[To me, there’s never been a more clear-cut case for reparations
than that of Haiti.] [[link removed]]

WHEN FRANCE EXTORTED HAITI – THE GREATEST HEIST IN HISTORY  
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Marlene Daut
June 30, 2020
The Conversation
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_ To me, there’s never been a more clear-cut case for reparations
than that of Haiti. _

Haitian President Jean-Pierre Boyer receiving Charles X’s decree
recognizing Haitian independence on July 11, 1825, Bibliotheque
Nationale de France

 

In the wake of George Floyd’s killing, there have been calls for
defunding police departments
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and demands for the removal of statues
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The issue of reparations for slavery has also resurfaced.

Much of the reparations debate has revolved around whether the United
States
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and the United Kingdom
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should finally compensate some of their citizens for the economic and
social costs of slavery that still linger today.

But to me, there’s never been a more clear-cut case for reparations
than that of Haiti.

I’m a specialist on colonialism and slavery
[[link removed]], and what France
did to the Haitian people after the Haitian Revolution is a
particularly notorious examples of colonial theft. France instituted
slavery on the island in the 17th century, but, in the late 18th
century, the enslaved population rebelled and eventually declared
independence. Yet, somehow, in the 19th century, the thinking went
that the former enslavers of the Haitian people needed to be
compensated, rather than the other way around.

Just as the legacy of slavery in the United States has created a gross
economic disparity between Black and white Americans
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the tax on its freedom that France forced Haiti to pay – referred to
as an “indemnity” at the time – severely damaged the newly
independent country’s ability to prosper.

The cost of independence

Haiti officially declared its independence from France in 1804. In
October 1806, the country was split into two, with Alexandre Pétion
ruling in the south and Henry Christophe
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ruling in the north.

Despite the fact that both of Haiti’s rulers were veterans of the
Haitian Revolution, the French had never quite given up on
reconquering their former colony.

In 1814 King Louis XVIII, who had helped overthrow Napoléon earlier
that year, sent three commissioners to Haiti to assess the willingness
of the country’s rulers to surrender. Christophe, having made
himself a king in 1811
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remained obstinate in the face of France’s exposed plan to bring
back slavery
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Threatening war, the most prominent member of Christophe’s cabinet,
Baron de Vastey
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insisted,“ Our independence will be guaranteed by the tips of our
bayonets!”

A portrait of Alexandre Pétion. Alfred Nemours Archive of Haitian
History, University of Puerto Rico

In contrast, Pétion, the ruler of the south, was willing to
negotiate, hoping that the country might be able to pay France for
recognition of its independence.

In 1803, Napoléon had sold Louisiana to the United States for 15
million francs
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Using this number as his compass, Pétion proposed paying the same
amount. Unwilling to compromise with those he viewed as “runaway
slaves
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Louis XVIII rejected the offer.

Pétion died suddenly in 1818, but Jean-Pierre Boyer, his successor,
kept up the negotiations. Talks, however, continued to stall due to
Christophe’s stubborn opposition.

[_Deep knowledge, daily._ Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter
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“Any indemnification of the ex-colonists,” Christophe’s
government stated, was “inadmissible
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Once Christophe died in October 1820, Boyer was able to reunify the
two sides of the country. However, even with the obstacle of
Christophe gone, Boyer repeatedly failed to successfully negotiate
France’s recognition of independence. Determined to gain at least
suzerainty [[link removed]] over the island
– which would have made Haiti a protectorate of France – Louis
XVIII’s successor, Charles X, rebuked the two commissioners Boyer
sent to Paris in 1824 to try to negotiate an indemnity in exchange for
recognition
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On April 17, 1825, the French king suddenly changed his mind. He
issued a decree stating France would recognize Haitian independence
but only at the price of 150 million francs – or 10 times the amount
the U.S. had paid for the Louisiana territory. The sum was meant to
compensate the French colonists for their lost revenues from slavery.

Baron de Mackau, whom Charles X sent to deliver the ordinance, arrived
in Haiti in July, accompanied by a squadron of 14 brigs of war
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carrying more than 500 cannons.

Rejection of the ordinance almost certainly meant war. This was not
diplomacy. It was extortion.

With the threat of violence looming, on July 11, 1825, Boyer signed
the fatal document
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which stated, “The present inhabitants of the French part of St.
Domingue shall pay … in five equal installments … the sum of
150,000,000 francs, destined to indemnify the former colonists.”

French prosperity built on Haitian poverty

Newspaper articles from the period
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reveal that the French king knew the Haitian government was hardly
capable of making these payments, as the total was more than 10 times
Haiti’s annual budget. The rest of the world seemed to agree that
the amount was absurd. One British journalist
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“enormous price” constituted a “sum which few states in Europe
could bear to sacrifice.”

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A facsimile of the bank note for the 30 million francs that Haiti
borrowed from a French bank. Lepelletier de Saint-Remy, 'Étude Et
Solution Nouvelle de la Question Haïtienne.'
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Forced to borrow 30 million francs from French banks to make the first
two payments, it was hardly a surprise to anyone when Haiti defaulted
soon thereafter. Still, the new French king
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expedition in 1838 with 12 warships to force the Haitian president’s
hand. The 1838 revision, inaccurately labeled “Traité
d’Amitié” – or “Treaty of Friendship” – reduced the
outstanding amount
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owed to 60 million francs, but the Haitian government was once again
ordered to take out crushing loans to pay the balance.

Although the colonists claimed that the indemnity would only cover
one-twelfth the value
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of their lost properties, including the people they claimed as their
slaves, the total amount of 90 million francs was actually five times
France’s annual budget
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The Haitian people suffered the brunt of the consequences of
France’s theft
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Boyer levied draconian taxes in order to pay back the loans. And while
Christophe had been busy developing a national school system
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during his reign, under Boyer, and all subsequent presidents, such
projects had to be put on hold. Moreover, researchers have found
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that the independence debt and the resulting drain on the Haitian
treasury were directly responsible not only for the underfunding of
education in 20th-century Haiti, but also lack of health care and the
country’s inability to develop public infrastructure.

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
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at least US$28 billion to Haiti in restitution.

A debt that’s both moral and material

Former French presidents, from Jacques Chirac
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to Nicolas Sarkozy, to François Hollande, have a history of punishing
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skirting
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or downplaying
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Haitian demands for recompense.

In May 2015, when French President François Hollande became only
France’s second head of state to visit Haiti, he admitted that his
country needed to “settle the debt
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Later, realizing he had unwittingly provided fuel for the legal claims
already prepared by attorney Ira Kurzban
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on behalf of the Haitian people – former Haitian President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide
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demanded formal recompense in 2002 – Hollande clarified that he
meant France’s debt was merely “moral
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To deny that the consequences of slavery were also material is to deny
French history itself. France belatedly abolished slavery in 1848 in
its remaining colonies of Martinique, Guadeloupe, Réunion and French
Guyana, which are still territories of France today. Afterwards, the
French government demonstrated once again its understanding of
slavery’s relationship to economics when it took it upon itself to
financially compensate the former “owners”
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people.

The resulting racial wealth gap
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is no metaphor. In metropolitan France 14.1% of the population
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poverty line. In Martinique and Guadeloupe, in contrast, where more
than 80% of the population is of African descent, the poverty rates
are 38% and 46%
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respectively. The poverty rate in Haiti
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is even more dire at 59%. And whereas the median annual income of a
French family is $31,112
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for a Haitian family.

These discrepancies are the concrete consequence of stolen labor from
generations of Africans and their descendants. And because the
indemnity Haiti paid to France is the first and only time a formerly
enslaved people were forced to compensate those who had once enslaved
them, Haiti should be at the center of the global movement for
reparations.[The Conversation]

Marlene Daut
[[link removed]], Professor
of African Diaspora Studies, _University of Virginia
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This article is republished from The Conversation
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the original article
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