lives on less than $2 a day. Deepening social misery has forced Haitians to flee the country in droves. Many Haitians drown in the Caribbean while risking the perilous journey to the United States on small motor boats. The images of American border guards on horseback brutally rounding up Haitian immigrants near the Rio Grande in September of 2021 was searing precisely because it encapsulated so well the treatment of Haiti as a nation over nearly two centuries. 

As of February 2022, the Biden administration had deported more than 20,000 Haitian refugees back to the impoverished island nation.