Most countries fail to deliver on Haiti aid pledges

[pauldun170]

http://www1.american.edu/TED/haiti.htm

1992
http://articles.latimes.com/1992-07-...onomic-embargo

1994
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/29/wo...i-embargo.html

[Homeslice]

You've got a gap covering the entire 19th century.......fool

[pauldun170]

Originally Posted by Homeslice

You've got a gap covering the entire 19th century.......fool

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Sorry -
Here tis
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http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/haiti.htm

Haitian Independence
On January 1, 1804 Haiti declared independence from France. In 1805 Dessalines declared himself Emperor of Haiti.

Emperor Dessalines tried to create a court but his efforts were the subject of ridicule by the more educated mulattoes. He did not however give titles, taking the position that only he could be royal. Dessalines tried to establish ties between the black and mulatto leadership by encouraging marriages. The major mulatto military leader Alexandre Petion refused the offer of marriage to a daughter of Dessalines.

Dessalines failed in other matters as well. He tried to revive production by forced labor on the plantations but failed. He also tried to secure control of the Spanish eastern side of the island but that too failed. Dessalines was ultimately assassinated, probably upon the orders of one or more of the mulatto leaders.



Jean-Jacques Dessalines
The Partition of Haiti
After the death of Dessalines there were two strong contenders for rule in Haiti: Henri Christophe and Alexandre Petion. The mulatto elite created a constituent assembly to form a government. The elite selected Henri Christophe, a black general, to be president and Alexandre Petion to head the legislature. The selection of Christophe was a case of the elite attempting to support stand-in black leaders who would follow the dictates of the elite. This was called the politique de doublure.

Christophe had no intention of being a puppet president. He raised an army and marched on Port-au-Prince but could not take the city which was commanded by Petion who had the artillery that Christophe lacked. Christophe marched north and captured Cap Haitien. Christophe declared himself King Henry I of Haiti and renamed Cap Haitien Cap Henry. He brought in warriors from Dahoumey in central Africa to serve as his elite guard.

In the south Alexandre Petion was made president-for-life of the Republic of Haiti with the capital at Port-au-Prince.



Christophe made an effort to revive the export economy of Haiti. The plantations were kept intact under State ownership and the freed plantation slaves could not leave their plantations. Working conditions were easier than they were under slavery and the plantation workers got one quarter of the crop for remuneration.

King Henry tried to create a royal aristocracy by giving out titles. Some were amusing such as the Count of Marmalade. He also, at great cost in human lives (ten to twenty thousand), built a palace for himself (San Souci) and a citadel (La Ferriere).



San Souci
La Ferriere

King Henry's rule was severe but as export production improved, standards of living in his kingdom improved as well. In Petion's Republic in the south conditions took a far different direction. Petion, who became President-for-Life in the Republic, believed in the ideals and policies of the French Revolution. He distributed state-owned land in small parcels to create a society of free yeoman farmers. The land was given free to his soldiers and sold at low costs to others. The small farmers of the Republic tended to produce for their own subsistence and not the crops for export such as sugar cane. The small farmers did produce coffee for a cash crop but not in sufficient quantity to generate export earnings to pay for imports. Without sugar cane production on the south the sugar mills and other subsidiary enterprises had to close thus depressing the economy. The Country Study for Haiti summed up the situation as follows:

In the south, the average Haitian was an isolated, poor, free, and relatively content yeoman. In the north, the average Haitian was a resentful but comparatively prosperous laborer.
The partition of Haiti produced an accidental comparative test of different economic institutions and policies.

Alexandre Petion was widely respected and honored. He provided refuge and assistance to Simon Bolivar which enabled Bolivar to recover from defeat at the hands of the Spanish and go on to win independence for Hispanic South America. When Petion died in 1818 King Henry attempted a reconciliation of the two Haitis but the republicans of the south did not want rule by an autocrat. Later King Henry suffered a stroke and realized that he would lose control in his kingdom. He knew he could expect very harsh treatment from his subjects so he committed suicide.

The Republic had selected an aide of Petion to govern, General Jean-Pierre Boyer. When King Henry committed suicide in 1820 Boyer led an army to the north to capture Cap Haitien and reunite Haiti. In 1822 Boyer conquered the Spanish parts of Hispaniola thus bringing all of Hispaniola under control from Port-au-Prince. Haitian control of Santo Domingo continued until 1844. Under Boyer the economy of Haiti stagnated. He made matters worse by making a large payment to the government of France to secure final acceptance of Haitian independence. The fiscal hardships associated with that payment made economic conditions even worse. In 1843 open rebellion broke out against Boyer charging him with corruption and dictatorial rule. When his army began to defect to the side of the rebels Boyer fled to Jamaica.

The competition between blacks and mulattoes for political control in Haiti continued throughout the rest of the 19th century and into the 20th century. The politique de doublure made it complicated to determine exactly who was in control. The two political parties were the National Party, controlled by blacks, and the Liberal Party, controlled by mulattoes of the cities. Hispanic nationalist forces gained control in Santo Domingo in 1844 and in the 1860s Spain again came into control of the eastern two thirds of Hispaniola.

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alternate http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/his...h-century.html

Constitution of 1805
Upon assuming power, General Dessalines authorized the Constitution of 1805. This constitution, in terms of social freedoms, called for: 1. Freedom of Religion (Under Toussaint Catholicism had been declared the official state religion). 2. Declared all citizens of Haiti, regardless of skin color, to be known as "Black" -- including the Poles and Germans.This was an attempt to eliminate the multi-tiered racial hierarchy which had developed in Haiti, with pure blood Europeans at the top, various levels of light to brown skin in the middle, and dark skinned "Kongo" from Africa at the bottom.


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French people who stayed in Haiti after the Independence Movement, despite early promises to the contrary, were slaughtered under Dessalines orders. In fact, the term "Zombi" comes from this era. A particuarly brutal individual, Jean Zombi, aiding in the murder of Frenchmen and women, forced men to strip naked before having their stomachs cut. Dessalines himself was horrified at Zombi's brutality.

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In Haitian folklore, the combination of Jean Zombi's violent actions and fear of becoming a slave once more, became the monster "Zombi" -- a being controlled by another, and capable of horrific actions.


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Struggle for Identity
Haiti is the world's oldest black republic and the second-oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere, after the United States. Although Haiti actively assisted the independence movements of many Latin American countries, the independent nation of former slaves was excluded from the hemisphere's first regional meeting of independent nations, in Panama in 1826, and did not receive U.S. diplomatic recognition until 1862.

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Dessalines proclaimed himself emperor as Jacques I, but his increasingly oppressive rule provoked his assassination (1806), and the country's division between the rival regimes of Christophe in the north and Alexandre Pétion in the south. In 1811 Christophe proclaimed himself king, reigning as Henri I, but after his suicide in 1820 Haiti was reunited under Pétion's successor Jean Pierre Boyer, president until 1843. In fear of invasion by the French, lack of recognition from the international community, and the threat of the French reinstatement of slavery, Haitian officials signed on to France's demand for a venal indemnity fee. The indemnity would be paid in recognition of Haiti?s independence, but would prove to be a tyrannical mechanism that evidently eroded the health of the economy, not mention the well-being of a slave nation. Thus, King Charles X agreed to be paid 150 million francs and consented to the reduction of import and export taxes. The indemnity imposed by France's colonial oppression (150 million francs), is equal to half a billion US dollars by the most conservative estimate, without attempting to calculate the interest and inflation.

Related Topics:
Alexandre Pétion - Jean Pierre Boyer

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When Santo Domingo - the eastern two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola - declared its independence in 1821, Haitian soldiers invaded the country and annexed it, as part of Boyer's attempts to keep control of the government. Boyer ran on a policy of aristocratic rule modeled on the policies of the French "citizen-king," Louis-Philippe.

Related Topics:
Santo Domingo - Louis-Philippe

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An earthquake and an economic crisis ended Boyer's rule in 1843. A revolt led by Rivière Hérard overthrew Boyer and established a brief parliamentary rule under the Constitution of 1843. A peasant revolt in the south led by Jean-Jacques Acaau, who saw Hérard's rule as elitist, succeeded in wresting control of the government and deposed Hérard after only five months in office. Philippe Guerrier succeeded him as part of a caretaker government, but he died in office in 1845. The State Council appointed Jean-Louis Pierrot president on 16 April, the day after Guerrier died, but he was overthrown in 1846 by Jean-Baptiste Riché, who died in 1847.

Related Topics:
Rivière Hérard - Jean-Jacques Acaau - Philippe Guerrier - 1845 - Jean-Louis Pierrot - 16 April - Jean-Baptiste Riché - 1847

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General Faustin Soulouque was elected President of Haiti on 1 March 1847, and put an end to the chaos that followed Boyer's deposition. Soulouque, a slave who had fought in the rebellion of 1791, had wide public appeal - wide enough, in fact, that he was able to crown himself Emperor of Haiti in 1852 as Faustin I.

Related Topics:
Faustin Soulouque - 1 March - 1847 - 1852

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Soulouque's iron rule succeeded in uniting Haiti, which to that point had been sharply divided along north-south lines. Soulouque also succeeded in uniting his opposition, which did not bode well for Soulouque's political future, but created an excellent foundation for future Haitian political development. His iron rule of Haiti came to an abrupt end in 1858 when he was deposed by General Fabre Geffrard, styled the Duke of Tabara.

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An Era of Development
Fabre Geffrard was elected president in 1859 after Emperor Faustin was driven into exile, and in the following years he encouraged a policy of national reconciliation that worked surprisingly well. In 1860, Geffrard's government reached an agreement with the Vatican, re-introducing official Roman Catholic institutions and practices to the nation. French Teaching orders returned to Haiti, where they organized schools, many for the elite, which taught French, the humanities, and Western culture. Parishes were started in Urban areas especially, and Haitians soon began to be allowed to enter the seminary and other religious vocations. Bishops remained French until the regime of François Duvalier. Geffrard's military government surrendered authority in 1867, the same year that the Constitution of 1867 was promulgated.

Related Topics:
1859 - François Duvalier - 1867

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Although the governments of Sylvaine Salnave and Nissage Saget did not end peacefully, they were not denoted by the level of violence that characterized the 1847-1852 period. A more workable constitution was introduced under Michel Domingue in 1874 that resulted in a long period of democratic peace and development for Haiti. The debt to France was repaid in 1879 after forty years of anxiety and renegotiation, and Michel Domingue's government peacefully transferred power to Lysius Salomon, one of Haiti's more able leaders. Monetary reform and a cultural renaissance ensued with a flowering of Haitian art.

Related Topics:
1874 - 1879 - Lysius Salomon

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The last two decades of the nineteenth century were also marked by the development of Haitian historical and political intellectualism. The classical tradition in Haiti had always been distinguished by a strong interest in history, and major works of history in the French language, important outside Haiti itself, were published in 1847 and 1865. Haitian intellectuals engaged in a valiant war of letters against a tide of racism and social Darwinism that emerged in the late nineteenth century, led by Louis-Joseph Janvier and Antenor Firmin.

Related Topics:
Social Darwinism - Louis-Joseph Janvier - Antenor Firmin

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Apart from the collapse of Salomon's government in 1889, the Constitution of 1867 saw peaceful and progressive transitions in government that did much to improve the economy and stability of the Haitian nation and the condition of its people. Peaceful successions in 1896 and 1902 restored the faith of the Haitian people in legal institutions and frameworks. The development of industrial sugar and rum industries near Port-au-Prince made Haiti, for a while, a model for economic growth in Latin American countries.

[Smittie61984]

All those words and letters are useless compared to the vast information provided on Youtube...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0VLrZlfPZY

[pauldun170]

Originally Posted by Smittie61984

All those words and letters are useless compared to the vast information provided on Youtube...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0VLrZlfPZY