Going Beyond the Textbook
The Haitian Revolution
What the Textbook says: (Pg. 624)
Analysis Questions:
1.
Why was the Haitian Revolution unique?
2.
Describe the location of Haiti
3.
What European power controlled Haiti?
4.
What caused the Haitian Revolution?
5.
What “caste” led the revolution?
6. What single person led the revolution?
a. What caste did he belong to?
b. What did he do after the revolution?
c. Through the French were the main perpetrators, what other European powers did
he defeat?
d. What was his fate?
7. What was the role of Napoleon in the revolution?
8. Why was Haitian independence unique?
Now, let’s go BEYOND!...
Haiti: a long descent to hell
Haiti, born of slavery and revolution, has struggled with centuries of crippling debt, exploitation,
corruption and violence
Jon Henley
Thursday 14 January 2010 14.00 EST Last modified on Wednesday 11 June 2014
14.11 EDT
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jan/14/haiti-history-earthquake-disaster
(Pre-Reading) Analysis Questions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Where did the article come from? Describe the source.
What type of article is this?
What is significant about the date of the article?
How do you feel about the article title? Why?
Geography and bad luck are only partly to blame for Haiti's tragedy. There are, plainly,
more propitious places for a country and its capital city to find themselves than straddling
the major fault line between the North American and Caribbean tectonic plates. It's more
than unfortunate to be positioned plumb on the region's principal hurricane track,
meaning you would be hit, in the 2008 season alone, by a quartet of storms as deadly and
destructive as Fay, Gustav, Hannah and Ike (between them, they killed 800 people, and
devastated more than 70% of Haiti's agricultural land). Wretched, also, to have fallen
victim to calamitous flooding in 2002, 2003 (twice), 2006 and 2007.
But what has really left Haiti in such a state today, what makes the country a constant and
heart-rending site of recurring catastrophe, is its history. In Haiti, the last five centuries
have combined to produce a people so poor, an infrastructure so nonexistent and a state so
hopelessly ineffectual that whatever natural disaster chooses to strike next, its impact on
the population will be magnified many, many times over. Every single factor that
international experts look for when trying to measure a nation's vulnerability to natural
disasters is, in Haiti, at the very top of the scale. Countries, when it comes to dealing with
disaster, do not get worse.
"Haiti has had slavery, revolution, debt, deforestation, corruption, exploitation and
violence," says Alex von Tunzelmann, a historian and writer currently working on a book
about the country and its near neighbours, the Dominican Republic and Cuba. "Now it has
poverty, illiteracy, overcrowding, no infrastructure, environmental disaster and large areas
without the rule of law. And that was before the earthquake. It sounds a terrible cliche, but
it really is a perfect storm. This is a catastrophe beyond our worst imagination."
It needn't, though, have been like this. In the 18th century, under French rule, Haiti – then
called Saint-Domingue – was the Pearl of the Antilles, one of the richest islands in
France's empire (though 800,000-odd African slaves who produced that wealth saw
precious little of it). In the 1780s, Haiti exported 60% of all the coffee and 40% of all the
sugar consumed in Europe: more than all of Britain's West Indian colonies combined. It
subsequently became the first independent nation in Latin America, and remains the
world's oldest black republic and the second-oldest republic in the western hemisphere
after the United States. So what went wrong?
Pause for Analysis
1.
2.
3.
4.
What European power controlled Haiti?
What was its name under this European power?
What were Haiti’s major exports?
What “superlative does Haiti hold?
Haiti, or rather the large island in the western Atlantic of which the present-day Republic
of Haiti occupies the western part, was discovered by Christopher Columbus in December
1492. The native Taino people knew it as Ayiti, but Columbus claimed it for the Spanish
crown and named it La Isla Española. As Spanish interest in the island faltered with the
discovery of gold and silver elsewhere in Latin America, the early occupiers moved east,
leaving the western part of Hispaniola free for English, Dutch and particularly French
buccaneers. The French West India Company gradually assumed control of the colony,
and by 1665 France had formally claimed it as Saint-Domingue. A treaty with Spain 30
years later saw Madrid cede the western third of the island to Paris.
Pause for Analysis
1.
2.
3.
4.
Who originally occupied Haiti?
Who “discovered” Haiti? For what crown?
What is the name of the entire island on which Haiti occupies the western half?
How did power transfer in Haiti?
Economically, French occupation was a runaway success. But Haiti's riches could only be
exploited by importing up to 40,000 slaves a year. For nearly a decade in the late 18th
century, Haiti accounted for more than one-third of the entire Atlantic slave trade.
Conditions for these men and women were atrocious; the average life expectancy for a
slave on Haiti was 21 years. Abuse was dreadful, and routine: "Have they not hung up men
with heads downward, drowned them in sacks, crucified them on planks, buried them
alive, crushed them in mortars?" wrote one former slave some time later. "Have they not
forced them to eat excrement? Have they not thrown them into boiling cauldrons of cane
syrup? Have they not put men and women inside barrels studded with spikes and rolled
them down mountainsides into the abyss?"
Pause for Analysis
1. How did Europeans deal with the high demand for Haiti’s resources?
Not surprisingly, the French Revolution in 1789 raised the tricky question of how exactly
the Declaration of the Rights of Man might be said to apply both to Haiti's then sizeable
population of free gens de couleur (generally the offspring of a white plantation owner and
a black concubine) – and ultimately to the slaves themselves. The rebellion of SaintDomingue's slaves began on the northern plains in August 1791, but the uprising, ensuing
bloody civil war and finally bitter and spectacularly brutal battle against Napoleon
Bonaparte's forces was not over for another 12 years. As France became increasingly
distracted by war with Britain, the French commander, the Vicomte de Rochambeau, was
finally defeated in November 1803 (though not before he had hanged, drowned or burned
and buried alive thousands of rebels). Haiti declared independence on 1 January 1804.
Pause for Analysis
1.
2.
3.
4.
What as the Declaration of the Rights of Man?
How did the French Revolution inspire revolution in Haiti?
What is Napoleon’s role in the Haitian Revolution?
What social “caste” led the Haitian Revolution?
As Stephen Keppel of the Economist Intelligence Unit puts it, Haiti's revolution may have
brought it independence but it also "ended up destroying the country's infrastructure and
most of its plantations. It wasn't the best of starts for a fledgling republic." Moreover, in
exchange for diplomatic recognition from France, the new republic was forced to pay
enormous reparations: some 150m francs, in gold. It was an immense sum, and even
reduced by more than half in 1830, far more than Haiti could afford.
"The long and the short of it is that Haiti was paying reparations to France from 1825 until
1947," says Von Tunzelmann. "To come up with the money, it took out huge loans from
American, German and French banks, at exorbitant rates of interest. By 1900, Haiti was
spending about 80% of its national budget on loan repayments. It completely wrecked
their economy. By the time the original reparations and interest were paid off, the place
was basically destitute and trapped in a spiral of debt. Plus, a succession of leaders had
more or less given up on trying to resolve Haiti's problems, and started looting it instead."
Pause for Analysis
1. How did the Haitian Revolution impact Haiti? (List two examples.)
The closing decades, though, of the 19th century did at least mark a period of relative
stability. Haitian culture flourished, an intelligentsia emerged, and the sugar and rum
industries started to grow once more. But then in 1911 came another revolution, followed
almost immediately by nearly 20 years of occupation by a US terrified that Haiti was about
to default on its massive debts. The Great Depression devastated the country's exports.
There were revolts and coups and dictatorships, and then, in 1957, came François "Papa
Doc" Duvalier. Papa Doc's regime is widely seen as one of the most corrupt and repressive
in modern history. He exploited Haiti's traditional belief in voodoo to establish a personal
militia, the feared and hated Tonton Macoutes, said to be zombies that he had raised from
the dead.
During the 28 years in power of Papa Doc and his playboy son and heir, Jean-Claude
Duvalier, or Baby Doc, the Tonton Macoutes and their henchmen killed between 30,00
and 60,000 Haitians, and raped, beat and tortured countless more. Until Baby Doc's eventual flight into exile in 1986, Duvalier père and fils alsomade themselves very rich
indeed. Aid agencies and international creditors donated and lent millions for projects that
were often abandoned before completion, or never even started. Generous multinational
corporations earned lucrative contracts. According to Von Tunzelmann, the Duvaliers
were at times embezzling up to 80% of Haiti's international aid, while the debts they
signed up to accounted for 45% of what the country owed last year. And when Baby Doc
finally fled, estimates of what he took with him run as high as $900m.
It is hardly surprising then that Haiti isn't Switzerland. The Duvaliers' departure, as
Keppel puts it, "left a void, and a broken and corrupt government. Democracy got off to a
really bad start there. The Duvaliers may have bankrupted the government, they may been
brutal, but they could keep control of the place. Since they went, Haiti has seen more
coups, ousters and social unrest." The country is short on investment, and desperately
short on most of the infrastructure and apparatus of a functioning modern state. For Keppel, while Haiti's problems undoubtedly began "a long way back, there have been
periods when it could have set itself on a different track". It's the recent transition from
dictatorship to democracy that is at the root of today's problems, he believes. "It's led to a
situation where the population is continuing to grow, where poverty drives many of them
to Port-au-Prince, and where Port-au-Prince, even at the best of times, doesn't have the
infrastructure to cope with them. And then comes an earthquake of an unprecedented
magnitude . . ."
Pause for Analysis
1. What caused major political change for Haiti in 1911?
2. Describe the leadership of Papa Doc. Give two examples to support your claim.
Von Tunzelmann isn't so sure. Haiti's descent began earlier than that, she believes. One
reason why Haiti suffers more than its neighbours from natural disasters like hurricanes
and flooding is its massive deforestation, under way in the country since the time of the
French occupation, she says. "The French didn't manage the land at all well," she says.
"The process of soil erosion really began then. And then in the chaos after the revolution,
the land was simply parcelled out into little plots, occupied mainly by individual families.
And since the 1950s, people have been cutting it down and cooking on charcoal. As the
population has soared, the forests have come down. Haiti is now about 98% deforested.
It's extraordinary. You can see it from space. The problem is, it was those forests, those
tree roots, that held the soil together. So with every new storm, more topsoil and clay
disappears." Arable land is reduced, simply, to rubble. Even before the devastating storms
of 2008, Haiti's population was starving. There were shocking reports of desperate people
mixing vegetable oil with mud to make something that at least looked approximately like a
biscuit.
Pause for Analysis
1. What does Von Tunzelmann argue is the reason for Haiti’s poor condition today?
List two examples.
"I wouldn't lay it all at the door of history," says Keppel. "But it's true to say that while this
earthquake was unprecedented and unpredictable and would have caused huge problems
anywhere, Haiti is impacted by natural disasters much more than some of its neighbours.
The infrastructure is so poor; the government can't control all its territory. There's been a
whole combination of factors, many of which have repeated themselves over and over, that
have left Haiti in the state it's in today."
Among aid workers whom Von Tunzelmann has spoken to, Haiti today is "down there with
Somalia, as just about the worst [most damaged] society on earth. Even in Afghanistan,
there's a middle class. People aren't living in the sewers." As far back as the 1950s, she
says, Haiti was considered unsustainably overcrowded with a population of 3 million; that
figure now stands at 9 million. Some 80% of that population live below the poverty line.
The country is in an advanced state of industrial collapse, with a GDP per capita in 2009 of
just $2 a day. Some 66% of Haitians work in agriculture, but this is mainly small-scale
subsistence farming and accounts for less than a third of GDP. The unemployment rate is
75%. Foreign aid accounts for 30%-40% of the government's budget. There are 80 deaths
for every 1,000 live births, and the survival rate of newborns is the lowest in the western
hemisphere. For many adults, the most promising sources of income are likely to be drug
dealing, weapons trading, gang membership, kidnapping and extortion.
Pause for Analysis
1. What evidence indicate Haiti is underdeveloped? (List three examples)
Compare Haiti with its neighbours, equally prone to natural disasters but far better
equipped to cope because they are far better functioning societies, and the only conclusion
possible, says Von Tunzelmann, is that it is Haiti's turbulent history that has brought it to
this point. For the better part of 200 years, she argues, rich countries and their banks have
been sucking the wealth out of the country, and its own despotic and corrupt leaders have
been doing their best to facilitate the process, lining their own pockets handsomely on the
way.
Pause for Analysis
1. What specific parts of Haiti’s history does the author argue “brought it to this
point”?
Approach Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic and the lush green of the forest
begins again: this is a wealthier place. An earthquake here has less impact because
constructions are stronger, building regulations are enforced, the government is more stable. In nearby Cuba, hardly a country rolling in money, emergency management is
infinitely more effective simply because of a carefully coordinated, block-by-block
organisation. Haiti has two fire stations in the entire country – and people on $2 a day
cannot afford quake-proof housing.
This article was amended on 18 January 2010, to clarify that a reference to Duvalier-era debts
constituting 45% of what Haiti owes referred to the situation in 2009, and to clarify that a quote
from interviewee Alex von Tunzelmann about the level of social damage in Haiti was her
paraphrasing of what aid workers had told her.
(Post-Reading) Analysis Questions:
1. Does this article paint an accurate picture of Haiti? Why/why not?
Going Beyond the Textbook
The Monroe Doctrine
What the Textbook says: (Pg. 625)
Analysis Questions:
1. Why did the U.S. suddenly find Latin America interesting in 1820?
2. What is a “doctrine”?
3. What is the Monroe Doctrine?
a. When was it issued? (Yes, you need to know this date!)
b. What did it say?
c. What is the U.S.’s motive in issuing this doctrine?
d. What was the European perception?
Now, let’s go BEYOND!...
Excerpts from The Monroe Doctrine
James Monroe expressed his thoughts on how foreign policy should be conducted at his seventh annual
message to Congress on December 2, 1823. His words are considered an essential part of America's political
history and became known as "the Monroe Doctrine."
....
“The political system of the allied powers is essentially different in this respect from that of America. This
difference proceeds from that which exists in their respective Governments; and to the defense of our own,
which has been achieved by the loss of so much blood and treasure, and matured by the wisdom of their most
enlightened citizens, and under which we have enjoyed unexampled felicity, this whole nation is devoted. We
owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to
declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this
hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.
....
Our policy in regard to Europe, which was adopted at an early stage of the wars which have so long agitated
that quarter of the globe, nevertheless remains the same, which is, not to interfere in the internal concerns of any
of its powers; to consider the government de facto as the legitimate government for us; to cultivate friendly
relations with it, and to preserve those relations by a frank, firm, and manly policy, meeting in all instances the
just claims of every power, submitting to injuries from none.”
Analysis Questions:
1. In what medium was the Monroe Doctrine delivered?
2. Who is Monroe’s audience? Why does this matter?
3. How does Monroe describe the U.S.’s relationship with Europe?
4. What does Monroe mean by “extend their system”?
5. What should Americans think of this ‘extension,’ according to Monroe? How must the
U.S. respond?
Analysis Questions:
1.
How do these political cartoons
represent the Monroe Doctrine?
2.
How might Latin Americans
feel about the policy?