Haitians Made the First Successful Slave Revolution and First Black-Led Republic, For Which "Crime" the World's Upper Class Has Been Punishing them Severely Ever Since

First the French rulers and then U.S. rulers kept Haitians, who enriched France when they were slaves, dirt poor ever since their glorious revolution

Thomas Jefferson versus The Haitian Slave Rebellion/Revolution

In 1804 the slaves of Haiti succeeded in their revolution and achieved independence. As Wikipedia writes of this slave revolution, "It was the only slave uprising that led to the founding of a state which was both free from slavery, and ruled by non-whites and former captives." Thomas "All men are created equal" Jefferson was president from 1801 to 1809, so he had enormous ability to help the newly freed slaves in Haiti, or harm them. What did he do? The same Wikipedia article says this:​

"The American President Thomas Jefferson—who was a slaveholder himself—refused to establish diplomatic relations with Haiti (the United States did not recognize Haiti until 1862) and imposed an economic embargo on trade with Haiti that also lasted until 1862 in an attempt to ensure the economic failure of the new republic as Jefferson wanted Haiti to fail, regarding a successful slave revolt in the West Indies as a dangerous example for American slaves.[131]"

The American ruling class (as I will illustrate below) censors the truth about Haiti, in particular the truth about WHY Haiti is the poorest nation in the western hemisphere and why so many Haitians are now migrating to the U.S. Merely by censoring the actual reason for Haiti’s poverty (I provide this reason below in some detail) the American ruling class has persuaded the American have-nots to draw a very wrong conclusion that goes something like this: “Haitians just don’t have the competence to create wealth and effective government the way we Americans do, but they want to live the good life and so they are all trying to get into the United States to enjoy wealth from our good-paying jobs and effective government without having to actually do the work required to create these things for themselves in Haiti.”

First, here is the history of Haiti, in a long extract from this Berkeley Political Review article:, in which I have bolded sections that highlight the reasons why Haiti is the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, reasons that are the opposite of the reasons so many of us Americans have been led to believe:

Haiti’s History

Originally home to the now largely eliminated Taino people, Christopher Columbus’s 1492 expedition marked the first visit of European settlers to the island now known as Hispaniola. The Spanish soon after established plantations throughout the island and began the mass importation of West African slaves to grow sugar and coffee to be exported to Europe. By 1665, the Spanish presence diminished in the western part of Hispaniola, allowing the French to claim the territory, renaming it Saint Domingue. The colony was immensely profitable for the French, becoming known as the “The Pearl of the Antilles,” producing 60% of the coffee and 40% of the sugar exported to Europe by the 1780s. But this prosperity came at an immense human cost. Around the same time period, Saint Domingue alone accounted for more than one-third of the Atlantic slave trade and was home to absolutely atrocious conditions for enslaved persons who died at alarming rates. 

In 1791, two years after the revolution in France proclaimed the universal rights of man, a slave revolt began in Saint Domingue, led famously by former slave Toussaint Louverture. Louverture’s rebels struggled periodically against French forces for 13 years, before the nation finally declared its independence in 1804. But the newly-formed nation, now called Haiti, was immediately faced with immense obstacles. For one, it was a nation run by and composed of former slaves, who possessed little to nothing in material wealth. Additionally, Haiti was isolated by foreign powers, including the French, the British, and the United States. President Thomas Jefferson and many other American elites viewed an independent Haiti as an existential threat to the institution of slavery that was becoming even more profitable and crucial for the southern United States. Jefferson refused to provide aid to Haiti and sought to economically and diplomatically isolate the country.

As the new Haitian Republic continued to struggle to establish itself, in 1825, King Charles X of France sent several warships to surround Haiti and to demand that the nation pay 150 million francs in reparations to French slave owners who lost their property in the revolution—or face another war. Unable to defend itself against French naval supremacy, Haiti was forced to cave to the demand, despite having no ability to pay a sum of money that large. Over the course of the next 122 years, up until 1947, Haiti paid the modern equivalent of $20–$30 billion in reparations and interest on the highly extortionary loans it was forced to take out from banks in France, the U.S., and elsewhere in Europe. Roughly 80% of its national budget in 1900 was dedicated to loan repayments alone. Unsurprisingly, this massive extortionary project left an already impoverished nation entirely destitute.

But the French were not the only imperial force to extort immense sums of money from the Haitian people. In 1868, U.S. President Andrew Johnson contemplated annexing the island of Hispaniola, fearing that the unstable political climate in Haiti and the neighboring Dominican Republic was a strategic vulnerability for the United States’s dominance of the Caribbean and the Western Hemisphere. By the 1910s, Haiti’s political instability reached a fever pitch, with numerous presidents being assassinated. Meanwhile, the U.S. slowly increased its role, particularly in Haitian economic affairs. U.S. officials said they were determined to stabilize the country, but their actions made clear their intentions were fundamentally selfish. American officials feared that Haiti’s instability would provide a pretext for either the French—to whom Haiti still owed enormous debts—or the Germans—whose economic ties to the country were growing—to gain a strategic foothold in the Caribbean, just while the U.S. was finishing construction of the critical Panama Canal. Eventually, in pursuit of these strategic and economic goals, on July 28, 1915, shortly after Haitian President Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was assassinated, Woodrow Wilson dispatched a force of U.S. Marines to occupy the country and to seize control of the country’s financial reserves. 

What ensued was 19 years of military occupation of Haiti by U.S. forces. American occupiers rewrote the country’s laws and constitution to give land-ownership rights to foreigners, including major U.S.-based agricultural corporations, silenced and brutalized dissenters, and abused and massacred civilians with impunity. By 1934, when the occupation ended, thousands of Haitians were killed, the country’s rural peasantry was left destitute, much of the country’s productive land was in foreign hands, and the United States maintained substantial influence over the country’s politicians and economic system. Ever since then, Haitian governments have struggled to balance the interests of their people with the demands of U.S. capitalists whose plantations and factories harvested the nation’s wealth and resources.

Just over 20 years following the end of the occupation, and only a decade after Haiti finished its reparations to France, Francois Duvalier was elected president, beginning almost 30 years of dynastic authoritarian rule and brutal state repression. Between 1957 and 1986, Duvalier and his son Jean-Claude (who took power in 1971 after his father’s death) created a brutal autocratic regime wherein any supposed opponents were subject to arbitrary arrests, detention in prison camps, torture, disappearances, and political killings. Tens of thousands of Haitians were killed as the Duvaliers embezzled countless funds and sold off capital to foreign manufacturers, only further deepening the nation’s endless economic instability. Importantly, the regime was consistently bankrolled by the U.S. government, which saw authoritarian Haiti as a counterweight to Fidel Castro’s communist Cuba. Sustained American aid kept the Duvaliers rich and allowed them to ignore the ongoing plight of their people as they siphoned off funds and invested in a costly repressive state apparatus.

The Current Crisis

All of this history brings us to the current crisis at hand. Potentially more than 85% of the population is experiencing poverty, and nearly 5 million of the country’s population of 11 million people are currently experiencing “acute hunger” according to the UN. An outbreak of cholera began sweeping the country early last year and has infected thousands, just years after a previous outbreak killed nearly 10,000. Inflation has risen to almost 50% over the past couple of years, as gangs, many of whom are associated with former politicians and government officials, have attempted to seize control of the nation’s resources, most significantly its fuel reserves. In 2022, more than 1,200 civilians were kidnapped by gangs, and more than 1,300 civilians were killed between January and August alone. Tens of thousands of Haitians are internally displaced, and tens of thousands more have left the country to seek refugee status elsewhere. However, to date, the U.S. has deported more than 26,000 migrants back to Haiti, though in December of last year, the Biden administration announced expanded legal protections for those fleeing the country. 

The current crisis has taken off ever since President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated by mercenaries linked to multiple Haitian-American men with political aspirations. His successor, Ariel Henry, was unable to establish her legitimacy and to counter the violence of criminal gangs, who have rendered it impossible for the country to hold new elections. As a result, in January, the terms of Haiti’s last 10 senators expired, leaving the country with no elected government whatsoever.

Facing the Reality

Though it was the site of the only successful slave rebellion in the Americas, Haiti has never truly gotten out of a state of servitude. One after another, Western powers have lined up to strip the nation of its resources and democratic prospects. From its inception, Haiti was shackled: it was a nation built by destitute freedmen that was viewed with suspicion and distrust by world powers consumed by imperial pursuits and the preservation of slavery. This inherent weakness gave the country no choice but to agree to pay reparations for the damage their freedom did to the pockets of French slaveholders. The country has thus been financially burdened ever since, as the greed of racist European capitalists perpetually foreclosed any hopes of economic prosperity. The damage done by the French set the stage for the United States to imperialize Haiti throughout the 20th Century, and to begin its own project of extracting capital from Haitian peasants for the sake of big American businesses.

Haiti’s status as a failed state is the intentional result of these actions. If Haiti had been a successful state in the 1800s, it would have been a danger to the racist world order of the era imposed by slavery and empire. And Haiti’s success further decades down the line would have been an obstacle to the extractive aims of foreign capitalists who exploited political instability to enrich themselves. Haiti demonstrates the destructive power of the interconnected ideologies of racism, capitalism, and imperialism. Around the world, millions of Black and brown people are living in squalor and conflict as a result of the extortive and racist actions of Western nations. States like Haiti are at the bottom of the global hierarchy because the current world order demands inequality, often along racial lines, to feed economic growth through the availability of cheap labor, land, and resources. 

Today, France shows almost no signs of regret for the reparations it forced Haiti to pay, and the United States is reluctant to assist in alleviating the nation’s current crisis. To be sure, rushing to intervene again in a country with such a horrific history of foreign influence does not seem a good idea, but something must be done. Millions of people are suffering in Haiti, and while there may be no clear solutions, the U.S. as a country, and the Western world as a whole, owes Haiti its help. Until we reach broad acceptance of this fact throughout the West, and until a concerted effort is dedicated to—literally—repaying the debts owed to the Haitian people, the Republic of Haiti may forever be a broken state.

Sam Ratcliffe

Sam Ratcliffe is a writer with the Berkeley Political Review's World Section. He is a Political Science major at UC Berkeley particularly interested in issues of policing, criminal justice, human rights, and democratic institutions. In his free time he enjoys hiking, gaming, and landscape photography.

Here’s how censorship of the truth about Haiti works

Today my hometown newspaper, the Oh-so-liberal Boston Globe, owned by the billionaire John Henry, published an article about the large number of Haitian migrants arriving in Boston lately. Read this Boston Globe article as carefully as you wish and you will find not a hint of the actual historical reasons WHY so many Haitians are so poor and so desperate, why there would be rampant gang violence and kidnapping for ransom causing better-off Haitians (such as doctors) to flee their homeland for their very survival.

A similar earlier Boston Globe article is titled, “For Massachusetts’ liberal leaders, migrant crisis forces hard choices: An influx of new arrivals is complicating traditional party-line politics on immigration and testing liberals’ commitment to welcoming all.”

If one looks at the comments to the above-linked article what you find is mostly anger at the immigrants on the grounds that “The VAST majority of immigrants are NOT here for political reasons et al, they are here to make money.” The full comment reads:

Tree Farmer3/05/24 - 9:15AM

The VAST majority of immigrants are NOT here for political reasons et al, they are here to make money. There are 8Billion people on earth, we have, in the USA, 337Million, give or take, and there are probably 5Billion out there who want to live here for better Quality of Life. Simple as that.

123 likes vs. 9 dislikes

Some just express contempt for the immigrants as people who want to be treated like royalty. Here is a sample:

joesambito1233/05/24 - 9:10AM

"This Governor [Maura Healy—J.S.] is a failure. We asked for culturally appropriate wet chicken and all we got was baked chicken! And when is she going to clean the bathrooms, I hope she doesn't think we're going to do it. I just downloaded Candy Crush on the phone she gave us"

Jean Pierre from Haiti (probably)

97 likes vs 15 dislikes

And of course many express anger at our liberal Massachusetts governor for foisting these immigrants on us. Here is a sample:

LilacSunday3/05/24 - 9:50AM

We can't accommodate everyone who wants to live here. These are economic migrants who are abusing the asylum process to gain immediate admission to the US, they are soaking the American taxpayers in the process. The asylum process needs to be changed to require that asylum-seekers apply from outside the U.S. and wait outside the U.S. until their claims are approved.

85 likes vs. 2 dislikes

Slinky553/05/24 - 2:44PM

'Lilac': Under the current US immigration laws-enacted and put into law long before the prior administration:
-economic issues are an illegal and invalid reason for anyone-from anywhere-to use as an asylum claim.
There are specific valid and legal reasons for someone to claim asylum listed in these laws. Economic issues are not one of them.
Anyone coming to the US for a job, better job, better housing, better educational opportunities, etc., are all breaking the law. By making a false and illegal claim. None of them should be allowed to enter the US in the first place. None of them should be allowed to have a hearing. They have already broken the law. They should not be allowed to set foot in the US.
They want to try and apply for asylum? Do it from your home country or somewhere else outside of the US. Then wait and see if you get approved before you set foot in the US. Better yet-follow the procedures via USCIS to apply for legal immigrant status and for future US citizenship.

Like(23) Dislike(2)

Chumlee1023/05/24 - 9:56AM

I’m sure the Henry’s [owners of the Oh-so-liberal Boston Globe—J.S.] have plenty of unused “suites” in their homes. They should step up and take some migrants and see how it works out before criticizing people that have seen enough money and resources given away to people that all they have to do is show up to get. Give us all the data too so the people that pay taxes can decide. Declare an emergency and then just do whatever you want should be very short term.

Like(43) Dislike(1)

But note that none of the comments question WHY there are so many desperate immigrants leaving their homeland. This is because people just assume it is because of the reason that the mass media narrative promotes—that we Americans have been successful in creating a wealthy nation but those people south of the border have been so incompetent in creating wealth and good government that they all just want to come to the USA to enjoy our wealth.

Like all Boston Globe articles about the increased number of migrants arriving in Boston, this article makes sure that its readers will feel that the only thing to think about in this regard is whether to be welcoming or not to the new migrants, and not about WHY there are so many people in places like Haiti so desperate to leave their homelands in the first place. So we read this at the end of the article:

It’s just one more illustration of the ever-shifting demands of governing through the crisis. For many, these are moral decisions.

“We have never seen anything like this,” said Dieufort Fleurissaint, better known as Pastor Keke, who has helped resettle Haitian immigrants in Boston for decades. “My phone keeps ringing. . . . Everyone is overwhelmed.”

Fleurissaint said he understands the tradeoffs required to serve the migrants, such as the disruptions in Roxbury. But “with the magnitude of the crisis,” he said, “something must be done.”

and we are offered this photo to drive the divide-and-rule point home:

Read here how YOU can help build the egalitarian revolutionary movement to have a society where the truth is widely known instead of lies spread by billionaires to divide-and-rule us.