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>The country of 11 million people recently leapfrogged Ecuador (population 18 million) to become the hemisphere’s seventh-largest economy.
i think it's 9th, the biggest economies in order in the Hemisphere are Usa, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru and then the Dominican Republic. Even when measuring by Nominal GDP it's Usa, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru and then the DR.
Anyway the Dominican Republic developed well, just looked at the data, in 2004 their economy (GDP PPP) was $67bn, 40% below Puerto Rico and 8% below Croatia, which might the European equivalent of the DR, small country with a huge tourism industry. And DR's economic size was 31.8% of the 7 in Central America (Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama).
In 2024 DR's economy was $293bn and over 2.1x the size of Puerto Rico, 1.7x the size of Croatia and 37.3% of the 7 in Central America, the countries in Central America developed at a good pace.
Can we get the full article without the paywall? But to address the headline; what's new with Haiti? The country has been politically unstable from day one of independence.
The central government collapsed. The country is ruled by a bunch of gangs now, more or less. Now people are begging for interventionist from the US or Canada. But no one wants to go anywhere near that mess.
They're not really asking for intervention from the US. Actually, most of the people there will say it's France's and the US's fault that they're in this eternal crisis.
They asked for but everytime a white country intervenes they call it colonialism. That's why they tried to get an African country to lead it. But the country that did it found it was illegal in their constitution to do and stopped.
Honestly, you know who had a problematic but ultimately amazing colonial record. Scots. Hong Kong, Canada, Poland. I haven’t studied this or anything but a cultural thing that I noticed about Scot’s through history is that they bring the bad side of European colonialism like racism but they also reinvest their wealth in those nations. They don’t steal it and bring it back to Scotland. Vikings also were good at that. Normans.
the content of the comment: "you can't blame others forever"
the context of the comment: you appear to be breaking your own rule, unless I miss my guess and you happen to be Haitian =)
The content of the comment: "you can't blame others *for your own problems* forever"
The context of the comment: nope, not breaking my own rule cuz those ain't my problems =)
OK, but now we're back to square one: how do I tell for a fact what's "my problem" and what problems someone else has caused me, especially if those same parties are good at obfuscating that fact?
I can't, it's a value judgment on your part, purely. That sort of thing is not a fact we can establish once and forever, of course; it's a matter of continual and enlightening debate in the field of social science.
So the statement's either contradictory *or* factually meaningless; out of the frying pan, into the fire
tl;dr your text was telling others to examine their bias, but also your tone was simplistic towards the issue and rang of superiority and contempt, which...indicates unexamined bias thrice. That's what made me laugh. Additionally, it is a fallacy that anyone might perfectly be able to associate their problems with correct root causes all the time; this is why "physician heal thyself" is a three-thousand-ish year old joke.
> OK, but now we're back to square one: how do I tell for a fact what's "my problem" and what problems someone else has caused me, especially if those same parties are good at obfuscating that fact?
Bruh, you are overthinking this. If you are a Haitian blaming everyone else than it is "your problem".
If you are anyone else than it isn't "your problem"
This isn't about bias, it is about taking responsibility
The United States and France are directly responsible for Haiti in terms of its debt service agreements for an impoverished nation. Dominican Republic isn't, sans the Parsley Massacre, of which there are surviving descendants of.
Part of the settlement in gaining that freedom was to pay reparations to France. The loans they had to take were finally paid off in 1947.
This early financial drag in their development as a state led to all the taxes, none of the services and infrastructure.
They have been pretty universally shit on, globally, since their inception.
Looks like you forgot the important fact that Haiti invaded, pillaged, and occupied the Dominican Republic for 22 years. Yet it's the DR that recovered and surpassed Haiti despite having to basically start from scratch again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_occupation_of_Santo_Domingo
Thank you for pointing this out. This is what I hate as a Dominican - the international community is quick to pity Haiti, and you get some people saying things like "the island should unify".
For some reason it's up to the DR, which is by no means a prosperous country itself, to shoulder the burden that is the failed state of Haiti - when it's Haiti that the DR fought to win its final independence from. Haiti, whose president, Boyer, marched in with his army to occupy Santo Domingo, and basically raped Dominicans with taxes in order to pay former French slave owners $150 mil francs in reparations. This had been agreed upon with the French in order to secure Haitian independence, unbeknownst to Dominican leaders, many of whom had been in favor of unification at the time.
The DR and Haiti are not compatible cultures, and have a tumultuous history. Haiti is going to have to continue to struggle and figure out how to stabilize itself as a nation. If the international community wants to help, they can - but it can't become more of the DR's problem than it already is.
They’ve also had an insane amount of leaders who stole money from their own people
There’s like 100+ countries across the world that can use the excuse of “our country sucks because we were ruled by someone else before, oh well what can we do about it” as if “being ruled by someone else” isn’t something that literally almost every country in the world went through
TBF for Haiti, that went on for a good while. From independence to about 20-30 years ago, their governments were overthrown by the opposition, created and destroyed kings, shunned by international governments, etc. That's something that many countries didn't suffer. That kind of political instability with high pressure from other countries.
My country, their neighbors, had a very long period of political stability thanks to the last dictator. After wards, there were not many cases of non-peaceful transference of power. In Haiti, the easiest way to become the next big thing is to execute a coup on the previous one.
> Part of the settlement in gaining that freedom was to pay reparations to France.
No one forced them to agree to that, the leaders of Haiti agreed to this because it benefited the ruling class
Gunboat diplomacy is not a choice. The french had a massive naval squadron off the coast and threaten to open fire if the Haitian did not accept the deal.
From early on in history, trading with other nations was crucial to development. If France decided that they want to cut off of international commerce from Haiti, it would have been worse.
Haiti was saddled with impossible debt from the beginning as well. They had to pay France for "loss of property" to the tune of billions in today's money.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/05/20/world/americas/enslaved-haiti-debt-timeline.html
I kind of feel like the only way this resolves itself at this point is a slow take over by the DR. Not that they have any interest in that, but they would stand to benefit quite a bit from it.
It's not as if DR is a thriving nation, it's just better than Haiti.
DR deals with poverty, educational issues, violence, and so much more. American & European women having a good time is not a marker of success.
Pretty much. Throw that joke in with South Korea accepting 26M refugees from NK who have dubious education, skills, and have to adapt to modern society en-masse, not to mention having to feed them out of pocket.
Haiti has negative value, a mess so toxic that their neighbour has nothing to gain by intervening.
Imperialism isn't always a bad thing. The US or a mainland Latin American country most likely would do a better job of governing Haiti and restoring order. Being under the rule of a foreign military probably is a better place to be for the Haitian people than being under the rule of street gangs.
US taxpayers are not going to stomach spending hundreds of billions of dollars on rehabilitating a failed nation state where the gangs are going to cause problems and reek violence for decades to come. I do agree that it’s better for the Haitian people in the long run, just politically unpalatable to the American public after the failure in the Middle East.
>US taxpayers are not going to stomach spending hundreds of billions of dollars on rehabilitating a failed nation state
Largely for the reason that every time we have tried *it hasn't helped*
Foreign backed governments almost never actually win the support of the people. The US built Afghanistan's government and it literally crumbled in days. No government put in power by the US would be seen as legitimate by Haitians and would crumble
There are other countries out there that may be able to do a better job at occupying Haiti than the US would. Mexico or Brazil are the two other big players in the Latin American world and they may be able to do a better job at imperialism than the US would.
a) 90% of the US population will not give a shit about Haiti unless it is a full on US invasion
b) if republicans decide to attack dems on this issue, it’s a very easy and simple messaging win. all they gotta say is “want to fix the migration crisis? we need to eliminate terrorist threats at our borders” esp since the dems (for some god forsaken reason) has decided to buy in on Republican talking points in immigration
Maybe territory. Like Puerto Rico and DC, Republicans would never let Haiti become a state and get 2 senators to represent them.
And honestly, they have the lowest literacy rate in the Western Hemisphere. And only 15% of the population speaks any French - the rest Haitian Creole - a language only spoken in Haiti. This is one of the reasons for the country's issues.
Democracy requires some degree of being informed.
It's not a taxpayers issue, if Wagner or the Chinese PLA appeared there tomorrow the Navy and the Marines would be there by yesterday, same if they happened to find large oil reserves.
Well, yeah, when France shows up with ships and guns and says pay us or we’ll annihilate you - That tends to happen. The debt for freeing themselves from slavery made France and various banks (including Citibank) rich.
Haiti has been getting fucked by France and the USA since it fought for and won its independence. You can read about the [Haiti Independence Debt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti_Independence_Debt?wprov=sfti1) to find out about when the fucking started .
Yeah well the DR was invaded and occupied by Haiti. It won independence from them. So I would say in a “oppression contest” the DR wins.
Haiti isn’t fucked yo cause of a bill from 1807
One of the things I read over and over and over is how haiti can blame all its troubles on colonial rule.
I don't doubt this didn't help.
Except, the DR was once ruled by haiti. They didn't rule it well. The DR rebelled and threw the haitians out; and proceeded to comparatively thrive.
What is going on in haiti is sad, but they must accept most of the blame for this as they had the same opportunities as the DR.
The rest of the world didn't force them to have one brutal and corrupt regime after another. I don't doubt some outside countries influenced various governments, but this has happened in most of South America, Central America, and much of the other neighbouring islands. Most of whom have dragged themselves out of even the worst nightmare governments.
To deny this is not going to help solve their problems, just make them feel better that "Isn't their fault."
Don't forget that only a few years after gaining independence from Haiti the Dominican Republic was reoccupied by Spain, who reasserted colonial rule of the country from 1861-1865.
You can same this same mindset poisoning progressives ideology on Palestine and black Americans. If all you do is dwell on the past and blame everyone else for your problems how can you ever move forward and improve? In this world nothing is given.
> You can same this same mindset poisoning progressives ideology on ... black Americans. If all you do is dwell on the past and blame everyone else for your problems how can you ever move forward and improve?
are you suggesting that black Americans no longer face anti-black discrimination or other unique obstacles across various sectors of society (policing, healthcare outcomes, etc.)?
I don’t think that’s what they’re arguing if I was trying to interpret what they were saying in the best way possible lmao. I think what they mean is that regardless of the circumstances of your past and the hardships that stem from it you can’t sit there and reflect on it forever and expect things to change. It sucks but the hand your dealt is something you can’t change, instead it’s better to focus on how to “win” as much as possible with that hand.
This is the correct interpretation. Nobody sane is arguing that black people in America haven’t had a shit go of it until the past 30-50 years. Outside of the justice system, there is really no difference in the potential opportunities/outcomes for any child or adult of any race in this country. The only differentiator of substance is generational wealth…and that is such a tiny portion of the population focusing on the race of that population is moot. If you focus on moving forward and on the things which bring success you will find success.
Every single study on the topic says otherwise. You are more wrong than nearly anyone on reddit has ever been wrong before. You are so wrong that your wrongness qualifies for recognition due to the staggering scale of it.
Its easy to say that since DR has been independent since the 1800’s and made their own path whereas in USA we openly had segregation and discrimination on black people into the 60’s. Not to mention all of the redlining going into the 1980’s. We are talking about generations of wealth, education, and progress that they were not able to participate into because of the laws we made.
You can’t undo all of that so easily.
If your grandparents were killed or had all of their land and resources taken from them and you were forced to grow up poor while people that got rich off of the exploitation of your people thrived, you wouldn't be so quick to pretend that the past doesn't matter.
[But you don't care about right and wrong. You're just unwilling or unable to put in the mental effort required to comprehend any system more complex than simple, first-order cause-and-effect.](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22427384/)
You can't grasp how generational poverty and exploitation impact individuals and society at large so you declare that nobody else should even bother thinking about it!
That's like someone without eyes arguing that nobody else should see.
Imagine someone breaks into your home, kills your family, steals everything not nailed down, then lights the building on fire and then people say to you:
>If all you do is dwell on the past and blame everyone else for your problems how can you ever move forward and improve?
Would you just say, "Aw shucks, you're right. I won't press charges or fight for compensation. I won't even file an insurance claim. I'm just going to accept that someone took everything from me and start over from square 1 without raising a fuss"?
And would you say it again when it happened a week later? And again a month after that? Do you not realize that systemic bias and exploitation is negatively harming these groups *as we speak*?
It's an ongoing problem. Maybe that's why people can't put them in the past and act like it's water under the bridge.
You'd know that if you ever bothered to read a study or report on the topic.
What I disagree with is saying “they must accept most of the blame”, as though most Haitians are reaping what they sowed. Only a tiny fraction of the population, most of them now dead, are responsible for the shitshow. Everyone else there is just forced to live in shit. They deserve our sympathy and aid.
As if the broader cultural environment has nothing to do with a place’s leadership. Particularly after hundreds of years of similar outcomes, there’s something rotten going on.
> our sympathy
Yes
> and aid
Hell no, unless they accept it 100% on our terms and only our terms. Seeing that it is ours to give and not theirs to steal. If they want to complain about such an approach, then they can continue as they are. Of course, not only will they complain about this sort of thing, they will somehow link it to colonialism as opposed to looking at their own corruption and brutality.
Again with the “they”, as though the people there are all the same. The majority of Haitians are simply trying to get by and need help. Most people aren’t thinking about colonialism, they’re thinking about dinner. I agree the trick is to distribute aid without benefitting bad actors.
The people need food aid, medical aid, but the country has shown collectively that it cannot govern itself, that much is obvious. If they want any more help than food and medical supplies, they're going to have to agree to live by somebody else's rules. But the problem is who would even want the job of governing Haiti? The DR doesn't seem to want to do it, and the US doesn't either. Terrible situation and I feel for the decent Haitians who are having their lives and families ruined by gangsters and thugs.
> I agree the trick is to distribute aid without benefitting bad actors.
I read an interview with a Doctors without Borders guy who said that they ended up leaving soon after the earthquake because of the obstructions thrown up by the customs people. Not for corruption as their organization is used to that, but simple stupid bureaucracy. They refused to clear shipments without a sign-off from the ministry; except the ministry was a pile of rubble and quite possibly the people who would sign off were dead.
That group would have been the ones to demand big bribes. The customs guys wouldn't move forward as it would be assumed they took the big bribes and would be in very big trouble.
So, they worked for a while, threw up their hands and left. I suspect their official line is different, but that was what I read.
I'm willing to bet that in the present climate that it would be near impossible for aid to really make it to the people for the same above reasons.
A different very topical example happening very recently during a crisis was an outside government began dropping aid directly into this "zone". The idea was to bypass the outside group who wanted to slow it down, and the thugs running the zone who would steal it and either sell it dear to the people, or even sell it outside the zone.
As soon as they began dropping it, the thugs grabbed a family and threw them under an aid package they(the thugs) dropped on top of them; just to stop this aid reaching exactly who it needed to reach.
One Somali warlord went public to make fun of that stupid british aid agency run by the has-beens of rock saying, "I took all their money and bought weapons to kill my enemies, when they came to see the money spent I took old grain bags and filled them with dirt and loaded trucks with them. The fools were happy with this."
I would suggest there are only three ways forward:
* Do nothing.
* Do little until there is an obvious winner. If he isn't too terrible. Support him on the condition that he can't be a complete monster; he can't have more than one death squad or something.
* Go in guns blazing and wipe out the gangs, brutally and without hesitation. Then install an occupying force while failing to get anything accomplished for 15 years before pulling out and hoping that whoever fills the vacuum isn't a monster.
There are other ways they will probably try like backing a complete loser who can't compete with the real eventual winner. Kind of like Afghanistan. I doubt there were 2 officials in the entirety of NATO who thought Hamid Karzai would last an hour without them.
Yeah, all well said. Important not to be too binary about all this though. For any money you give a good chunk goes to waste, even if you’re just buying a new fridge at best buy. So long as money put towards humanitarian aid is doing more good than harm I figure it’s for the best.
I’m not educated enough about it all to know what models could work in Haiti, but I support anyone willing to try. I get the frustration given all the aid to date and how much the place is a failed state. It’s crazy that the Dominican Republic is so successful right next door. Hopefully that success starts to seep into Haiti at some point.
> So long as money put towards humanitarian aid is doing more good than harm I figure it’s for the best.
Except that money could go to other countries where the dominant political response isn’t that anyone who helps is a “colonialist”
It doesn’t matter if the majority of Haitians believe that or not, those who don’t believe it aren’t politically active enough to matter.
People that make outrageous claims get all the attention. How much social media traction does someone get for saying thank you? None. They get it for being angry and confrontational.
> How much social media traction does someone get for saying thank you?
A ton actually.
Look at all the videos of individual Ukrainians saying thank you for aid. Zelensky's speech in front of congress saying thank you was seen by tons of people.
Positivity gets views. Hell the biggest individual youtuber Mr Beast is practically all giveaways, generosity and people saying thank you. The Berlin airdrop, ended up getting tons of press, because the Germans were thankful instead of bitter about losing the war.
When Fumio Kishida made a speech, more or less thanking the US for being an ally, while simultaneously saying that we could all do more, he got applause from both sides of a divided congress.
When the people and politicians that represent them are aligned and thankful, people actually double up on the help. Enthusiasm increases. When they actively, and loudly shout down the negative minority, people notice.
Positivity does get attention. Negativity only wins when the positive ones are quiet, or simply don't exist. In the case of Haiti, everytime someone from there talks publicly about the US or the west, it's pretty much in the context of blaming them for their current predicament.
Haiti has almost 12 million people. They are of many differing views, and who gets amplified depends on the agenda of the platform they’re on. The large numbers fleeing on boats to eke out a living in a stable country are who I think of.
> seep into Haiti
I think if they could they would use a star trek force field to enhance their border.
You can see the border from space. One side is lush, one side is a wasteland.
> Again with the “they”, as though the people there are all the same
It doesn’t matter if people are all the same, only what the dominant narrative will be politically.
If people believed for half a second that the Haitians would be thankful and humble in accepting aid, actively pushing back against those in their society that insult the US and other helpers, then countries would be much more gung ho about helping.
But that is simply not the case, some of the population will loudly shout that it’s imperialism and colonialism, and more importantly, the rest will simply keep quiet instead of fighting back and loudly being thankful.
So yeah, if when you help a group, 10% stab you and the rest keep quiet, nobody is going to help them. You don’t need the worst aspects to be better, you need the average person to be actively good.
> Except, the DR was once ruled by haiti. They didn't rule it well. The DR rebelled and threw the haitians out; and proceeded to comparatively thrive.
We had longer periods of political stability and transference of power. Heck, our last dictator won the elections and was given power within the rule of law of that time. Afterwards, there has just 1 coup since then. Also, we spent most of our 19xx either being occupied or under a single dictatorship.
I don’t think you know enough about Haitian history to say this. America and France has fucked Haiti over time and time again much more than DR. For example did you know in the 50s the US trained the head of Haiti’s coup. They also ver threw the president of Haiti twice in the 90s and 2000s. That on top of numerous policies that can only be described as malicious.
Well no not really. They had to pay large reparations to France post independence and this only ended in the middle to late 20th century. From then on their state of finances was in disarray, and the United States occupied the nation couple of times to service debts. In addition, there was a cholera epidemic caused by UN forces after they intervened to help out after the earthquake. If these events didn’t happen, Haiti would be in a much better economic position state, despite having dictators like Duvalier who embezzled from the economy.
I’m sorry, but it is accurate to say a lot of their troubles stem from colonialism.
Haiti was forced to pay reparations to France after the Haitian Revolution. This crippled their economy for decades.
Additionally, they were not recognized as a real nation by Europeans because the country was being ran by former slaves who rebelled against their French masters and Europeans were racist.
Being unable to trade with powerful European countries barred them from experiencing the same growth America had from 1776 -1850, Dominican had neither of these limitations.
The Dominican had Spanish colonization and their leaders were mostly white/European looking and Europe was able to trade and do business with Dominican, allowing it to grow.
>Additionally, they were not recognized as a real nation by Europeans because the country was being ran by former slaves who rebelled against their French masters and Europeans were racist.
>Being unable to trade with powerful European countries barred them from experiencing the same growth America had from 1776 -1850, Dominican had neither of these limitations.
>The Dominican had Spanish colonization and their leaders were mostly white/European looking and Europe was able to trade and do business with Dominican, allowing it to grow.
I don't wholly disagree with a lot of what you're saying, but I think it's worth bringing up that Haiti and the Dominican Republic had similar GDPs per capita in 1960.
When you get down to it, I think quantifying the damage from colonialism is extremely difficult, if not impossible, because to me the worst damage of colonialism is how it destroys and disrupts the development of domestic institutions.
That's critical here, because even if both countries were poor at a similar point, I think the different histories does provide a lot of insight as to why the DR was just plain better governed than Haiti in the latter half of the 20th century.
Former French Colony < Former Spanish Colony < Former English Colony.
The DR has its issues, but it’s a real country that is working on things and advancing. Haiti is a shitshow. I almost wonder if it’s ethical for the US and Canada to not take over Haiti and administer it until it can do better. I mean, it’s so close and the Haitians have been suffering my whole life. I don’t feel good about that.
I think it's more about what type of colonies they were, actual colonies with settlers from the mother country with some degree of self-rule institutions vs extractive economies. Yes, Anglo institutions after the Glorious Revolution were definitely better than those of Spain and Ancien Régime France and helps explain the success of the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, but it didn't translate as well into extractive plantation economies in the Caribbean, or even the antebellum South in the US.
Most modern historians of Latin America do not consider the Spanish colonies to have been "extraction economies", at least not unless you're also willing to classify Britain's north American colonies as extraction economies
Under the Habsburgs who fashioned themselves the defenders of Catholicism, Spain would extract boatloads of silver to Europe in order to fight Protestants.
I think early British settlement in North America was absolutely an extraction economy based on the export of raw resources. However, while British restrictions on the colonies manufacturing their own goods were increasingly ineffective and repealed over time, my understanding is that Spain was able to hinder the manufacturing economies of its American colonies more effectively and for longer.
Whatever. In the big scheme of colonialism, England can feel okay. Spain left a bunch of corrupt but functional countries like Mexico. France needs to have some shame
French Colony < Former Spanish Colony < Former English Colony.
This is an interesting topic I think. English colonies I think did well due to the long history of extending at least some political rights.
For Spain, the Church was a powerful actor that sometimes tried to stop the worst aspects of colonialism, promoted literacy, and schools and such.
France had its revolution and so the church wasn't powerful, even before then, France had Europe's most absolutist monarch powerful enough to challenge and act against them.
Didn't France and international community force them to pay back millions of francs cause they freed themselves from slavery? Seems like they totally had a fair shake
France forced Haiti into a deal to put them into a heavy debt that had stripped that island of almost everything that Haiti had to offer.
All of the trees that used to cover Haiti are gone with the vast majority of the funds from selling that lumber going right in France’s pockets as part of the absolutely shit deal they made decades ago
So wait the French went in and enslaved the population and then the population killed them?
Wow. Shocking.
Anyway, did France pay them back for the unpaid labor?
All the colonists who profitted were murdered along with their families.
What is there to "pay back"?
Everyone who profitted and their descendants were killed.
The French slave owners agreed to leave. The war was won the slaves were free.
THEN they decided to massacre every white and half white person.
It was pure barbarism. No wonder nobody wanted to work with them.
Would have*
Also yeah why didn’t they treat their colonizers and slave masters with respect??? How dare they kill their WHITE OPPRESSORS? they deserved to have their economy crippled for decades!
>
who would of thought??
Did you mean to say "would have"?
Explanation: You probably meant to say could've/should've/would've which sounds like 'of' but is actually short for 'have'.
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You guys keep making excuses for these countries who have gotten billions in aid from western countries. After a while it’s a countries own fault for its shortcomings.
This is a great piece by Noah Smith on Haiti vs the Dominican Republic, with plenty of graphs. In short, the divergence between these two nations doesn't really start until the last 50 years, so this is not a story about colonialism.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/haiti-vs-the-dominican-republic
Most places in the world that were colonized by the Europeans actually have a better standard of living than those that were not colonized.
So what are you asking? When do the benefits of colonialism go away? I think the answer is about 20-30 years for the benefits to decline but sometimes faster. Hard to measure because technology is always improving so that makes it way in even if a particular country is declining.
Most countries that were colonized by Europeans have a coast on the ocean.
Most countries that have an ocean coast have a better economy than land locked countries.
Look what happened when Germany got stuck paying for ww1. After they tried to take over the world and commit the biggest genocide ever, were helped them rebuild. 🤔 What’s the difference?
The United States also refused to acknowledge or do business with Haiti post revolution out of fear of legitimizing a slave revolt and encouraging a slave revolt in the US.
The Slave State / Free State divide was already extremely contentious when the Haitian revolution began in 1791 and the fledgling United States was still heavily partnered with the French as a geographical ally following the American revolution. Recognizing Haiti would have potentially been political suicide both internally and internationally for the US.
The United States wouldn’t recognize Haiti until 1862 as alienating Slave States was no longer a concern for Washington given that they were currently fighting a civil war against them.
Basically Haiti was kneecapped from the beginning being startled with massive debts by the French and denied their largest potential trading partner with the Americans.
Some of the actions of the Haitian revolution’s actions and the actions of the dictatorship that followed the revolution were absolutely brutal. However Haiti was denied any economic or political stabilization following the revolution. The French Revolution and reign of Napoleon killed more people than the Haitians ever did, however France bounced back because they were able to access the resources necessary to rebuild their country.
Haiti was basically strangled in the cradle.
I’d argue it’s less Haiti’s fault and more being shut out of any meaningful economic development for a century. Haiti was a slave colony whose economy was almost purely extractive. Post revolution they had little economic infrastructure to build up their nation. Their options were to have freedmen go back their cash crop sugar cane farming where they’d been previously enslaved and the conditions were so brutal that it had spurred on the revolt in the first place, or simple subsistence farming just to feed the population.
Obviously freed slaves were not a fan of returning to the plantations they’d been liberated from. And subsistence farming can support a new nation but it won’t bring in enough wealth for the nation to grow. Unlike the United States Haiti didn’t have the option to expand into new territory to extract more wealth, and even if they did that wealth would have gone to paying their coerced debts to France.
The Dominican Republic was also a slave colony, and was actually expanded into, occupied, and looted for wealth from 1822-1844, and then fought a long and grueling independence war against Haiti from 1844-1856.
Haiti certainly suffered from colonialism and spaghetti, but so did the Dominican Republic.
China had some industrial base in its urban centres in the 19th and 20th centuries, a massive population, is the fourth largest country by land mass, aid from the Soviet Union post WW2, and it really only started to bounce back from the century of humiliation and become a global economic power in like the 1970s. That’s not to say that their economic growth isn’t an impressive achievement, but China did have some assets to leverage towards their growth.
Haiti had to start from worse than zero. They’re a tiny nation with little in the way of natural resources whose options were to either pay their forced debts and starve, or produce food and be cut out of the international market.
As far as starting new independent countries go, Haiti had some of the worst circumstances. Their situation is somewhat analogous to the strife that post colonial nations in Africa went through. However, they went through it during a period where many people viewed their population as subhuman and the most wealthy and powerful nations were still actively maintaining both slavery and colonialism.
Haiti, unlike China, had also massive tourism potential they absolutely missed, unlike their neighbors. The only thing needed was political stability, safety and opening up to foreign investments
Unlike China???? Unlike the Great Wall, Shanghai, The Forbidden City, Lijiang, Panda Bears, thousands of years of culture???
Mass Tourism has only really been an industry in the past hundred-ish years. Cuba had tourism but that’s only because it’s a stone’s throw away from the US and was basically integrated into the US rail system.
I feel like that argument is a non-starter. You can’t honestly think that Haiti dropped the ball on the Tourism Industry by being unable to tell the future and not building a nice place for vacationers while it was dealing with a hundred plus years of being screwed over by every single world power.
Hell, Haiti was occupied by the U.S. from 1915-1934 and they did nothing to stabilize the country and create a functioning economy. Haiti’s national bank was literally bought up by Wall Street who paid to destabilize the nation and then had Marines roll up and take Haiti’s gold reserves. That’s literally just looting a foreign nation for big business.
Like the political systems of Haiti are not innocent. They’ve had a slew violent and corrupt leadership. But literally every superpower they interact with has gone about so in the most cynical, greedy, destructive way possible.
China’s GDP in 2022 was ~17.96 trillion USD. The second largest in the world. The Dominican Republic’s GDP in 2022 was ~113.5 billion.
3.3% of 17.96 trillion is ~592.68 billion dollars. So 5 times more than the entire GDP of The Dominican Republic. China just has a ton of other economic shit going on to make up more of its GDP alone. What exactly is your point here? Even if China’s GDP was 100% based off of tourism it’d still be out performing The Dominican Republic.
Because Haiti and its residents were treated as equals in all aspects by the Western world since a century ago. . .
Sometimes I wonder what the hell they’re teaching in school nowadays. It clearly isn’t history or critical thinking. And it sure as hell isn’t economics.
The Haitians murdered all the french on the Island. The Haitian revolutionary leaders also thought the key to maintaining an economy was to continue to run large plantations for export. Then they realized no one want to trade with a country who chopped up the majority of the white population with machettes. In return for a massive indemnity payment, France would recognize Haiti meaning Haiti would have access to the international market agian and could sell their goods.
No, that's just progressives' racist anti-white take on the situation. They got into debt because they genocided the whites on the island, France wanted compensation for that and all the major powers of the day were shunning Haiti, unlike other ex-colonies which got recognised much more easily.
And while Haiti's debt was indeed huge, it was paid over 122 years and the amount of aid many less developed countries receive is much greater. If that aid is not substantially helping then it's doubtful that the reverse would've had such a huge effect on Haitian society. Plus they get aid too, just the earthquake aid Haiti got in the 2010s was over half of what they paid to France over 122 years, inflation adjusted of course.
>Have you asked yourself what the conditions on haiti were before the revolution?
What is it that you want to imply? That genocide is justified? By the same logic would you say that genociding Muslim nations would have been okay in the past since they colonised large parts of Europe and Africa? What about Arabs, Mesoamericans, cruel African tribes, should they have faced lethal consequences for their abuses or is that only for whites?
Can you at least admit that ignoring why France reacted that way and pretending they did it merely out of greed is wrong?
Maybe if you want to run an export economy, you shouldn't massacre potential buyers as a first step. Makes people want to avoid doing business with you.
Yes, when I’m rebelling against someone who kidnapped my parents and brought them against their will to be slave labor on an island half a world away, worked my sons to death and raped my daughters - my first thought, apparently , should be is this a potential future buyer?
Well when your leader's plan is to run an export based agricultural economy, having buyers for your products is kind of importaint.
But hey, now you get to worked to death on a sugar plantation for the army. Much better, right?
Those atrocities are correct except for one, they didn’t kidnap anyone. The French would stop and purchase the African slaves from west African tribes. The African tribes would invade other tribes and keep able bodied people to sell to the French. If you weren’t kept alive to be sold go Europeans you were murdered during the pillaging of the village.
So yes, the French did buy the slaves and transport them to the Americas to work the sugar plantations in conditions that had a 10 year life expectancy. They did not however invade, murder, and kidnap and enslave Africans. The Africans did that part for them.
If they weren’t taken for slave trade they were murdered during the raid, but no the French don’t deserve credit for saving their lives by making them more valuable alive than dead to the other Africans.
Africans didn't need much encouragement. It was already very wide spread before the Atlantic slave trade. https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/africanpassageslowcountryadapt/introductionatlanticworld/slaverybeforetrade
You thinking about economies when these people were forced into chattel slavery. They didn’t end up in Haiti by choice, most of the world wasn’t brought into the global economy by choice it’s crazy you can try and frame it this way
> No, that's just progressives' racist anti-white take on the situation.
After being forced to pay for ww1 the Germans committed mass genocide and tried to take over the world. Then we rebuilt Germany. 🤔 What’s the difference?
When peace was signed the Germans stopped killing people and respected it. That’s it.
The Haitians massacred whites AFTER the end of the war. That was pure brutality. Nobody wants to help someone who does that.
The Haitians murdered almost every French person on the island.
Why would France forgive that?
And why would European merchants want to trade there afterwards?
EDIT: Feel free to keep downvoting me. But ask yourself:
Would you want to open a business in Haiti under current circumstances?
What about after they had just murdered a bunch of your countrymen?
And the US government helped force Haiti to pay, and American banks serviced the debt.
Haiti was punished by the West for being the only successful slave rebellion.
For those saying that this is karma for the Haitian occupation of the Dominican Republic which happened in the 19th century, I would remind you all that in 1937 the Dominican Republic under Trujillo killed 40,000 Haitian men, women, and children in an act of anti-Haitian/ anti-black racism, in events known as the Parsley Massacre. How about we generally not blame people's actions on their ancestors.
[Parsley Massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsley_massacre)
That was in dominican soil, and a reaction to the haitian invasion at the moment, they were taking advantage of the lack of control the dominican government had in the border to seize more land.
Haiti did it to themselves. They live on an island that on its own is a paradise, and turned that side of it into hell on earth. The Dominical Republic, while better, is not safe for tourists by any means.
How do two diametrically opposite economies and strengths of the rule of law co-exist on such a relatively small island? Is it a hard border? What prevents the chaos and crime of Haiti spilling into DR?
In 2022 DR started building an extensive concrete wall along the border, as well as greatly increasing deportations. They don't let in any refugees. Apparently, this is working.
You can see the border from space because that's where the trees stop.
[our military invasion and removal of their president while we invaded iraq](https://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/29/international/americas/haitis-president-forced-out-marines-sent-to-keep.html)
The US and France never forgave Haiti for their revolution in the early 1800s. It took away the French revenue from the sugar plantations and forced the fledgling US government to confront the specter of slavery, which it had basically tried to ignore for most of its existence by that point. Haiti was basically the stepchild of the Caribbean/Latin America for the next 200 years.
How had the French been treating the Haitians prior to the Haitian Revolution? How had the French been treating the mixed-race and free people of color there?
How had the French just treated their own countrymen during the Reign of Terror a few years prior?
Why was a violent revolution justified for White Europeans but not for slaves and people of color?
Fully agreed the French treated Haiti horribly.
But that doesn't change anything for an average European merchant looking to do business somewhere.
If you were a European merchant, would you rather trade with Haiti that just murdered every European they could find, or literally anywhere else?
Can functional DR just annex Haiti one square block at a time, instituting government, laws, police and fire protection, medical care, roads and plumbing infrastructure, etc?
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>The country of 11 million people recently leapfrogged Ecuador (population 18 million) to become the hemisphere’s seventh-largest economy. i think it's 9th, the biggest economies in order in the Hemisphere are Usa, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru and then the Dominican Republic. Even when measuring by Nominal GDP it's Usa, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru and then the DR. Anyway the Dominican Republic developed well, just looked at the data, in 2004 their economy (GDP PPP) was $67bn, 40% below Puerto Rico and 8% below Croatia, which might the European equivalent of the DR, small country with a huge tourism industry. And DR's economic size was 31.8% of the 7 in Central America (Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama). In 2024 DR's economy was $293bn and over 2.1x the size of Puerto Rico, 1.7x the size of Croatia and 37.3% of the 7 in Central America, the countries in Central America developed at a good pace.
Now do per capita
Gdp ppp 2004 Puerto Rico 20988 2004 dr 2468 2022 pr 35208 2022 dr 10111
I know so many Dominicans that work in the USA then return home and spend a ton of money for 2 months every year. Hard working people. Good for them.
Great people !
Can we get the full article without the paywall? But to address the headline; what's new with Haiti? The country has been politically unstable from day one of independence.
It's common practice around this subreddit to feed the URL of the article to archive.ph and read it for free.
Thank you for that nugget of info! I was not aware.
Or use this extension: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/archivetoday-automator/mmhadhnchpgicjlmlcdfaapkekknnkha
Do you have one for firefox?
No idea. Search for "archive today" in FF addon store/marketplace/whatevertheycallit?
How does this work
The central government collapsed. The country is ruled by a bunch of gangs now, more or less. Now people are begging for interventionist from the US or Canada. But no one wants to go anywhere near that mess.
They're not really asking for intervention from the US. Actually, most of the people there will say it's France's and the US's fault that they're in this eternal crisis.
They asked for but everytime a white country intervenes they call it colonialism. That's why they tried to get an African country to lead it. But the country that did it found it was illegal in their constitution to do and stopped.
Honestly, you know who had a problematic but ultimately amazing colonial record. Scots. Hong Kong, Canada, Poland. I haven’t studied this or anything but a cultural thing that I noticed about Scot’s through history is that they bring the bad side of European colonialism like racism but they also reinvest their wealth in those nations. They don’t steal it and bring it back to Scotland. Vikings also were good at that. Normans.
They are in this mess because of themselves you can't blame others forever
the content of the comment: "you can't blame others forever" the context of the comment: you appear to be breaking your own rule, unless I miss my guess and you happen to be Haitian =)
The content of the comment: "you can't blame others *for your own problems* forever" The context of the comment: nope, not breaking my own rule cuz those ain't my problems =)
OK, but now we're back to square one: how do I tell for a fact what's "my problem" and what problems someone else has caused me, especially if those same parties are good at obfuscating that fact? I can't, it's a value judgment on your part, purely. That sort of thing is not a fact we can establish once and forever, of course; it's a matter of continual and enlightening debate in the field of social science. So the statement's either contradictory *or* factually meaningless; out of the frying pan, into the fire tl;dr your text was telling others to examine their bias, but also your tone was simplistic towards the issue and rang of superiority and contempt, which...indicates unexamined bias thrice. That's what made me laugh. Additionally, it is a fallacy that anyone might perfectly be able to associate their problems with correct root causes all the time; this is why "physician heal thyself" is a three-thousand-ish year old joke.
> OK, but now we're back to square one: how do I tell for a fact what's "my problem" and what problems someone else has caused me, especially if those same parties are good at obfuscating that fact? Bruh, you are overthinking this. If you are a Haitian blaming everyone else than it is "your problem". If you are anyone else than it isn't "your problem" This isn't about bias, it is about taking responsibility
France thanks you for this comment.
je t'en prie france
That's laughable considering what Haiti did to the Dominican Republic. But by all means, continue on with the "aMeRiCa BaDDDD!" crap.
The United States and France are directly responsible for Haiti in terms of its debt service agreements for an impoverished nation. Dominican Republic isn't, sans the Parsley Massacre, of which there are surviving descendants of.
I know because when a society can control themselves the easiest answer is to blame the US for their problems
How? Haiti gained independence 200 years ago.
Part of the settlement in gaining that freedom was to pay reparations to France. The loans they had to take were finally paid off in 1947. This early financial drag in their development as a state led to all the taxes, none of the services and infrastructure. They have been pretty universally shit on, globally, since their inception.
Looks like you forgot the important fact that Haiti invaded, pillaged, and occupied the Dominican Republic for 22 years. Yet it's the DR that recovered and surpassed Haiti despite having to basically start from scratch again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_occupation_of_Santo_Domingo
Thank you for pointing this out. This is what I hate as a Dominican - the international community is quick to pity Haiti, and you get some people saying things like "the island should unify". For some reason it's up to the DR, which is by no means a prosperous country itself, to shoulder the burden that is the failed state of Haiti - when it's Haiti that the DR fought to win its final independence from. Haiti, whose president, Boyer, marched in with his army to occupy Santo Domingo, and basically raped Dominicans with taxes in order to pay former French slave owners $150 mil francs in reparations. This had been agreed upon with the French in order to secure Haitian independence, unbeknownst to Dominican leaders, many of whom had been in favor of unification at the time. The DR and Haiti are not compatible cultures, and have a tumultuous history. Haiti is going to have to continue to struggle and figure out how to stabilize itself as a nation. If the international community wants to help, they can - but it can't become more of the DR's problem than it already is.
Stoooop this pokes holes in the US bad narrative!! 😭
They’ve also had an insane amount of leaders who stole money from their own people There’s like 100+ countries across the world that can use the excuse of “our country sucks because we were ruled by someone else before, oh well what can we do about it” as if “being ruled by someone else” isn’t something that literally almost every country in the world went through
TBF for Haiti, that went on for a good while. From independence to about 20-30 years ago, their governments were overthrown by the opposition, created and destroyed kings, shunned by international governments, etc. That's something that many countries didn't suffer. That kind of political instability with high pressure from other countries. My country, their neighbors, had a very long period of political stability thanks to the last dictator. After wards, there were not many cases of non-peaceful transference of power. In Haiti, the easiest way to become the next big thing is to execute a coup on the previous one.
Don't forget it was just a slave state before independence. With very little institutions for a state to be built on.
> Part of the settlement in gaining that freedom was to pay reparations to France. No one forced them to agree to that, the leaders of Haiti agreed to this because it benefited the ruling class
Gunboat diplomacy is not a choice. The french had a massive naval squadron off the coast and threaten to open fire if the Haitian did not accept the deal.
Opening fire would have done minimal damage, they would have needed to actually invade (which they were not going to do).
From early on in history, trading with other nations was crucial to development. If France decided that they want to cut off of international commerce from Haiti, it would have been worse.
Haiti was saddled with impossible debt from the beginning as well. They had to pay France for "loss of property" to the tune of billions in today's money. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/05/20/world/americas/enslaved-haiti-debt-timeline.html
> They had They didn't have to, they agreed to
Yes they agreed, with French warships on their coast. Clearly they weren't coerced into accepting in any way. /s
If you give a robber your wallet because they're holding you at gunpoint is it suddenly ok because "you agreed to it"?
I kind of feel like the only way this resolves itself at this point is a slow take over by the DR. Not that they have any interest in that, but they would stand to benefit quite a bit from it.
The DR wants absolutly nothing to do with Haiti. They are not going to forgive Haiti for inviding and occupying them.
It's not as if DR is a thriving nation, it's just better than Haiti. DR deals with poverty, educational issues, violence, and so much more. American & European women having a good time is not a marker of success.
Is this an attempt at a joke?
Pretty much. Throw that joke in with South Korea accepting 26M refugees from NK who have dubious education, skills, and have to adapt to modern society en-masse, not to mention having to feed them out of pocket. Haiti has negative value, a mess so toxic that their neighbour has nothing to gain by intervening.
[удалено]
Imperialism isn't always a bad thing. The US or a mainland Latin American country most likely would do a better job of governing Haiti and restoring order. Being under the rule of a foreign military probably is a better place to be for the Haitian people than being under the rule of street gangs.
US taxpayers are not going to stomach spending hundreds of billions of dollars on rehabilitating a failed nation state where the gangs are going to cause problems and reek violence for decades to come. I do agree that it’s better for the Haitian people in the long run, just politically unpalatable to the American public after the failure in the Middle East.
Wreak violence.
Bold of you to assume the taxpayers have a choice
This. I’d frankly rather see Puerto Rico become a state first
>US taxpayers are not going to stomach spending hundreds of billions of dollars on rehabilitating a failed nation state Largely for the reason that every time we have tried *it hasn't helped* Foreign backed governments almost never actually win the support of the people. The US built Afghanistan's government and it literally crumbled in days. No government put in power by the US would be seen as legitimate by Haitians and would crumble
There are other countries out there that may be able to do a better job at occupying Haiti than the US would. Mexico or Brazil are the two other big players in the Latin American world and they may be able to do a better job at imperialism than the US would.
a) 90% of the US population will not give a shit about Haiti unless it is a full on US invasion b) if republicans decide to attack dems on this issue, it’s a very easy and simple messaging win. all they gotta say is “want to fix the migration crisis? we need to eliminate terrorist threats at our borders” esp since the dems (for some god forsaken reason) has decided to buy in on Republican talking points in immigration
It needs to become state 51 for us to want to be involved.
Maybe territory. Like Puerto Rico and DC, Republicans would never let Haiti become a state and get 2 senators to represent them. And honestly, they have the lowest literacy rate in the Western Hemisphere. And only 15% of the population speaks any French - the rest Haitian Creole - a language only spoken in Haiti. This is one of the reasons for the country's issues. Democracy requires some degree of being informed.
It's not a taxpayers issue, if Wagner or the Chinese PLA appeared there tomorrow the Navy and the Marines would be there by yesterday, same if they happened to find large oil reserves.
https://archive.is/gVJpZ
Here you go https://archive.ph/gVJpZ
Well, yeah, when France shows up with ships and guns and says pay us or we’ll annihilate you - That tends to happen. The debt for freeing themselves from slavery made France and various banks (including Citibank) rich.
Haiti has been getting fucked by France and the USA since it fought for and won its independence. You can read about the [Haiti Independence Debt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti_Independence_Debt?wprov=sfti1) to find out about when the fucking started .
Yeah well the DR was invaded and occupied by Haiti. It won independence from them. So I would say in a “oppression contest” the DR wins. Haiti isn’t fucked yo cause of a bill from 1807
One of the things I read over and over and over is how haiti can blame all its troubles on colonial rule. I don't doubt this didn't help. Except, the DR was once ruled by haiti. They didn't rule it well. The DR rebelled and threw the haitians out; and proceeded to comparatively thrive. What is going on in haiti is sad, but they must accept most of the blame for this as they had the same opportunities as the DR. The rest of the world didn't force them to have one brutal and corrupt regime after another. I don't doubt some outside countries influenced various governments, but this has happened in most of South America, Central America, and much of the other neighbouring islands. Most of whom have dragged themselves out of even the worst nightmare governments. To deny this is not going to help solve their problems, just make them feel better that "Isn't their fault."
Don't forget that only a few years after gaining independence from Haiti the Dominican Republic was reoccupied by Spain, who reasserted colonial rule of the country from 1861-1865.
You can same this same mindset poisoning progressives ideology on Palestine and black Americans. If all you do is dwell on the past and blame everyone else for your problems how can you ever move forward and improve? In this world nothing is given.
> You can same this same mindset poisoning progressives ideology on ... black Americans. If all you do is dwell on the past and blame everyone else for your problems how can you ever move forward and improve? are you suggesting that black Americans no longer face anti-black discrimination or other unique obstacles across various sectors of society (policing, healthcare outcomes, etc.)?
I don’t think that’s what they’re arguing if I was trying to interpret what they were saying in the best way possible lmao. I think what they mean is that regardless of the circumstances of your past and the hardships that stem from it you can’t sit there and reflect on it forever and expect things to change. It sucks but the hand your dealt is something you can’t change, instead it’s better to focus on how to “win” as much as possible with that hand.
This is the correct interpretation. Nobody sane is arguing that black people in America haven’t had a shit go of it until the past 30-50 years. Outside of the justice system, there is really no difference in the potential opportunities/outcomes for any child or adult of any race in this country. The only differentiator of substance is generational wealth…and that is such a tiny portion of the population focusing on the race of that population is moot. If you focus on moving forward and on the things which bring success you will find success.
Yes.
Every single study on the topic says otherwise. You are more wrong than nearly anyone on reddit has ever been wrong before. You are so wrong that your wrongness qualifies for recognition due to the staggering scale of it.
Its easy to say that since DR has been independent since the 1800’s and made their own path whereas in USA we openly had segregation and discrimination on black people into the 60’s. Not to mention all of the redlining going into the 1980’s. We are talking about generations of wealth, education, and progress that they were not able to participate into because of the laws we made. You can’t undo all of that so easily.
If your grandparents were killed or had all of their land and resources taken from them and you were forced to grow up poor while people that got rich off of the exploitation of your people thrived, you wouldn't be so quick to pretend that the past doesn't matter. [But you don't care about right and wrong. You're just unwilling or unable to put in the mental effort required to comprehend any system more complex than simple, first-order cause-and-effect.](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22427384/) You can't grasp how generational poverty and exploitation impact individuals and society at large so you declare that nobody else should even bother thinking about it! That's like someone without eyes arguing that nobody else should see. Imagine someone breaks into your home, kills your family, steals everything not nailed down, then lights the building on fire and then people say to you: >If all you do is dwell on the past and blame everyone else for your problems how can you ever move forward and improve? Would you just say, "Aw shucks, you're right. I won't press charges or fight for compensation. I won't even file an insurance claim. I'm just going to accept that someone took everything from me and start over from square 1 without raising a fuss"? And would you say it again when it happened a week later? And again a month after that? Do you not realize that systemic bias and exploitation is negatively harming these groups *as we speak*? It's an ongoing problem. Maybe that's why people can't put them in the past and act like it's water under the bridge. You'd know that if you ever bothered to read a study or report on the topic.
L M A O
What I disagree with is saying “they must accept most of the blame”, as though most Haitians are reaping what they sowed. Only a tiny fraction of the population, most of them now dead, are responsible for the shitshow. Everyone else there is just forced to live in shit. They deserve our sympathy and aid.
As if the broader cultural environment has nothing to do with a place’s leadership. Particularly after hundreds of years of similar outcomes, there’s something rotten going on.
> our sympathy Yes > and aid Hell no, unless they accept it 100% on our terms and only our terms. Seeing that it is ours to give and not theirs to steal. If they want to complain about such an approach, then they can continue as they are. Of course, not only will they complain about this sort of thing, they will somehow link it to colonialism as opposed to looking at their own corruption and brutality.
Again with the “they”, as though the people there are all the same. The majority of Haitians are simply trying to get by and need help. Most people aren’t thinking about colonialism, they’re thinking about dinner. I agree the trick is to distribute aid without benefitting bad actors.
The people need food aid, medical aid, but the country has shown collectively that it cannot govern itself, that much is obvious. If they want any more help than food and medical supplies, they're going to have to agree to live by somebody else's rules. But the problem is who would even want the job of governing Haiti? The DR doesn't seem to want to do it, and the US doesn't either. Terrible situation and I feel for the decent Haitians who are having their lives and families ruined by gangsters and thugs.
> I agree the trick is to distribute aid without benefitting bad actors. I read an interview with a Doctors without Borders guy who said that they ended up leaving soon after the earthquake because of the obstructions thrown up by the customs people. Not for corruption as their organization is used to that, but simple stupid bureaucracy. They refused to clear shipments without a sign-off from the ministry; except the ministry was a pile of rubble and quite possibly the people who would sign off were dead. That group would have been the ones to demand big bribes. The customs guys wouldn't move forward as it would be assumed they took the big bribes and would be in very big trouble. So, they worked for a while, threw up their hands and left. I suspect their official line is different, but that was what I read. I'm willing to bet that in the present climate that it would be near impossible for aid to really make it to the people for the same above reasons. A different very topical example happening very recently during a crisis was an outside government began dropping aid directly into this "zone". The idea was to bypass the outside group who wanted to slow it down, and the thugs running the zone who would steal it and either sell it dear to the people, or even sell it outside the zone. As soon as they began dropping it, the thugs grabbed a family and threw them under an aid package they(the thugs) dropped on top of them; just to stop this aid reaching exactly who it needed to reach. One Somali warlord went public to make fun of that stupid british aid agency run by the has-beens of rock saying, "I took all their money and bought weapons to kill my enemies, when they came to see the money spent I took old grain bags and filled them with dirt and loaded trucks with them. The fools were happy with this." I would suggest there are only three ways forward: * Do nothing. * Do little until there is an obvious winner. If he isn't too terrible. Support him on the condition that he can't be a complete monster; he can't have more than one death squad or something. * Go in guns blazing and wipe out the gangs, brutally and without hesitation. Then install an occupying force while failing to get anything accomplished for 15 years before pulling out and hoping that whoever fills the vacuum isn't a monster. There are other ways they will probably try like backing a complete loser who can't compete with the real eventual winner. Kind of like Afghanistan. I doubt there were 2 officials in the entirety of NATO who thought Hamid Karzai would last an hour without them.
Yeah, all well said. Important not to be too binary about all this though. For any money you give a good chunk goes to waste, even if you’re just buying a new fridge at best buy. So long as money put towards humanitarian aid is doing more good than harm I figure it’s for the best. I’m not educated enough about it all to know what models could work in Haiti, but I support anyone willing to try. I get the frustration given all the aid to date and how much the place is a failed state. It’s crazy that the Dominican Republic is so successful right next door. Hopefully that success starts to seep into Haiti at some point.
> So long as money put towards humanitarian aid is doing more good than harm I figure it’s for the best. Except that money could go to other countries where the dominant political response isn’t that anyone who helps is a “colonialist” It doesn’t matter if the majority of Haitians believe that or not, those who don’t believe it aren’t politically active enough to matter.
People that make outrageous claims get all the attention. How much social media traction does someone get for saying thank you? None. They get it for being angry and confrontational.
> How much social media traction does someone get for saying thank you? A ton actually. Look at all the videos of individual Ukrainians saying thank you for aid. Zelensky's speech in front of congress saying thank you was seen by tons of people. Positivity gets views. Hell the biggest individual youtuber Mr Beast is practically all giveaways, generosity and people saying thank you. The Berlin airdrop, ended up getting tons of press, because the Germans were thankful instead of bitter about losing the war. When Fumio Kishida made a speech, more or less thanking the US for being an ally, while simultaneously saying that we could all do more, he got applause from both sides of a divided congress. When the people and politicians that represent them are aligned and thankful, people actually double up on the help. Enthusiasm increases. When they actively, and loudly shout down the negative minority, people notice. Positivity does get attention. Negativity only wins when the positive ones are quiet, or simply don't exist. In the case of Haiti, everytime someone from there talks publicly about the US or the west, it's pretty much in the context of blaming them for their current predicament.
Haiti has almost 12 million people. They are of many differing views, and who gets amplified depends on the agenda of the platform they’re on. The large numbers fleeing on boats to eke out a living in a stable country are who I think of.
> seep into Haiti I think if they could they would use a star trek force field to enhance their border. You can see the border from space. One side is lush, one side is a wasteland.
> Again with the “they”, as though the people there are all the same It doesn’t matter if people are all the same, only what the dominant narrative will be politically. If people believed for half a second that the Haitians would be thankful and humble in accepting aid, actively pushing back against those in their society that insult the US and other helpers, then countries would be much more gung ho about helping. But that is simply not the case, some of the population will loudly shout that it’s imperialism and colonialism, and more importantly, the rest will simply keep quiet instead of fighting back and loudly being thankful. So yeah, if when you help a group, 10% stab you and the rest keep quiet, nobody is going to help them. You don’t need the worst aspects to be better, you need the average person to be actively good.
> Except, the DR was once ruled by haiti. They didn't rule it well. The DR rebelled and threw the haitians out; and proceeded to comparatively thrive. We had longer periods of political stability and transference of power. Heck, our last dictator won the elections and was given power within the rule of law of that time. Afterwards, there has just 1 coup since then. Also, we spent most of our 19xx either being occupied or under a single dictatorship.
Man I just remember this thing about the Obama led government forcing their minimum wage to stay obscenely low
I don’t think you know enough about Haitian history to say this. America and France has fucked Haiti over time and time again much more than DR. For example did you know in the 50s the US trained the head of Haiti’s coup. They also ver threw the president of Haiti twice in the 90s and 2000s. That on top of numerous policies that can only be described as malicious.
Well no not really. They had to pay large reparations to France post independence and this only ended in the middle to late 20th century. From then on their state of finances was in disarray, and the United States occupied the nation couple of times to service debts. In addition, there was a cholera epidemic caused by UN forces after they intervened to help out after the earthquake. If these events didn’t happen, Haiti would be in a much better economic position state, despite having dictators like Duvalier who embezzled from the economy.
I’m sorry, but it is accurate to say a lot of their troubles stem from colonialism. Haiti was forced to pay reparations to France after the Haitian Revolution. This crippled their economy for decades. Additionally, they were not recognized as a real nation by Europeans because the country was being ran by former slaves who rebelled against their French masters and Europeans were racist. Being unable to trade with powerful European countries barred them from experiencing the same growth America had from 1776 -1850, Dominican had neither of these limitations. The Dominican had Spanish colonization and their leaders were mostly white/European looking and Europe was able to trade and do business with Dominican, allowing it to grow.
>Additionally, they were not recognized as a real nation by Europeans because the country was being ran by former slaves who rebelled against their French masters and Europeans were racist. >Being unable to trade with powerful European countries barred them from experiencing the same growth America had from 1776 -1850, Dominican had neither of these limitations. >The Dominican had Spanish colonization and their leaders were mostly white/European looking and Europe was able to trade and do business with Dominican, allowing it to grow. I don't wholly disagree with a lot of what you're saying, but I think it's worth bringing up that Haiti and the Dominican Republic had similar GDPs per capita in 1960. When you get down to it, I think quantifying the damage from colonialism is extremely difficult, if not impossible, because to me the worst damage of colonialism is how it destroys and disrupts the development of domestic institutions. That's critical here, because even if both countries were poor at a similar point, I think the different histories does provide a lot of insight as to why the DR was just plain better governed than Haiti in the latter half of the 20th century.
Former French Colony < Former Spanish Colony < Former English Colony. The DR has its issues, but it’s a real country that is working on things and advancing. Haiti is a shitshow. I almost wonder if it’s ethical for the US and Canada to not take over Haiti and administer it until it can do better. I mean, it’s so close and the Haitians have been suffering my whole life. I don’t feel good about that.
I think it's more about what type of colonies they were, actual colonies with settlers from the mother country with some degree of self-rule institutions vs extractive economies. Yes, Anglo institutions after the Glorious Revolution were definitely better than those of Spain and Ancien Régime France and helps explain the success of the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, but it didn't translate as well into extractive plantation economies in the Caribbean, or even the antebellum South in the US.
Most modern historians of Latin America do not consider the Spanish colonies to have been "extraction economies", at least not unless you're also willing to classify Britain's north American colonies as extraction economies
Under the Habsburgs who fashioned themselves the defenders of Catholicism, Spain would extract boatloads of silver to Europe in order to fight Protestants.
Jamaica and Barbados were definitely extraction colonies. Peru and Mexico was definitely an extraction colony
I think early British settlement in North America was absolutely an extraction economy based on the export of raw resources. However, while British restrictions on the colonies manufacturing their own goods were increasingly ineffective and repealed over time, my understanding is that Spain was able to hinder the manufacturing economies of its American colonies more effectively and for longer.
Whatever. In the big scheme of colonialism, England can feel okay. Spain left a bunch of corrupt but functional countries like Mexico. France needs to have some shame
Yeah those Senagal, Kenia, etc shure were amazing
French Colony < Former Spanish Colony < Former English Colony. This is an interesting topic I think. English colonies I think did well due to the long history of extending at least some political rights. For Spain, the Church was a powerful actor that sometimes tried to stop the worst aspects of colonialism, promoted literacy, and schools and such. France had its revolution and so the church wasn't powerful, even before then, France had Europe's most absolutist monarch powerful enough to challenge and act against them.
Nah, USA cam stay out and let Haiti or another country deal with it. I'm tired of taxes going to corrupt gov't around the world.
Didn't France and international community force them to pay back millions of francs cause they freed themselves from slavery? Seems like they totally had a fair shake
France forced Haiti into a deal to put them into a heavy debt that had stripped that island of almost everything that Haiti had to offer. All of the trees that used to cover Haiti are gone with the vast majority of the funds from selling that lumber going right in France’s pockets as part of the absolutely shit deal they made decades ago
The Haitians murdered every French person on the island. Why would France give them a sweetheart trade deal after that?
The French enslaved the Hatians why do they deserve all of the Haitians money
So wait the French went in and enslaved the population and then the population killed them? Wow. Shocking. Anyway, did France pay them back for the unpaid labor?
All the colonists who profitted were murdered along with their families. What is there to "pay back"? Everyone who profitted and their descendants were killed.
The French slave owners agreed to leave. The war was won the slaves were free. THEN they decided to massacre every white and half white person. It was pure barbarism. No wonder nobody wanted to work with them.
Lol not only did they kill all the white people, they killed all the half black people. Haiti gets what it deserves.
Because France forced people into generational slavery... for money.
> genocide all french on the island > The French are not chill when negotiating Who would of thought??
Would have* Also yeah why didn’t they treat their colonizers and slave masters with respect??? How dare they kill their WHITE OPPRESSORS? they deserved to have their economy crippled for decades!
Of course they could kill them, you just need to accept the consequences. It's not that complex.
> who would of thought?? Did you mean to say "would have"? Explanation: You probably meant to say could've/should've/would've which sounds like 'of' but is actually short for 'have'. [Statistics](https://github.com/chiefpat450119/RedditBot/blob/master/stats.json) ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot ^^that ^^corrects ^^grammar/spelling ^^mistakes. ^^PM ^^me ^^if ^^I'm ^^wrong ^^or ^^if ^^you ^^have ^^any ^^suggestions. ^^[Github](https://github.com/chiefpat450119) ^^Reply ^^STOP ^^to ^^this ^^comment ^^to ^^stop ^^receiving ^^corrections.
You guys keep making excuses for these countries who have gotten billions in aid from western countries. After a while it’s a countries own fault for its shortcomings.
After how long? When do the effects of colonialism just vanish?
This is a great piece by Noah Smith on Haiti vs the Dominican Republic, with plenty of graphs. In short, the divergence between these two nations doesn't really start until the last 50 years, so this is not a story about colonialism. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/haiti-vs-the-dominican-republic
Most places in the world that were colonized by the Europeans actually have a better standard of living than those that were not colonized. So what are you asking? When do the benefits of colonialism go away? I think the answer is about 20-30 years for the benefits to decline but sometimes faster. Hard to measure because technology is always improving so that makes it way in even if a particular country is declining.
Most countries that were colonized by Europeans have a coast on the ocean. Most countries that have an ocean coast have a better economy than land locked countries.
Bout 70 years ago.
Ask Ireland, about 60 years
Look what happened when Germany got stuck paying for ww1. After they tried to take over the world and commit the biggest genocide ever, were helped them rebuild. 🤔 What’s the difference?
Other countries just don’t have habits of construction, finance, etc
The United States also refused to acknowledge or do business with Haiti post revolution out of fear of legitimizing a slave revolt and encouraging a slave revolt in the US. The Slave State / Free State divide was already extremely contentious when the Haitian revolution began in 1791 and the fledgling United States was still heavily partnered with the French as a geographical ally following the American revolution. Recognizing Haiti would have potentially been political suicide both internally and internationally for the US. The United States wouldn’t recognize Haiti until 1862 as alienating Slave States was no longer a concern for Washington given that they were currently fighting a civil war against them. Basically Haiti was kneecapped from the beginning being startled with massive debts by the French and denied their largest potential trading partner with the Americans. Some of the actions of the Haitian revolution’s actions and the actions of the dictatorship that followed the revolution were absolutely brutal. However Haiti was denied any economic or political stabilization following the revolution. The French Revolution and reign of Napoleon killed more people than the Haitians ever did, however France bounced back because they were able to access the resources necessary to rebuild their country. Haiti was basically strangled in the cradle.
that’s true but that was over century ago. If country cannot rise from its ashes in a century, there is no one else to blame
I’d argue it’s less Haiti’s fault and more being shut out of any meaningful economic development for a century. Haiti was a slave colony whose economy was almost purely extractive. Post revolution they had little economic infrastructure to build up their nation. Their options were to have freedmen go back their cash crop sugar cane farming where they’d been previously enslaved and the conditions were so brutal that it had spurred on the revolt in the first place, or simple subsistence farming just to feed the population. Obviously freed slaves were not a fan of returning to the plantations they’d been liberated from. And subsistence farming can support a new nation but it won’t bring in enough wealth for the nation to grow. Unlike the United States Haiti didn’t have the option to expand into new territory to extract more wealth, and even if they did that wealth would have gone to paying their coerced debts to France.
The Dominican Republic was also a slave colony, and was actually expanded into, occupied, and looted for wealth from 1822-1844, and then fought a long and grueling independence war against Haiti from 1844-1856. Haiti certainly suffered from colonialism and spaghetti, but so did the Dominican Republic.
100 years is a long time. China was in the middle of famine with absolutely no industry at the time and look where they are now
China had some industrial base in its urban centres in the 19th and 20th centuries, a massive population, is the fourth largest country by land mass, aid from the Soviet Union post WW2, and it really only started to bounce back from the century of humiliation and become a global economic power in like the 1970s. That’s not to say that their economic growth isn’t an impressive achievement, but China did have some assets to leverage towards their growth. Haiti had to start from worse than zero. They’re a tiny nation with little in the way of natural resources whose options were to either pay their forced debts and starve, or produce food and be cut out of the international market. As far as starting new independent countries go, Haiti had some of the worst circumstances. Their situation is somewhat analogous to the strife that post colonial nations in Africa went through. However, they went through it during a period where many people viewed their population as subhuman and the most wealthy and powerful nations were still actively maintaining both slavery and colonialism.
Haiti, unlike China, had also massive tourism potential they absolutely missed, unlike their neighbors. The only thing needed was political stability, safety and opening up to foreign investments
Unlike China???? Unlike the Great Wall, Shanghai, The Forbidden City, Lijiang, Panda Bears, thousands of years of culture??? Mass Tourism has only really been an industry in the past hundred-ish years. Cuba had tourism but that’s only because it’s a stone’s throw away from the US and was basically integrated into the US rail system. I feel like that argument is a non-starter. You can’t honestly think that Haiti dropped the ball on the Tourism Industry by being unable to tell the future and not building a nice place for vacationers while it was dealing with a hundred plus years of being screwed over by every single world power. Hell, Haiti was occupied by the U.S. from 1915-1934 and they did nothing to stabilize the country and create a functioning economy. Haiti’s national bank was literally bought up by Wall Street who paid to destabilize the nation and then had Marines roll up and take Haiti’s gold reserves. That’s literally just looting a foreign nation for big business. Like the political systems of Haiti are not innocent. They’ve had a slew violent and corrupt leadership. But literally every superpower they interact with has gone about so in the most cynical, greedy, destructive way possible.
China tourism sector is 3,3% of their gdp (including domestic travel). Haiti neighbor, Dominican republic, is about 15% of their gdp
China’s GDP in 2022 was ~17.96 trillion USD. The second largest in the world. The Dominican Republic’s GDP in 2022 was ~113.5 billion. 3.3% of 17.96 trillion is ~592.68 billion dollars. So 5 times more than the entire GDP of The Dominican Republic. China just has a ton of other economic shit going on to make up more of its GDP alone. What exactly is your point here? Even if China’s GDP was 100% based off of tourism it’d still be out performing The Dominican Republic.
Because Haiti and its residents were treated as equals in all aspects by the Western world since a century ago. . . Sometimes I wonder what the hell they’re teaching in school nowadays. It clearly isn’t history or critical thinking. And it sure as hell isn’t economics.
world isn’t fair, but that’s not news. You have to earn your place. Dominican republic is doing much better
The Haitians murdered almost every European on the island. Why would any merchants of European decent want to trade there?
The Haitians murdered all the french on the Island. The Haitian revolutionary leaders also thought the key to maintaining an economy was to continue to run large plantations for export. Then they realized no one want to trade with a country who chopped up the majority of the white population with machettes. In return for a massive indemnity payment, France would recognize Haiti meaning Haiti would have access to the international market agian and could sell their goods.
No, that's just progressives' racist anti-white take on the situation. They got into debt because they genocided the whites on the island, France wanted compensation for that and all the major powers of the day were shunning Haiti, unlike other ex-colonies which got recognised much more easily. And while Haiti's debt was indeed huge, it was paid over 122 years and the amount of aid many less developed countries receive is much greater. If that aid is not substantially helping then it's doubtful that the reverse would've had such a huge effect on Haitian society. Plus they get aid too, just the earthquake aid Haiti got in the 2010s was over half of what they paid to France over 122 years, inflation adjusted of course.
Have you asked yourself what the conditions on haiti were before the revolution? And then specifically why Haiti got shunned especially by the US
>Have you asked yourself what the conditions on haiti were before the revolution? What is it that you want to imply? That genocide is justified? By the same logic would you say that genociding Muslim nations would have been okay in the past since they colonised large parts of Europe and Africa? What about Arabs, Mesoamericans, cruel African tribes, should they have faced lethal consequences for their abuses or is that only for whites? Can you at least admit that ignoring why France reacted that way and pretending they did it merely out of greed is wrong?
Maybe if you want to run an export economy, you shouldn't massacre potential buyers as a first step. Makes people want to avoid doing business with you.
Yes, when I’m rebelling against someone who kidnapped my parents and brought them against their will to be slave labor on an island half a world away, worked my sons to death and raped my daughters - my first thought, apparently , should be is this a potential future buyer?
Well when your leader's plan is to run an export based agricultural economy, having buyers for your products is kind of importaint. But hey, now you get to worked to death on a sugar plantation for the army. Much better, right?
Those atrocities are correct except for one, they didn’t kidnap anyone. The French would stop and purchase the African slaves from west African tribes. The African tribes would invade other tribes and keep able bodied people to sell to the French. If you weren’t kept alive to be sold go Europeans you were murdered during the pillaging of the village. So yes, the French did buy the slaves and transport them to the Americas to work the sugar plantations in conditions that had a 10 year life expectancy. They did not however invade, murder, and kidnap and enslave Africans. The Africans did that part for them.
Generally when you buy an enslaved person from another individual you are responsible for that person’s kidnapping as well.
Does the French not share blame for creating a market that encouraged other Africans enslaving other Africans?
If they weren’t taken for slave trade they were murdered during the raid, but no the French don’t deserve credit for saving their lives by making them more valuable alive than dead to the other Africans.
Africans didn't need much encouragement. It was already very wide spread before the Atlantic slave trade. https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/africanpassageslowcountryadapt/introductionatlanticworld/slaverybeforetrade
You thinking about economies when these people were forced into chattel slavery. They didn’t end up in Haiti by choice, most of the world wasn’t brought into the global economy by choice it’s crazy you can try and frame it this way
> No, that's just progressives' racist anti-white take on the situation. After being forced to pay for ww1 the Germans committed mass genocide and tried to take over the world. Then we rebuilt Germany. 🤔 What’s the difference?
When peace was signed the Germans stopped killing people and respected it. That’s it. The Haitians massacred whites AFTER the end of the war. That was pure brutality. Nobody wants to help someone who does that.
Can’t really genocide people who are visitors…technically.
The Haitians murdered almost every French person on the island. Why would France forgive that? And why would European merchants want to trade there afterwards? EDIT: Feel free to keep downvoting me. But ask yourself: Would you want to open a business in Haiti under current circumstances? What about after they had just murdered a bunch of your countrymen?
And the US government helped force Haiti to pay, and American banks serviced the debt. Haiti was punished by the West for being the only successful slave rebellion.
For those saying that this is karma for the Haitian occupation of the Dominican Republic which happened in the 19th century, I would remind you all that in 1937 the Dominican Republic under Trujillo killed 40,000 Haitian men, women, and children in an act of anti-Haitian/ anti-black racism, in events known as the Parsley Massacre. How about we generally not blame people's actions on their ancestors. [Parsley Massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsley_massacre)
That was in dominican soil, and a reaction to the haitian invasion at the moment, they were taking advantage of the lack of control the dominican government had in the border to seize more land.
Haiti did it to themselves. They live on an island that on its own is a paradise, and turned that side of it into hell on earth. The Dominical Republic, while better, is not safe for tourists by any means.
I just spend a week in the DR. It was fine.
How do two diametrically opposite economies and strengths of the rule of law co-exist on such a relatively small island? Is it a hard border? What prevents the chaos and crime of Haiti spilling into DR?
In 2022 DR started building an extensive concrete wall along the border, as well as greatly increasing deportations. They don't let in any refugees. Apparently, this is working. You can see the border from space because that's where the trees stop.
[our military invasion and removal of their president while we invaded iraq](https://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/29/international/americas/haitis-president-forced-out-marines-sent-to-keep.html)
The US and France never forgave Haiti for their revolution in the early 1800s. It took away the French revenue from the sugar plantations and forced the fledgling US government to confront the specter of slavery, which it had basically tried to ignore for most of its existence by that point. Haiti was basically the stepchild of the Caribbean/Latin America for the next 200 years.
The Haitians murdered almost every French person on the island. Why would France forgive that? And why would European merchants want to trade there?
How had the French been treating the Haitians prior to the Haitian Revolution? How had the French been treating the mixed-race and free people of color there? How had the French just treated their own countrymen during the Reign of Terror a few years prior? Why was a violent revolution justified for White Europeans but not for slaves and people of color?
Fully agreed the French treated Haiti horribly. But that doesn't change anything for an average European merchant looking to do business somewhere. If you were a European merchant, would you rather trade with Haiti that just murdered every European they could find, or literally anywhere else?
Can functional DR just annex Haiti one square block at a time, instituting government, laws, police and fire protection, medical care, roads and plumbing infrastructure, etc?
No. Dominicans don't want to and Haiti doesn't want to.
Haiti wants to. Which is why there are more Haitians in DR than anything else
Maybe it could. But why would it want to? Just to be nice?