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Xenophobia and Economic Decline: The Haitian Case, 1820-1843

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Robert K. Lacerte
Robert K. Lacerte*
Affiliation:
Whitworth College, Spokane, Washington
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Extract

The international situation in which the early Haitian republic found itself between 1820 and 1843 aggravated its internal problems and precipitated its economic decline. The economic structure of the new country had been weakened by the destruction of the colonial sugar plantations during the war of liberation against France (1791-1804). It proved impossible to resurrect these in the republican era, because of the lack of capital and the unwillingness of the ex-slaves to return to plantation life. They wanted property of their own, and this insistence forced successive governments to distribute land to them. Only Henri Christophe, who ruled the North as a kingdom (1806-1820), succeeded in maintaining the old system through forced labor; an experiment which died with him. Dramatic as these changes were, however, they were not sufficient to prevent the resurgence of a new economy based on coffee; a crop which was well suited to peasant cultivation. The shift towards coffee exports had begun in the last years of the colonial era and accelerated in the years after 1804. An economy of smallholders engaged in the cultivation of coffee and provisions existing alongside the remaining plantations could have provided a modest foundation for economic growth. Alexandre Pétion, the first president of Haiti (1806-1818), had envisioned this possibility and it was one of the reasons which he gave for carrying out the first land reform in Latin America. Haiti was a major exporter of coffee in the first half of the nineteenth century, and there were a number of foreign merchants already present in the country to purchase the crop. Instead of economic prosperity, the years after 1820 witnessed an economic decline which made the first black nation virtually ungovernable after 1843 save by the rule of caudillos.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , April 1981 , pp. 499 - 515
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1981

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References

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2 There were twenty-four merchant houses in Port-au-Prince in 1818. New York Public Library, Hearne Papers. Similar figures for the second city, Cap-Henri (Cap-Haitien), are unavailable, but British property there was valued at $1,041,000 in 1811. Great Britain, Admiralty 1/262, March 12, 1811.

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9 British Museum, Clarkson Papers Add. 41266, Terms offered to Hati in 1816.

10 Joachim, 1498

11 Great Britain, Foreign Office 34/4 “C. Mackenzie to G. Canning, September 9, 1826.”

12 Great Britain, Foreign Office 35/18 Memorandum on the expediency of renewing negotiations for the Commercial Treaty between Great Britain and Hayti, October, 1836. Hereafter cited as Memorandum.

13 Ibid.

14 Great Britain, Foreign Office 35/5 “C. Mackenzie to G. Canning, January 17, 1827.”

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35 Ibid., 18 aôut 1842.

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44 Great Britain, Foreign Office 35/25 “W. Ussher to Lord Aberdeen, March 5, 1842.” The Haitian coin was an amalgam of silver (93.5 per cent) and copper (94.5 per cent). 35/16 Return of the Amalgam of the Haytian Coin Shewing the Quantity of Alloy.

45 Great Britain, Foreign Office 35/17 Returns for the years 1834 and 1836.

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49 Le Phare (Port-au-Prince), 17 février 1831.

50 Ibid., 24 février 1831.

51 Ibid.

52 Ibid., 3 mars 1831.

53 Great Britain, Foreign Office 35/20 “W. Ussher to Lord Palmerston, April 30, 1838.”

54 Le Manifeste (Port-au-Prince), 19 décembre 1841.

55 Great Britain, Foreign Office 35/20 “W. Ussher to Lord Palmerston, October 8, 1838.”

56 Great Britain, Foreign Office 35/26 “W. Ussher to Lord Aberdeen, March 12, 1843.”

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58 Great Britain, Foreign Office 35/26 “W. Ussher to the Earl of Aberdeen, August 19, 1843.”