Haiti Earthquake: Disaster at a Disaster

[dvinman]

In the 1700’s what is now Haiti was called the “Jewel of the Caribbean,” and supplied about 40% of the world’s sugar.

In 1791 the government of France passed legislation to phase out slavery in it’s Caribbean colonies and grant the former Negro slaves citizenship. Rather than becoming citizens, Haiti’s Negro population mass murdered all whites and Mulattoes who could not flee the Island in time. In 1804 only full blooded Negros remained and Haiti became the first Negro ruled nation. The Haitian revolution dominated America’s debate over slavery. While both the north and the south agreed that slavery should be ended, southerners and a large percentage of northerners universally opposed having a large population of freed slaves living in their midst. The Haitian “Revolution” was fresh in everyone’s mind.

Flash forward to 1915. The “Jewel of the Caribbean” is now a desolate cesspool, that is exporting almost no sugar. The United States decides to “take up the white man’s burden” and send the US Marine Corps to rebuild Haiti’s infrastructure and feed it’s starving population.

The United States gave huge amounts of money to Haiti and oversaw the building of 1,000 miles of road, telephone lines, modernized it’s port, and helped Haiti to start exporting sugar once again. The US also put an end to the thousands of bandits along Haiti’s border with the Dominican Republic. The US left in 1934 at the request of the then stabilized and very ungrateful Haitian government.

Haiti immediately sank straight back into total desolation strife. In 1973 the United State once again began playing a huge role in Haiti, giving the Island huge sums of money in handouts each year.

In 1994 the Clinton administration once again sent the US military to Haiti to rebuild the Island’s infrastructure.

In 1995 the Peace Corps went to Haiti in large numbers to train the Haitians in job skills. The US government spent almost one Billion providing food and job training to the Haitians between 95 and 99.

So when Obama says that Haiti has our “full, unwavering, support,” they have already had our full support since 1915.

 

[Xenophon]

And the alternative to helping them is to let them die?

In a case like this, I'd rather see us have no money then turn our backs on helpless people.

 

[editec]

In 1791 the government of France passed legislation to phase out slavery in it’s Caribbean colonies and grant the former Negro slaves citizenship.

Did they?

I'd like to know more about that since I can't find comfirmation of that claim.

Can you direct me to your source of this revelation, please?

 

[uptownlivin90]

In 1791 the government of France passed legislation to phase out slavery in it’s Caribbean colonies and grant the former Negro slaves citizenship.

Did they?

I'd like to know more about that since I can't find comfirmation of that claim.

Can you direct me to your source of this revelation, please?

Yes and no. It's a bullshit spin certain individuals try to put on my people's revolution. Yes, the French Revolution brought about the new issue of abolition, however that fight was on the French mainland. This ignorant picture this fool is trying to paint that the good old well meaning plantation owners in the French colonies wanted to free their slaves "slowly but surely". The whites of Saint Domingue (d'Haiti) threatened to wage war against France over the issue of slavery.

It would be somewhat be the equivelant of a black revolution taking place in Alabama during the civil war against the white plantation owners. Mainland France simply flirted with the issue and the colonies weren't having it. The original poster is an idiot.

Haitian Revolution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

French Slavery

The leading figures of the Enlightenment condemned slavery, but they made little impact on French popular or political opinion. Abbé Raynal in 1770 published a book (in Amsterdam) arguing that slavery was contrary to nature and thus wrong. The clergy of Bordeaux, however, demanded it be prohibited as an outrage to religion and the parlement of Paris ordered it burned by the public executioner.

The French Revolution brought such antislavery men to power. English abolitionists like Thomas Clarkson were delighted and encouraged the French liberals to put their words into action. The Declaration of the Rights of Man in August 1789 had stated, "Men are born free and are equal before the law."

So you might think, in the interest of consistency, the French would have ended the slave trade and liberated their chattels at that time. You'd be wrong.

A Société des Amis des Noirs had formed. One of its leaders was Condorcet, who urged France to follow the example of America, which had set an end date to the slave trade and where leaders from all sections looked forward to the day, expected soon, when American slavery would die a natural death. Condorcet held up America as an example to France in this regard because America's leaders knew they would "debase their own pursuit of liberty if they continued to support slavery."

But the négriers of Nantes were powerful and influential. The Constituent Assembly took up the topic of the slave trade in March 1790. So far from curtailing slavery or the slave trade, it simply passed a decree, "Whoever works to excite risings against the colonists will be declared an enemy of the people."

The French Assembly even had the equivalent of the American three-fifths clause, which gave the West Indian colonies 10 deputies in Paris, even though they numbered only a few tens of thousands of free settlers. But the Assembly rejected a few free mulattoes who turned up among the West Indian deputies and refused to seat them.

Shortly afterwards, a delegation from the newly founded and revolutionary Armée Patriotique of Bordeaux reached Paris and told both the Jacobin Club and the Assembly that five million Frenchmen depended on the colonial commerce for their livelihood, and that both the slave trade and West Indian slavery were essential for the prosperity of France. Another committee was then entrusted to make a report on slavery. That body, however, did little more than denounce attempts to cause risings against the colonists. Mirabeau was shouted down when he tried to oppose this. The assembly voted for the committee's proposals for inaction and, until 1793, the French slave trade continued to receive a subsidy in the form of a bonus for every slave landed. Nantes in fact enjoyed its best year ever as a slave city in 1790, sending forty-nine ships to Africa. For the slave merchants in that politically radical city, the word "liberty" seems to have signified the idea that the slave trade should be open to all. [Thomas, p.522]
Mulattos in Saint-Domingue, learning that their hopes for equality in the new system had been quashed in the Assembly, rose in revolt, and turmoil spread through the colonies. This forced the leaders of the Revolution to reopen the issue and condemn slavery -- in principle. It was not enough. Saint-Domingue's slaves then rose in a bloody insurrection. There were 450,000 blacks, most of them slaves, against only 40,000 whites (mulattoes numbered about 50,000).
Finally, in August 1791, the Assembly declared anyone who landed in France to be free, but it was too late to save Saint-Domingue. The British had occupied the colony and re-instated slavery, and by the time they handed it back to France at the Peace of Amiens (1802) the French had gotten over their flirtation with emancipation and were back in the slavery business. Saint-Domingue fell in the only successful slave revolt in history and was reborn as the free nation of Haiti. Meanwhile the shortage of sugar in Paris that resulted from the slave revolt precipitated the riots that brought the Revolution crashing down from its high ideals into authoritarian repression.

 

[Vast LWC]

And even if the OP's information was completely true, which it obviously isn't, I can't say I would blame anyone for killing a bunch of people that ENSLAVED THEM AND EVERYONE THEY KNEW for their entire lives.

Personally if my family and friends were all enslaved by a bunch of Frenchmen for decades, I might want to go kill some people myself. Maybe that's just me though.

I imagine the original poster thought that the enslaved people of Haiti should have been grateful to their former captives for graciously finally letting them out of the captivity that they had imposed in the first place.

Of course the "White Man's Burden" comment shows us what kind of person wrote the OP in the first place anyway.

 

[uptownlivin90]

In 1791 the government of France passed legislation to phase out slavery in it’s Caribbean colonies and grant the former Negro slaves citizenship. Rather than becoming citizens, Haiti’s Negro population mass murdered all whites and Mulattoes who could not flee the Island in time. In 1804 only full blooded Negros remained and Haiti became the first Negro ruled nation.

You're a complete and utter idiot and a liar at that. First of all ONLY wealthy mulatto's were offered citizenship in the French Republic. When they were offered this, white plantation owners became furious and made every attempt to supress them in order to keep them from successfully abolishing slavery. In matter of fact the Mulatto population were the FIRST to rebel against the white plantation owners and led and began the Haitian revolution.
The Haitian Revolution
Mulattoes were not "killed off" at all, they faught alongside and with the black Haitians and still exist in d'Haiti today. They make up anywhere from 5 to 7 percent of the population.

The Haitian revolution dominated America’s debate over slavery. While both the north and the south agreed that slavery should be ended, southerners and a large percentage of northerners universally opposed having a large population of freed slaves living in their midst. The Haitian “Revolution” was fresh in everyone’s mind.

While I don't pretend that the civil war in America was over slavery, you must think we're all idiots if you want us to believe that southern plantation owners wanted to loose their best source of income.

Flash forward to 1915. The “Jewel of the Caribbean” is now a desolate cesspool, that is exporting almost no sugar. The United States decides to “take up the white man’s burden” and send the US Marine Corps to rebuild Haiti’s infrastructure and feed it’s starving population.

First of all the United States went into d'Haiti in 1915 to save it's own business interests after Jean Guillaume Sam was ousted from power that February.

Second, immediately after the revolution d'Haiti fell into enormous debt to France, as the nation demanded that they be paid "retribution" for their loss of slave labor (so much for the good ol' white man huh?).External debt of Haiti - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This debt helped choke the economic life out of d'Haiti immediately. As well, between the Haitian revolution and 1915 the majority of turmoil existed between rival classes of wealthy MULLATOS (who you falsely claim were killed off ). Wealthy Mulatto families often had outside support from either France, Britain, Germany, or Spain, and then later the United States, Cuba, and Russia. With all seven nations having pouring money into various classes of wealthy Mulatto's these elite groups became RICHER while many of the poor masses in d'Haiti became poorer. The seven nations supporting various groups in d'Haiti played them against each other and d'Haiti became a political battle ground, especially during WWI.

The United States gave huge amounts of money to Haiti and oversaw the building of 1,000 miles of road, telephone lines, modernized it’s port, and helped Haiti to start exporting sugar once again. The US also put an end to the thousands of bandits along Haiti’s border with the Dominican Republic. The US left in 1934 at the request of the then stabilized and very ungrateful Haitian government.

The US did not just come and give support to the Haitians, it was a full blown occupation in which the US government gave itself full veto control over d'Haiti's legitimate government. This occupation could not continue because if it had d'Haiti would simply become a US colony. In addition new problems with the US occupation arose. The Haitian elite was morbidly opposed to segregation in the Southern US and had been working with the NAACP since 1910. Segregationalist policies were also being enforced in much of Port-au-Prince under the US. The US came and "reformed" the French based educational system which was favored by the elected officials in Haiti.

This caused the break down of much of the educational system simply because there were not enough trained educators in d'Haiti to teach the US based system. While good things DID occur during the occupation it wasn't all "good ol' white man helping out the negroes".

 

[uptownlivin90]

And even if the OP's information was completely true, which it obviously isn't, I can't say I would blame anyone for killing a bunch of people that ENSLAVED THEM AND EVERYONE THEY KNEW for their entire lives.

Personally if my family and friends were all enslaved by a bunch of Frenchmen for decades, I might want to go kill some people myself. Maybe that's just me though.

I imagine the original poster thought that the enslaved people of Haiti should have been grateful to their former captives for graciously finally letting them out of the captivity that they had imposed in the first place.

Of course the "White Man's Burden" comment shows us what kind of person wrote the OP in the first place anyway.

That and that they should be "grateful" that the white man was "kind" enough to take them out of the disease ridden jungles of Africa where they were swinging in trees and bring them into "civilization"... all they had to do was do a few chores. Racism is sickening.