Friday, December 27, 2024
Zagada
Thursday, December 26, 2024
State and Nation in Haiti's First Half-Century
One of the more rewarding readings of the end of 2024 has been Le Culte de l'égalité: une exploration du processus de formation de l'État et de la politique populaire en Haïti au cours de la première moitié du dix-neuvième siècle (1804-1846) by Jean Alix René. René's study really challenges us to rethink the relationship between the early state in postcolonial Haiti and its relationship with the rural majority. Instead of, say, adopting the theory of postcolonial Haiti as a maroon state, a more accurate way of looking at it may have been one in which cultivateurs and peasants viewed the state as a legitimate source of protection and an aid in their search for justice. If, as René suggests, the early Haitian state and early constitutions were based on the idea of protection of the governed and a fraternity of suffering based on the racial discrimination, slavery and colonialism in which all Haitians were at least partly affected by, then the state could occasionally be seen as a force in which subaltern groups sought redress, respect, honor, and dignity. We, unfortunately, are not doing justice to all the nuances of this important study, but its implications are quite suggestive. Drawing on various archival sources, including petitions from subaltern groups, governments acts and proclamations, Haitian constitutions, and the press, this other dimension of the state's relations with the nation are more nuanced.
Of course, as various scholars have argued (Trouillot, Gonzalez, Barthelemy, etc.), the state during the Haitian Revolution and after 1804 sought to limit the extension of smallholder property, the partition of estates, and, at times, even the movement of cultivateurs. According to the author, Dessalines tried to build a Haitian economy based on state control of production through the leasing of habitations for 5 year terms and usage of the military to police or control cultivateurs and limit squatting. However, he faced the problem of both soldiers and cultivateurs resisting his state plans. The emergence of the de moitié system itself was at least partly motivated by the cultivators themselves, who chose to either sharecrop, engage in logging, squat on lands, or, later on, purchase small parcels from the recipients of land under Petion. On the other hand, practices that dated from marronage in the colonial period and forms of resistance among cultivateurs during the Revolution, some Haitians (soldiers and cultivateurs) formed runaway communities that Christophe and others endeavored to crush during the early years of Haitian independence.
Under Petion, however, relations between state and nation took a different path. Petion's agrarian policy of land concessions or grants and preference for la douceur to gradually change or influence Haitians of the lower classes, appears to have strengthened bonds between the state and its rural majority. While still basing itself on protection, Petion also sought to use land grants and more subtle methods to encourage the cultivation of export crops while also rejecting measures like forced placements of cultivateurs. Moreover, it would appear that Manigat was incorrect when he posited the importance of the commercial oligarchy in Petion's decision to concede small properties in 1809. That Petion's change in policy was at least somewhat effective and supported by the rural majority, one notes how it roused desertions from Goman's rebel state in the South. Although not stated in the study of René, one imagines that Petion's agrarian policies were also contributing factors for the flight of Haitians from Christophe's kingdom to the Republic. But for deeper, specific case studies, René cites the case of Cupidon Guillotte, an African-born former slave whose 1828 petition may represent how peasants viewed or conceived of the state. The petition emphasizes the role of the government as a protector and one in which the peasants saw state power as a source for legitimacy of smallholders. Naturally, this process during the tenure of Petion was not the benevolence of a magnanimous president, but a result of years of peasant and cultivateur resistance and the conflicts with Christophe in the North.
Unfortunately, the more positive aspects of Petion's policies, which still sought to exclude the masses, were magnified by President Boyer. Jean-Pierre Boyer would, as early as 1818, restore corvee labor. He also agreed to the horrible conditions of the 1825 indemnity to France, despite vociferously opposing it in 1814. Boyer similarly excluded cultivateurs from juries, national guard gatherings, and, most infamously, promulgated the Code Rural. Seen by René as the most systematic attempt to control the labor of the rural population of Haiti, through domination, coercion and force, Boyer still failed due to resistance from the peasantry and some of the local and provincial government officials or military officers. Yet even as Boyer sought to exclude the rural majority and control their labor, Haitians continued to petition the state for justice. This identification with the state emerges more clearly with the peasant revolt in the South in the 1840s. Led by peasant smallholders rather than the landless, this middling group, influenced by the liberals who held banquets with peasants in 1842 and overthrew Boyer in 1843, went even further by demanding education for their children, an end to exclusionary practices, and participation in the formal political process.
Although the peasant revolution only lasted a short time, the proclamations of Acaau and other sources fascinatingly point to the ways in which the peasantry drew on the legacy of the Haitian Revolution and relations with the state, demanding participation rather than isolation. Alas, the resistance of the elites prevented this from fully occurring, while occasional peasant rebellions and use of violence did open some positions in government to some peasants. The tragedy seen in the failure of the Piquets nonetheless lingered, as the "nation" was still largely excluded by the state. Hopefully, future scholarship revisits the themes raised by René for the second half of Haiti, in the 19th century.
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Exploring Igbo and African Ancestry
Tuesday, September 3, 2024
René Depestre: A Life in Movement
Wednesday, August 28, 2024
Dram Zafra
Joel Lorquet's Dram Zafra was another one of his socially conscious graphic novels on an important topic or theme of modern Haiti. In this case, Haitian braceros who cut sugarcane in the Dominican Republic, but also touching upon other themes like migration and exploitation. Like his other comics, this one features some interesting storytelling but underdeveloped art. That said, this short work, through telling the tale of 3 Haitian men who go cut cane in the DR to escape misery but only find more suffering and deprivation, is emotionally powerful. One of the 3 men dies in the Dominican Republic, another loses an arm for sleeping with a married Dominican woman, and the third, Murat, is imprisoned for entering the Dominican Republic illegally. The two survivors who eventually make it back to Haiti, one via a prison escape and the other after 6 months of living in the batey, return to their old lives with new ideas and conceptions of their experience abroad. Indeed, one, Murat, connects the bracero system to slavery while the armless Jean-Orius opens a boutique or shop. It is a shame Lorquet did not continue to write and illustrate stories in Haitian Creole. If his work was written in the standard Haitian Creole orthography and he was open to new genres, perhaps more Haitians would have followed in his footsteps and Haiti would have developed better comics. Nonetheless, Lorquet's socially relevant work addresses major issues Haiti faced during the 1980s while attempting to show the dignity of poorer Haitians.
Sunday, May 26, 2024
Petion's Republic and the Haitian People
Monday, May 20, 2024
L'administration de Jacmel en 1845
Maurice Lubin's L'administration de Jacmel en 1845 is too brief to truly provide an idea of Jacmel in the 1840s, but it certainly helps. Relying on surviving government documents and reports on receiving and expenditures of the arrondissement's administration, Lubin's short publication does suggest something of Jacmel's importance in Haiti at the time. For instance, Jacmel's revenue stream included about the equivalent of 6 million in foreign currency that was sent to the central administration in Port-au-Prince. Jacmel was also frequently visited by foreign ships in 1845, including two from Venezuela. The city's military received about 52 percent of expenses, with only one single primary school funded by the government. This sorry state of affairs, including the existence of only military hospitals and no government spending on health and sanitation, demonstrates the negative impact of Haiti's overly militarized administration. Indeed, the state could not even pay respectable salaries to some of the citizens who served in the armed forces yet died in indigence and their families could not cover the costs of their funerals. So, while there was prosperity from Jacmel's coffee economy and, perhaps, the cost of living was not yet so high, the government was still spending perhaps excessively in the military. This was so even after the final recognition of Haitian independence by France, though the Western powers could still have invaded the island, necessitating a strong military.
Saturday, May 18, 2024
Les anciennes sucreries coloniales et le marché haïtien (sous Boyer)
Les anciennes sucreries coloniales et le marché haïtien (sous Boyer) by Hénock Trouillot is a short read on an interesting moment that consolidated Haiti's banana republic path. As the title indicates, Trouillot's work explores the decline of Haitian sugar production during the presidency of President Boyuer. Trouillot elucidates this process through a combination of archival sources, foreign reports and accounts and newspapers to demonstrate how the lack of capital, absence of labor and poor economic policies led to Haiti's poverty and underdevelopment.
First, the decline of the sugar industry. Despite attempts to revive Haiti's sugar production and commercial exports and promote the national industry, through initiatives like the Code Rural and immigration of African Africans, Boyer's Haiti failed on all fronts. A lack of capital plagued Haitian sucreries and the Haitian elite generally, meaning that they did not possess the capital to modernize or improve production or hire skilled workers. This favored the guildives and distilleries instead of sugar, since owners of sucreries were able to turn to producing tafia and rum for the Haitian market. According to Trouillot, this ultimately did not do much for the economy or Haitian social elevation since it favored a disproportionate consumption of alcohol. Boyer's government also helped ruin the sugar industry through tax policies that favored imported liquors and imported sugar. So, despite the Boyer government's purported interest in promoting sugar production, the government ultimately contributed to its demise. The lack of credit or limited amount of credit available to Haitians was an additional burden.
The remainder of Trouillot's short study focuses on market, fiscal and economic policies of the Boyer years. Plans for a national bank under President Boyer did not succeed while foreigners began to overwhelmingly dominate the national economy. Although, at least on paper, prevented from owning land and, legally, limited to consignment, many of these foreigners (French, Germans, British and Americans) violated Haitian laws and regulations repeatedly. The seeds of frequent foreign involvement in Haitian coups and revolutions can already be seen in the example of Robert Sutherland, who sold arms to both Christophe and Petion during their conflicts. In other ways, the access of foreigners to capital and credit from their home countries and their ability to flout Haitian laws or find willing Haitian allies facilitated their dominance of the economy. In short, most imported goods were under their control and many were able to force or undercut Haitian competitors. Able to set prices that were ultimately passed on to the consumer, these foreigners contributed little to Haiti. Their economic importance for the state, however, could be seen in the data for years available in which recettes from imports paid by foreign consignment merchants, although contraband, speculation and overcharging ensured them a sizable profit in Haiti. Members of the Haitian government and the Haitian elite accommodated themselves to this pattern, using the state and their position or ownership of some land to benefit themselves to whatever extent possible. While some lamented the weakness of national commerce and the lack of economic power for the Haitian elite, they engaged in truly anti-national business or political actions.
Surprisingly, Trouillot attributes the demise of the Boyer years to opposition from the very same corrupt Haitian elite that was responsible for favoring the stranglehold of foreigners on Haiti's commerce. Some of these familiar names appeared in L'Union in the 1830s and included landowning elite families, such as the Nau. These groups, joined by those in the South by 1843, succeeded in overthrowing Boyer in a movement that received popular support. For Trouillot, these anti-Boyer elites were ravenous and wanted to take advantage of the state for their own economic benefit rather than truly aim for liberal reforms of the economy or policies more favorable to the development of a national bourgeoisie. While this aspect of Trouillot's argument probably requires more evidence, it is interesting to see the way he highlighted the frequent fires that broke out in Port-au-Prince that targeted commercial houses, perhaps an indication of popular discontent and resentment of the foreign-dominated economy and the state that established this. Of course, the 1825 agreement to indemnify France for recognition and the formation of the "double debt" contributed to this downward path for Haiti, which became even more fully enmeshed in the economic imperialism of the Western powers.
Saturday, April 27, 2024
Henri Christophe's Government
Hénock Trouillot's Le gouvernement du roi Henri Christophe offers a broad overview of the kingdom of Haiti under Henri Christophe. Based on archival sources, newspaper accounts written in the Republic to the South, and the descriptions of travelers and writers like Dumesle, Trouillot endeavored to reconstruct the history of Christophe's state. Recognizing that most of our writings on Christophe from the Republic were authored by ideological and political opponents of the kingdom, Trouillot attempted to offer a balanced assessment of Christophe's government. Instead of seeing him as a bloodthirsty tyrant, Christophe's state was a totalitarianism avant la lettre which sought to build a modern black nation through a strong economy and well-ordered polity. One sees this through Christophe's fortifications and national defense policy, protection of national commerce and promotion of Haitian industry and labor, and economic, educational and political policies that regulated social life while creating clear hierarchies in which the rights of the cultivateur were, at least on paper, protected.
Due to Trouillot's desire to shed a more positive light on Christophe's kingdom, one can see how every policy pursued by Christophe, even before the death of Dessalines, was connected to establishing a firm foundation for a wealthy, civilized, and well-defended state. Surrounded by slaveholding powers in a hostile world, Christophe, like Toussaint and Dessalines, believed the island's fate lied in reestablishing agriculture and industry. Christophe accomplished this with a system in which the large estates were preserved and distributed to a nobility appointed by him. Paying 1/4 of the proceeds of the estates to the state and 1/4 to the laborers, Christophe instituted a system of taxation and strict controls to ensure the recipients of land grants performed their duty of producing sugar, coffee, and other exports. Christophe's state relied on the military and police to ensure the laborers did not leave the estates without permission, too. However, the laborers were, at least in theory, the recipients had access to government redress in cases of exploitation. In addition, Christophe's state was wealthy. The successful system of production adopted in the kingdom, based on that of the earlier system used by Dessalines, Toussaint and Sonthonax, left about 30 million gourdes in the state treasury. This wealth came from sound economic policies and a system of land tenure in which the state was ever-ready to ensure consistent production and pursue international trade (most favorably with Britain).
In addition to Christophe's system of land administration, he promoted national industry and commerce. Christophe spent dearly for foreign teachers, artisans, expertise and technicians to train local Haitians. His educational policy, which appears to have still been in a limited form by the time of his death in 1820, included an ambitious program that would have, if he had the time, probably reached all corners of the state. Nonetheless, his policies did succeed in promoting the training of a cadre of Haitian artisans and technicians. Indeed, even what at first seems like a waste of funds on Christophe's fine palaces, chateaux and monuments, was actually an expenditure that mostly employed Haitian labor and artisans. This further encouraged the development of Haitian skilled labor while also ensuring that the appointed nobility would also employ or seek the services of Haitian skilled laborers on their own projects. Christophe's success in this regard, combined with the success of higher agricultural production, ensured his state was far wealthier than the southern republic. One can see how his lavish palaces and monuments were spent in ways that could support local industry and the development of a local economy.
Sadly, the lack of additional sources, particularly on taxation and imports and exports, prohibits a deeper understanding of Christophean state's political economy. Nonetheless, with what has survived and made it into the Haitian National Archives, Trouillot's analysis affirms the kingdom's economic wealth. It was exactly the type of state which, despite its internal problems (the use of forced labor, the limitations on the movement of cultivateurs and the attempts to prohibit Vodou) was likely to build and consolidate a strong nation-state in a sea of hostile powers. Unlike the republic to the south, Christophe's kingdom was a centralized administration in which the state played a direct role in nearly every area. Christophe's success could be seen in that his treasury contained an estimated 30 million gourdes when he died, with most of it looted and pillaged by his disloyal subjects, leaving only an estimated 9 million for Boyer's government (according to Trouillot). His grandiose vision had even included a plan to recruit 40,000 African recaptives through negotiations with the British, presumably using these Africans to supplement his army. This was a brilliant strategy that, if there had been sufficient time, could have helped save Christophe from the rebels who pushed him to commit suicide. Lamentably, Christophe's regime perished and a reunified Haiti, under Boyer, agreed to the onerous indemnification of France.
Sunday, January 28, 2024
Eugene Aubin and Vodou
Saturday, January 27, 2024
Religion and Politics in Haiti
A collection of 2 essays by Harold Courlander and Remy Bastien, published as Religion and Politics in Haiti in 1966, presents an interesting moment in the study of Vodou and politics. Written at a time of economic malaise and authoritarian rule by Papa Doc, both Courlander and Bastien present Vodou in a provocative fashion. To Courlander, whose studies of Haiti always struck us as superficial, Vodou is not to be blamed for the woes of Haiti. Indeed, Vodou was actually something that represented a complete worldview and ethos for the Haitian masses. Due to the extreme poverty and precariousness of life for the Haitian peasant, Vodou offered something lacking in Catholicism and it continued to play such a pivotal role due to ongoing governmental neglect, incompetence, and exploitation.
Bastien, a Haitian, offered a more extreme position. Indeed, Bastien went as far as accusing the Haitian ethnological movement of a trahison des clercs. Instead of dedicating themselves to the betterment of their illiterate brothers trapped in backwards, regressive living conditions and a magico-religious worldview disconnected from modernity, the Haitian intellectual sought to make Vodou (and folklore) the pillar of Haitian identity and authenticity. According to Bastien, these Haitian intellectuals, followers of the school of Price-Mars, lacked the brakes necessary to stop their extremism. So, unlike the situation in sub-Saharan Africa, the Haitian ethnologists took things too far and neglected their ultimate responsibility of ameliorating conditions for the Haitian peasantry.
Of course, Bastien's brief essay is excessive itself, especially in light of the writings of Haitian ethnologists like Price-Mars which directly concerned social inequality and the failure of Haiti's elite. However, one can also see the justness of Bastien's critique at a time when Vodou had become another institution corrupted or controlled by Francois Duvalier. By 1966, at least in Bastien's eyes, Vodou had become part of the oppressive panoply of Duvalierism's toolbox of administration. Furthermore, Vodou was incompatible with the types of modern change, education, healthcare, and poverty eradication that Bastien believed was necessary. No houngan would sponsor or support these aforementioned reforms since their achievement would, in Bastien's perspective, defeat the purpose of the houngan's existence in the first place. This characterization of the houngan is unfair, or at least lacking the evidence for such a broad generalization. Nonetheless, the Haitian religion was, by then, a product of long-term marginalization and growing impoverishment of the Haitian. Consequently, Vodou reflected those regressive conditions of living and would be threatened by progressive changes in the Haitian countryside. Indeed, the Vodou of 1966 or even 1915 was far from the conditions of 1791. Instead of fetishizing folklore and Vodou, Haiti's intellectuals should have devoted themselves more passionately to the question of bringing the peasantry into the 20th century.