If I said that white countries made black countries like Haiti shitholes, the hollering would never end. Over the time I have been here, I have read endless posts by whites dissing black run countries. The NY Times wrote a series called The Ransom. Now it's time some whites learned the truth.
The Ransom
The Root of Haitiās Misery: Reparations to Enslavers
...for generations after independence, Haitians were forced to pay the descendants of their former slave masters, including the Empress of Brazil; the son-in-law of the Russian Emperor Nicholas I; Germanyās last imperial chancellor; and Gaston de Galliffet, the French general known as the ābutcher of the Communeā for crushing an insurrection in Paris in 1871.
Twenty-one years after Haitiās revolutionary heroes declared their countryās independence, swearing to die before being put back in chains or living under French domination again, a squadron of French warships ā equipped with some 500 cannons ā loomed off Haitiās coastline.
The kingās envoy, the Baron of Mackau, issued a daunting ultimatum:
Hand over a staggering sum in reparations to Haitiās former slave masters, or face another war.
The Haitians had ample reason for alarm. Two decades earlier, Napoleon had tried to destroy them, sending one of the largest expeditions of warships ever dispatched by France, with his brother-in-law at the helm. The Haitians won and declared independence. Napoleon lost more troops than he did at Waterloo and withdrew.
But rich French colonists continued to press to reconquer the territory, and they found another sympathetic ear when the Bourbon monarchy returned to power. One minister of the navy, a former colonist and prominent defender of slavery, even drafted a new plan to put Haitians back in bondage or ācrush themā with a still larger army.
No country could be expected to come to Haitiās defense. The world powers had frozen it out, refusing to officially acknowledge its independence. American lawmakers in particular did not want enslaved people in their own country to be inspired by Haitiās self-liberation and rise up.
So, Haitiās president, eager for the trade and security of international recognition, bowed to Franceās demands. With that, Haiti set another precedent: It became the worldās first and only country where the descendants of enslaved people paid reparations to the descendants of their masters ā for generations.
It is often called the āindependence debt.ā But that is a misnomer. It was a ransom.
The amount was far beyond Haitiās meager means. Even the first installment was about six times the governmentās income that year, based on official receipts documented by the 19th-century Haitian historian Beaubrun Ardouin.
But that was the point, and part of the plan. The French king had given the baron a second mission: to ensure the former colony took out a loan from young French banks to make the payments.
This became known as Haitiās ādouble debtā ā the ransom and the loan to pay it ā a stunning load that boosted the fledgling Parisian international banking system and helped cement Haitiās path into poverty and underdevelopment. According to Ardouinās records, the bankersā commissions alone exceeded the Haitian governmentās total revenues that year.
Then right wingers can't understnd why some blacks call whites devils.
Haitian
for its failed state status today, and the U.S. mainstream media repeats this nonsense every time they mention Haitiās statehood collapse.
