Haiti has been run by black or mulatto dictators since 1791.
France did not control anything there in the 19th century . Haiti paid France around 10 million US in reparations for property lost in the revolution to gain French recognition over 50 years from 1838-1888. Haitian GDP prior to revolt was many times that. To try to blame Haiti today on France from 200 years ago is a very very big stretch and falls into the old tried and true axiom that blacks rise and fall on the whim of the cracker....which to me is the real racist logic much more so than notions of white supremacy...the dependent blacks shackled by the white man's benevolence or scorn...without us they are lost.....soft bigotry..low expectations...one thing Bush got right.
They did not siphon off any more wealth from there than did any other colonial power from any other colony.
The denuding of the nation was done by Haitians themselves and mostly for charcoal...not uncommon in the third world.
The only wealth there was created by agricultural deployment...namely sugar cane...a little sisal...and some alumina I'd reckon...can't recall....but it stands to reason.
But you're right about one thing...had Haiti been white would not have happened because whites themselves would have found a way to make a reasonable nation after 200 years of Independence unlike most but not all blacks there..
There are some smart and well meaning Christian blacks there but they are simply drowned out by kleptocracy, superstitions and primitive culture that is beyond hope.
What wealth there is exists in the hands of Chinese, Arabs, Jews and even some Swedes and old Mulatto families and not because those folks are evil non black exploiters but because they are smarter in general and more educated.
They massacred or drove off nearly all the whites after the the revolt and have suffered for it...irreparably in my opinion.
Contrast them with Dom Rep next door...a fairly African place but with a strong white and mulatto bourgeoisie...much much better....though still way below what we would call good.
it's just how it is man...all cultures or races or sub-races etc don't perform equally on the mean....even with inter group variance taken into account
geographic isolation and tribalism and in my view black magic worship are strong inhibiters...and I think it transfers over time beyond just sociological
so fire away...I lived there....worked there from 88-92 the better part of each year...from Jacmel to Port au Paix
PS...they shoulda kept West Point grad Cedras
Let's put this amount into some perspective, shall we?
For one thing, it was roughly 30M US dollars at the time, not $10M.
The US bought the entire Louisiana Territory for about $15M. That's about 1/3 of the continental USA. Admittedly it was a hell of a bargain, but that was still a great deal of money at the time.
The entire US federal budget in 1860 was $60M. I've been unable to track down what it was in 1825, but I suspect it was pretty close to the $30M in question.
The majority of the "property" the Haitians were required to indemnify the French for was the money value of the liberated slaves. Guess what we paid the owners when we liberated the slaves (confiscated their value) in this country? Zip.
The 150M gold francs ($30M US) was about 5x the total annual exports of Haiti at the time. The equivalent amount for the US today would be more than $5 trillion. By 1900 80% of the Haitian budget went to these payments. Many presently consider the US grossly over-indebted, but our payments on the national debt consume a great deal less than 80% of our budget, and most of that goes to American creditors, or at least is reinvested in the USA by foreign creditors. When Haiti paid money to the French it left the country never to return.
I stand by my contention that the USA would have considered this an egregious violation of the Monroe Doctrine if committed against any other Latin American nation. But southern (and northern) prejudice against black Haiti kept them from intervening.
AFAIK, no Latin American nation was forced to pay anything remotely equivalent to Spain or Portugal for losses suffered by Spanish or Portugese nationals during their revolutions. If you have evidence otherwise, I'd like to see it.
I agree with most of what you say about Haiti having largely messed itself up. But the French, with American acquiescence, certainly helped a great deal.
Contrast them with Dom Rep next door...a fairly African place but with a strong white and mulatto bourgeoisie...much much better....though still way below what we would call good.
I agree. You have any evidence that DR was required to pay equivalent, or any, reparations to Spain?