HISTORY OF HAITI

AFTER the huge earthquake that shook Haiti in 2010, hundreds of foreign
journalists swarmed into the country. They sought both to take stock of
the damage and to explain why Haiti was in such poor shape to begin with.
Laurent Dubois, a professor at Duke University, was disappointed with
their accounts of Haitis past, which attributed the countrys poverty
either to cultural flaws or foreign meddling. Pundits offered a plethora
of ill-informed speculation, he writes. Nearly all of the coverage
portrayed Haitians themselves as either simple villains or simple
victims.

Mr Duboiss new book aims to counter-act those misconceptions. It

recounts the countrys political, economic and social history from the
colonial era to the present. He argues that Haitis woes stem from a
legacy of powerful political leaders and institutions, inside and
outside the country, [who] have ignored and suppressed the aspirations of
Haitis majority.

His story abounds with villains. Although nationalists in the developing

world often instinctively blame foreigners for their troubles, Haitis
grievances are indisputable. France created it as the worlds most
extreme slave colony: in 1789 slaves outnumbered freemen by ten to one.
Since new captives were constantly brought in to replace the 5-10% that
died every year, two-thirds of the population was African-born.

A successful slave revolt won Haiti its independence in 1804. But France
refused to accept it until 1825, when Haiti agreed to pay a huge
indemnity, financed with usurious loans from French banks. The national
treasury was under French control for decades. Meanwhile, European
countries regularly sent warships to Haiti to extort funds from the
government.

Americas imperialism was even more direct. Although Woodrow Wilsons

officials knew little of HaitiThink of it! Niggers speaking French!
exclaimed William Jennings Bryan, the secretary of statethey coveted the
countrys harbours. And American firms lobbied for access to its land and
public-works contracts. In 1915 the president who vowed to make the
world safe for democracy sent his army to occupy Haiti, where it stayed
until 1934. Mr Dubois describes in wrenching detail the American armys
brutality, including mass murder and forced labour.

Haitis home-grown leaders were little better. One after another they
preached liberal values of checks and balances, inclusion and democratic
participation. In practice, however, they ruled autocratically on behalf
of urban elites, with the help of an over-mighty army. The constant
marginalisation of rural peasants from politics led to an endless series
of rebellions and coups. The only president to break this mutinous
pattern was Franois Duvalier, a murderous megalomaniac whose 1957-71
reign of terror exceeded even the Americans ruthlessness.

Mr Dubois upbraids rival accounts of Haitian history for their lack of

complex interpretations. Yet his own version paints ordinary Haitians
as the passive victims of foreign and domestic malefactors, with no
inherent shortcomings or responsibility for their societys
underdevelopment. The most intriguing part of his tale is the one that
contradicts this thesis.

Mr Dubois writes admiringly of Haitians counter-plantation system

communitarian, small-scale agriculture, borne out of a rejection of
anything that looked liked the mass farming for export of the slave era.
He commends Haitis peasants for resisting the efforts of foreign
companies and their own governments to impose a capitalist labour system,
and cites Steven Stoll, a historian who lauds Haitis subsistence
culture as a model.

But unfortunately, specialised wage labour for a global market is the

most effective means yet devised for lifting masses out of poverty. Even
as he refuses to recognise it, Mr Dubois demonstrates a central irony of
Haitian history: the countrys birth in a heroic slave revolt has made
its citizens uneasy with the economic system most likely to alleviate
their misery.