Haiti - History and Context?

AndyHilmer · July 11, 2021, 5:17am

I don’t know enough about Haiti, apart from the one thing I trust, that France and the US fucked them over for centuries.

Lucy_Gothro1 · July 11, 2021, 6:11am

There’s this - which starts with the word “Hi” for some weird reasoon; it’s semi-protected and I can’t remember my password to get into my account to fix it.

Also, the book reviewed herein:

Wanderfound · July 11, 2021, 6:31am

Obligatory:

See also:

And for a snippet of post-revolutionary history…

In 1915 the United States, responding to complaints to President Woodrow Wilson from American banks to which Haiti was deeply in debt, occupied the country. The occupation of Haiti lasted until 1934. The US occupation was resented by Haitians as a loss of sovereignty and there were revolts against US forces. Reforms were however carried out.

Under the supervision of the United States Marines, the Haitian National Assembly elected Philippe Sudré Dartiguenave president. He signed a treaty that made Haiti a de jure US protectorate, with American officials assuming control over the Financial Adviser, Customs Receivership, the Constabulary, the Public Works Service, and the Public Health Service for a period of ten years. The principal instrument of American authority was the newly created Gendarmerie d’Haïti, commanded by American officers.

In 1917, at the demand of US officials, the National Assembly was dissolved, and officials were designated to write a new constitution, which was largely dictated by officials in the US State Department and US Navy Department. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Under-Secretary for the Navy in the Wilson administration, claimed to have personally written the new constitution. This document abolished the prohibition on foreign ownership of land – the most essential component of Haitian law. When the newly elected National Assembly refused to pass this document and drafted one of its own preserving this prohibition, it was forcibly dissolved by Gendarmerie commandant Smedley Butler. This constitution was approved by a plebiscite in 1919, in which less than 5% of the population voted.

Wanderfound · July 11, 2021, 7:38am

Youtube Haitian revolution with more of a detail-focus than the Akala vid:

Wanderfound · July 15, 2021, 3:30am

The publication in which the piece appears was not where it was originally supposed to run. It was originally commissioned by a different, well-known national outlet. They contacted me last week, within hours of Moïse’s death, and asked me to choose the angle that seemed right to me. The editors seemed strangely hesitant when I suggested the framing, but contracted me anyway to write the piece, so long as I included what they called “nuance.” I had my suspicions about what that meant, but a writer’s got to write (and eat), so I pressed on.

I realized I was in trouble right away when I got back the comments on my first draft. Right off the bat, the editor cast doubt on my use of the “occupation” as a way of describing what the United States did in Haiti between 1915 and 1934. They commented:

“Want to be careful with this word – what was the nature of the occupation? How many troops did we send and what exactly did they do? Eg was it more of a peacekeeping/security assistance force, or what?”

If anyone should have been prepared for that question, it was me, the guy who just spent five years writing a book that is focused in part on how woefully ignorant Americans are of what our country has done in the world, especially in the decades leading up to World War II. But I was somehow not ready to get a comment like that from a senior editor at a major U.S. publication.

In any case, what the Americans were doing in Haiti from 1915 to 1934 was literally called the U.S. Occupation of Haiti. That’s what the White House, State, Army, and Navy Departments formally called it. It was a euphemism, in fact (as I was convinced to add in the final piece), to soften what it really was: a de facto colonization in service of the U.S.’s growing global power, corporations, and banks. It was a massive undertaking involving thousands of troops (mostly Marines) and other personnel. Many big names passed through Haiti in the period: Franklin Delano Roosevelt went down at one point to personally supervise in his charge as assistant secretary of the Navy. (FDR later bragged, falsely, about having personally written Haiti’s new U.S.-investment-friendly constitution in the process.) It was also extremely violent. Along the way, Marine aviators invented dive-bombing and barrel bombs to terrorize the Haitian population into submission.