The earthquake’s
destruction has been aggravated not by a pact with the Devil, but by the
crippling legacy of imperialism.
Where does the fault lie in Haiti? For geologists, it lies
on the line between the North American and Caribbean tectonic plates. For some,
the earthquake is evidence of God’s wrath: the American evangelist Pat
Robertson has even suggested that the horror is recompense for some voodoo pact
made with the Devil at Haiti’s birth.
More sensible voices point to the procession of despots who
have plundered Haiti over the years, depriving it of an effective
infrastructure and rendering it uniquely vulnerable to natural disaster. But
for many Haitians, the fault lies earlier — with Haiti’s colonial experience,
the slavers and extortionists of empire who crippled it with debt and
permanently stunted the economy. The fault line runs back 200 years, directly
to France.
In the 18th century, Haiti was France’s imperial jewel, the
Pearl of the Caribbean, the largest sugar exporter in the world. Even by
colonial standards, the treatment of slaves working the Haitian plantations was
truly vile. They died so fast that, at times, France was importing 50,000
slaves a year to keep up the numbers and the profits.
Inspired by the principles of the French Revolution, in 1791
the slaves rebelled under the leadership of the self-educated slave Toussaint
L’Ouverture. After a vicious war, Napoleon’s forces were defeated. Haiti
declared independence in 1804.
As Haiti struggles with new misfortune, it is worth
remembering that noble achievement — this is the only nation to gain
independence by a slave-led rebellion, the first black republic, and the second
oldest republic in the western hemisphere. Haiti was founded on a demand for
liberty from people whose liberty had been stolen: the country itself is a tribute
to human resilience and freedom.
France did not forgive the impertinence and loss of
earnings: 800 destroyed sugar plantations, 3,000 lost coffee estates. A brutal
trade blockade was imposed. Former plantation owners demanded that Haiti be
invaded, its population enslaved once more. Instead, the French State opted to
bleed the new black republic white.
In 1825, in return for recognising Haitian independence,
France demanded indemnity on a staggering scale: 150 million gold francs, five
times the country’s annual export revenue. The Royal Ordinance was backed up by
12 French warships with 150 cannon.
The terms were non-negotiable. The fledgeling nation
acceded, since it had little choice. Haiti must pay for its freedom, and pay it
did, through the nose, for the next 122 years.
Historical accountancy is an inexact business, but the scale
of French usury was astonishing. Even when the total indemnity was reduced to
90 million francs, Haiti remained crippled by debt. The country took out loans
from US, German and French banks at extortionate rates. To put the cost into
perspective, in 1803 France agreed to sell the Louisiana Territory, an area 74
times the size of Haiti, to the US, for 60 million francs.
Weighed down by this financial burden, Haiti was born almost
bankrupt. In 1900 some 80 per cent of the national budget was still being
swallowed up by debt repayments. Money that might have been spent on building a
stable economy went to foreign bankers. To keep workers on the land and extract
maximum crop yields to pay the indemnity, Haiti brought in the Rural Code,
instituting a division between town and country, between a light-skinned elite
and the dark-skinned majority, that still persists.
The debt was not finally paid off until 1947. By then, Haiti’s
economy was hopelessly distorted, its land deforested, mired in poverty,
politically and economically unstable, prey equally to the caprice of nature
and the depredations of autocrats. Seven year ago, the Haitian Government
demanded restitution from Paris to the tune of nearly $22 billion (including
interest) for the gunboat diplomacy that had helped to make it the poorest
country in the western hemisphere.
In the wake of last week’s earthquake, the effect of which
has been so brutally magnified by Haiti’s economic fragility, there have been
renewed calls for France to honour its moral debt. There is no chance that it
will do so. The view from the Elysee is that the case was closed in 1885. In
2004 Jacques Chirac set up a Commission of Reflection under the left-wing
philosopher Regis Debray to examine France’s historical relations with Haiti:
it concluded blandly that the demand for restitution was “non-pertinent in both
legal and historical terms”.
As Haiti faces social breakdown, government paralysis and
death on a shattering scale, the French finance minister has called for a
speeding up of the cancellation of Haiti’s debt. This is grim irony: if France
had not saddled the country with debt almost from its inception, Haiti would
have been far better equipped to cope with nature’s spite.
Bernard Kouchner, the French Foreign Minister, is calling
for a “reconstruction and development” conference. “It is a chance to get Haiti
once and for all out of the curse it seems to have been stuck with for such a long
time,” President Sarkozy said.
This seems uncomfortably close to Mr Robertson’s insulting
suggestion that Haitian slaves made a “pact with the Devil” to free themselves
from Napoleon’s grip. The original curse was economic, not religious, and laid
on Haiti by imperial France.
Haiti does not need more words, conferences or commissions
of reflection. It needs money, urgently. So far, official donations from France
are less than half of those from Britain.
The legacy of colonialism worldwide is a bitter one, but in
few countries is there a more direct link between the sins of the past and the
horrors of the present. Merely a French acknowledgement that the unfolding
catastrophe is partly the consequence of history, and not merely blind fate,
would go some way to salving Haiti’s wounds.
France does not pay for its history. But imagine what the
reaction might be if, the next time you receive an outrageous bill in a French
restaurant, you declare that payment is non-pertinent, set up a commission of
reflection and walk out.
