Yes, but that just says be thankful if your former imperial master were British.
Not because they were nice (being better than Belgium doesn’t say much) but because they inadvertently taught their colonies how to govern themselves.
Every other imperial government destroyed the ruling class and government with a heavy hand, with nothing to replace the destroyed knowledge and skills.
Britain is kind of weird because they didn't set out to become colonizers from the get-go like some other powers did but they kept doing these sorts of minimum effort "back the friendly faction" interventions to protect their economic interests abroad and of course the tin pot dictators and banana republics they were setting up couldn't stay stable without a lot of constant attention and one thing lead to another, troops were stationed, governors were installed, let that run its course for 100yr and suddenly you have an empire.
I don’t think the British decolonized because they wanted to either.
I understand Hong Kong during the 1950s or 1960s wasn’t exactly peaceful, but they handled it better than the other former European powers.
That is to say, they wanted to retain influence if not control.
Though you have flare-ups like the Falkland Islands; which from an outsider’s perspective seems weird that Britain retained influence and not given to Argentina.
Edit: Just to be clear, the British really screwed over nations like China. So it’s strictly about how they handled their pull-out in the last hundred years.
When the war was over the remaining white population was systematically massacred. Originally they were going to spare women and children, but they reasoned they could bring white men into the world, and killed them as well [0]. Quoting from the article:
> Before his departure from a city, Dessalines would proclaim an amnesty for all the whites who had survived in hiding during the massacre. When these people left their hiding place however, most (French) were killed as well.
You wonder why the journalists don't write about this part of the story. They are not journalists. They are social activists who wants to influence society into becoming a certain way. They have an agenda and the agenda is to portray some groups in the most favourable light, and others as bloody heartless murderers.
Their agenda is to find the root cause of inequalities, and the root cause must always lie outside the victimized group, preferably in the form of exploitation by another group. More slaves made it to the Middle East from Africa than to America, but the NYTimes couldn't care less about them, or the countries they came from.
I’m sure if you castrated a man and then burned a member of his family at the stake for stealing food, he’d probably revolt against you and have no qualms about killing your whole family including your children.
The treatment of Haitian slaves was so bad that the King issued the Code Noir. People don’t just rise up in revolt and risk their lives for fun.
Martin Luther King Jr said it best, “A riot is the language of the unheard.” So what then is a revolt?
I think the reason things were so brutal on both sides in haiti was that there were about 32 French for every 500 slaves. So in that context terror and genocide in reaction to terror make more sense.
And committed a genocide in the process, but it was a truely horrific regime they overthrew and they have been in the "debt for uprising" doghouse ever since.
Debt of a country should be generational. If its not paid off within a generation (30 years) it withers
I wish discussions of sovereign debt would always include the accompanying real dynamics. I have a hard time believing Haitians would have simply paid because they received bills telling them they owed money.
So it wasn't actually "debt" that kept the Haitians poor, but rather had to have been some kind of extortion. Was it France threatening to reinvade? Was it all countries threatening to stop trading? Was it the local elites wanting to improve their own position by enforcing on the people under them? Was it many countries threatening to invade and repossess land if mortgages weren't paid? Taking the focus off this in favor of abstract "debt" is basically giving a free pass to those responsible.
The article does go on to details, and it seems like it was the local elites wanting to improve their own position. So basically the revolution was successful but then terrible leaders came to power, similar to if they had gotten a brutal dictator instead.
“When slaves left the plantations or disobeyed their masters, they were subject to whipping or to more extreme torture such as castration or burning, the punishment being both a personal lesson and a warning for other slaves. King Louis XIV of France passed the Code Noir in 1685 in an attempt to regulate such violence and the treatment of slaves in general in the colony, but masters openly and consistently broke the code. During the 18th century, local legislation reversed parts of it.”
What you mention regarding the king trying to regulate the situation is not in contradiction with France simply being more concerned with human rights than other countries.
Do we know how slaves were treated in other areas ( Africa, the Middle East, South America,...)? I find it hard to believe they were any better. The fact that they tried to improve the slave's conditions doesn't prove they were a particularly cruel country for the time.
More slaves were brought to the Middle East than to America, Where are those slave's descendants? Why didn't they revolt?
You have to read about mameluks (the litterature is quite complete, and as some of them could write, you can have the slave point of view on slavery). That will answer most of your questions, and you won't have to trust a random commentator like me (i only know of the end of the mameluk Bajri and the impact it had on west European powers)
There are many possible suggestions, why did you pick that one?
Maybe the suggestion is that they would've eventually gained freedom, like all slaves in Western countries, and that in that alternate history, they would've fared better. After all, the black population in the USA is richer than the black population in Haiti.
They would have fared a lot better if … France didn’t saddle them with reparations for their independence … like what the entire article posted was about
Maybe, playing counterfactual history is just a game. Would they have fared better had they never been brought to Haiti as slaves and had they remained in Africa?
Maybe they would've been taken as slaves to the Middle East. By the way, where are the black descendants of the African slaves taken to the Middle East? How do we pay them reparations?
I think it's completely reasonable to look at the country which they share an island with, Dominican Republic, and ask questions about why one has fared so much differently than the other. The countries share almost identical geographical attributes, yet the average Dominican is 10x richer than the average Haitian.
Central American colonial history is incredibly fascinating but also very tragic.
Obviously, and it's pretty juvenile and reddity to imply I hadn't even read the article, thanks. It might surprise you that there's actually a lot more to Haiti's post-colonial history than just the debt the French tried to call in.
30 years of rule under the Duvalier dynasty held Haiti back in the 20th century much, much more than the country's central debt, but I understand the urge to direct the blame the struggles to one specific cause instead.
And the Duvalier regime is entirely on the Haitian people? The history of Haiti in the 20th century is impossible to separate from the major world power next door. The US has been nearly constantly involved in controlling Haitian politics, including literal invasions, and absolutely not for the benefit of the Haitian people, but to ensure that no other powers grew in the Caribbean region that could threaten its power.
The immediate post-independence history stands out. From Wikipedia:
> Haiti's first century of independence was characterized by political instability, ostracism by the international community and the payment of a crippling debt to France.
Very sad tale, the huge and totally unjust 'reparations' = an ongoing shameful 'bribe' the French imposed to make the now free Haitians pay an ongoing egregious tax. Like most slavers, they feared education = prevented lest in help them get out of their economic trap. So Haiti fell prey to generation of dictators with guns whose only wish was to extract $$ from the populace. The part of the island occupied by Spain eventually threw off the Spanish and had a troubled history with similar dictators, but eventually established a rep democracy and has done very well with over 5% GDP growth. They both have certainly had a rough deal with their colonial history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominican_Republic
One hopes education in Haiti will be prioritised and they are now going to do better going forward!!
Lots of comments decrying the post-war massacres of French on the island.
Say you lead an impoverished country with no international patrons. You've just ejected slaving colonists from the island, but they do not recognize your independence.
What do you wake up each morning worrying about? Re-invasion. A local French population lobbying France to return and restore their property rights is not a minor inconvenience.
I don't think those comments reflect not being empathetic of their situation.
What they reflect is that now, the current narrative is biased, because we purposely leave outside of the story specific parts, and this can't be attributed to chance.
The freed slaves were no indigenous population, they were as much colonists as the white frenchmen, so colonial narrative does not make sense. It was slave revolt, not anti-colonial revolt. Their land property rights were any more legitimate than land property rights of white frenchmen (especially those who were not slave-owners).
It's just crazy that the NYT wrote a lengthy article about France's relationship with Haiti after the war, but left out the genocide of the French population of Haiti. That is the sort of thing that causes bad blood between nations for decades, if not centuries. Maybe France would have given up on enforcing the debt sooner if it hadn't been for that historical context? The NYT doesn't even explore the possibility.
> It's just crazy that the NYT wrote a lengthy article about France's relationship with Haiti after the war, but left out the genocide of the French population of Haiti. That is the sort of thing that causes bad blood between nations for decades, if not centuries. Maybe France would have given up on enforcing the debt sooner if it hadn't been for that historical context? The NYT doesn't even explore the possibility.
Assuming that's true, it's good evidence that journalists should stick to journalism and stay out of writing history. I like the NYT, but it seems like they've lately been taking themselves too seriously and wading into activities where they are not competent. IMHO, if they want to do projects like this, they should commission actual historians to write them.
They say that journalism is the rough draft of history. There's not much good in creating a rough draft for something that happened 230 years ago, and more than likely has better coverage elsewhere.
Assuming OP is talking about the 1804 massacre, Dessalines said:
> Yes, we have rendered to these true cannibals war for war, crime for crime, courage for courage [should be “outrage for outrage”]; Yes, I have saved my country – I have avenged America. The avowal I make of it in the face of earth and heaven, constitutes my pride and my glory. – Of what consequence to me is the opinion which contemporary and future generations will pronounce upon my conduct? I have performed my duty; I enjoy my own approbation; for me that is sufficient. But what do I say? The preservation of my unfortunate brothers, the testimony of my own conscience are not my only recompence [sic]: I have seen two classes of men, born to cherish, assist and succour one another – mixed, in a word, and blended together – crying for vengeance, and disputing the honor of the first blow.
Read the article for yourself, it skips right over the 1804 Haiti massacre, which reduced the French population from thousands to nearly zero. In contemporary terminology, we call that a genocide.
> Assuming that's true, it's good evidence that journalists should stick to journalism and stay out of writing history.
Yeah, this isn't their first foray into politically motivated "historical" work. The 1619 Project somehow won a Pulitzer despite being widely panned by historians. This looks like more of the same.
As I read this, and the comments, I'm struck by how the legacy of slavery has left what feels like incurable trauma on everyone involved. It feels like generational trauma that will take generations to resolve. White and black, everyone has suffered immensely. There is more focus on the suffering of the slaves, as it should be, and white people involved also suffered emotionally and with other terrible consequences. It's a pity this discussion feels like people finding a side and trying to out-trauma the other side, instead of just recognizing how awful this was for everyone. And what that means for the future.
> It feels like generational trauma that will take generations to resolve.
I agree with your point there. In the United States, at least, you have 246 years of slavery (1619 – 1865), followed by 100 years of systemic racism, massacres, lynchings, terror, etc. (1865 – 1965), followed by continual attempts at suppression (1965 – now) and racism, though it has significantly improved. In several generations, it'll be better than it is now, so long as people don't try to forget the past.
58 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] threadNot because they were nice (being better than Belgium doesn’t say much) but because they inadvertently taught their colonies how to govern themselves.
Every other imperial government destroyed the ruling class and government with a heavy hand, with nothing to replace the destroyed knowledge and skills.
I don’t think the British decolonized because they wanted to either.
I understand Hong Kong during the 1950s or 1960s wasn’t exactly peaceful, but they handled it better than the other former European powers.
That is to say, they wanted to retain influence if not control.
Though you have flare-ups like the Falkland Islands; which from an outsider’s perspective seems weird that Britain retained influence and not given to Argentina.
Edit: Just to be clear, the British really screwed over nations like China. So it’s strictly about how they handled their pull-out in the last hundred years.
But from what I understand it was mostly a headache and cost center for the UK, given the distances involved.
> Before his departure from a city, Dessalines would proclaim an amnesty for all the whites who had survived in hiding during the massacre. When these people left their hiding place however, most (French) were killed as well.
You wonder why the journalists don't write about this part of the story. They are not journalists. They are social activists who wants to influence society into becoming a certain way. They have an agenda and the agenda is to portray some groups in the most favourable light, and others as bloody heartless murderers.
Their agenda is to find the root cause of inequalities, and the root cause must always lie outside the victimized group, preferably in the form of exploitation by another group. More slaves made it to the Middle East from Africa than to America, but the NYTimes couldn't care less about them, or the countries they came from.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haiti_massacre
The treatment of Haitian slaves was so bad that the King issued the Code Noir. People don’t just rise up in revolt and risk their lives for fun.
Martin Luther King Jr said it best, “A riot is the language of the unheard.” So what then is a revolt?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1070615/estimated-popula....
In contrast outside the black belt and the delta regions slavery in the US was a minority thing.
When you have a oppressed majority then you have a potential powder keg.
Slavery was wrong regardless.
So it wasn't actually "debt" that kept the Haitians poor, but rather had to have been some kind of extortion. Was it France threatening to reinvade? Was it all countries threatening to stop trading? Was it the local elites wanting to improve their own position by enforcing on the people under them? Was it many countries threatening to invade and repossess land if mortgages weren't paid? Taking the focus off this in favor of abstract "debt" is basically giving a free pass to those responsible.
The article does go on to details, and it seems like it was the local elites wanting to improve their own position. So basically the revolution was successful but then terrible leaders came to power, similar to if they had gotten a brutal dictator instead.
- Beatings
- Brandings
- Cutting of ears
- Cutting of hamstrings
- Not selling you away from your children and wife (if you were permitted to be married)
- Death sentences (addition)
Source: https://revolution.chnm.org/d/335/
“When slaves left the plantations or disobeyed their masters, they were subject to whipping or to more extreme torture such as castration or burning, the punishment being both a personal lesson and a warning for other slaves. King Louis XIV of France passed the Code Noir in 1685 in an attempt to regulate such violence and the treatment of slaves in general in the colony, but masters openly and consistently broke the code. During the 18th century, local legislation reversed parts of it.”
Do we know how slaves were treated in other areas ( Africa, the Middle East, South America,...)? I find it hard to believe they were any better. The fact that they tried to improve the slave's conditions doesn't prove they were a particularly cruel country for the time.
More slaves were brought to the Middle East than to America, Where are those slave's descendants? Why didn't they revolt?
Maybe the suggestion is that they would've eventually gained freedom, like all slaves in Western countries, and that in that alternate history, they would've fared better. After all, the black population in the USA is richer than the black population in Haiti.
Maybe they would've been taken as slaves to the Middle East. By the way, where are the black descendants of the African slaves taken to the Middle East? How do we pay them reparations?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro-Iraqis
Central American colonial history is incredibly fascinating but also very tragic.
30 years of rule under the Duvalier dynasty held Haiti back in the 20th century much, much more than the country's central debt, but I understand the urge to direct the blame the struggles to one specific cause instead.
> Haiti's first century of independence was characterized by political instability, ostracism by the international community and the payment of a crippling debt to France.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti
The "crippling debt" was that Haiti was forced to compensate France for its loss of slaves.
(As was Israel, a nation founded by Holocaust survivors in a very hostile region, or Poland, bombed to shreds in the Second World War.)
In our compassion to the permanently weak, it is easy to overlook the ones who started out in similar position, but eventually outgrew their problems.
Say you lead an impoverished country with no international patrons. You've just ejected slaving colonists from the island, but they do not recognize your independence.
What do you wake up each morning worrying about? Re-invasion. A local French population lobbying France to return and restore their property rights is not a minor inconvenience.
War is cruel, especially colonial war.
What they reflect is that now, the current narrative is biased, because we purposely leave outside of the story specific parts, and this can't be attributed to chance.
Assuming that's true, it's good evidence that journalists should stick to journalism and stay out of writing history. I like the NYT, but it seems like they've lately been taking themselves too seriously and wading into activities where they are not competent. IMHO, if they want to do projects like this, they should commission actual historians to write them.
They say that journalism is the rough draft of history. There's not much good in creating a rough draft for something that happened 230 years ago, and more than likely has better coverage elsewhere.
> Yes, we have rendered to these true cannibals war for war, crime for crime, courage for courage [should be “outrage for outrage”]; Yes, I have saved my country – I have avenged America. The avowal I make of it in the face of earth and heaven, constitutes my pride and my glory. – Of what consequence to me is the opinion which contemporary and future generations will pronounce upon my conduct? I have performed my duty; I enjoy my own approbation; for me that is sufficient. But what do I say? The preservation of my unfortunate brothers, the testimony of my own conscience are not my only recompence [sic]: I have seen two classes of men, born to cherish, assist and succour one another – mixed, in a word, and blended together – crying for vengeance, and disputing the honor of the first blow.
His “Liberty or Death” Proclamation: https://haitidoi.com/2013/08/02/i-have-avenged-america/
Read the article for yourself, it skips right over the 1804 Haiti massacre, which reduced the French population from thousands to nearly zero. In contemporary terminology, we call that a genocide.
> Assuming that's true, it's good evidence that journalists should stick to journalism and stay out of writing history.
Yeah, this isn't their first foray into politically motivated "historical" work. The 1619 Project somehow won a Pulitzer despite being widely panned by historians. This looks like more of the same.
I agree with your point there. In the United States, at least, you have 246 years of slavery (1619 – 1865), followed by 100 years of systemic racism, massacres, lynchings, terror, etc. (1865 – 1965), followed by continual attempts at suppression (1965 – now) and racism, though it has significantly improved. In several generations, it'll be better than it is now, so long as people don't try to forget the past.