AHC: A more prosperous Haiti

[Gary Oswald]

I've just written four articles about the Haitian revolution and in the comments on the first one @Ciclavex commented to say that he wished more AH featured an independent Haiti that hadn't been constantly fucked over by world powers since independence.

So lets talk about how we get there.

One thing you need to prevent happening is the French indemnity, the money the Haitians paid to France in order to get recognition of their independence which was compensation to the slave owners for their now freed slaves. I think it's pretty easy to get the Haitians to refuse this ultimatum, any major leader other than Boyer would have done. But this rather does lead to the problem that if the Haitians refuse it, they still don't have recognition and they have to deal with an embargo. You really need to get the French to accept independence without the indemnity.

You also really need to avoid the US interventions in the 20th century, which requires a much more politically stable and stronger country without different leaders willing to sell the country out to the USA to maintain power and possibly a foreign backer. And you need to avoid the way foreign, german mostly until ww1 and then american since, traders were and are allowed to control the external trade of Haiti's resources without investing within Haiti itself which requires the country to have a stronger economic footing.

Internally, one of the problems is with infrastructure. A slave colony did not have infrastructure built into it the way a settler colony did. Haiti had no education system or health system prior to independence. And the long period of war between 1791 and 1804 tore up the roads and the irrigation systems.

And the biggest problem is probably the Army and the way it sucked up half of the state's budget and allowed a small elite to run the country for their own benefit by shutting out any genuine democratic movements. You really need a situation where a leader can safely reduce the power of the army without either being overthrown or opening the country for invasion.

Different leaders at the top can change some of that, I'm not joking when I've said everything is a lot better if you just kill off Boyer, but a lot of the problems are innate to it being a relatively small ex slave slate which is hated by the rest of the world for what it is. And by suggesting other leaders who could be in power instead, you fall a bit into the David Miliband trap where you pick someone who never held power and so assume they'd be better than those who did because they haven't had a chance to disappoint you.

But, as I've made very clear in my posts on this subject before, I find Henry I and Pétion both fascinating figures. Both are hugely flawed but Henry I, unlike pretty much any other leader from the revolution era, grasped the importance of investing in education and healthcare and Pétion, unlike pretty much any other leader from the revolution era, attempted to work with rather than against the former plantation workers by introducing measures that made it easier for them to own their own land and create their own share crop schemes. The initial plan after the two of them assassinated Dessalines was for Henry to serve as president with Pétion as his senate leader and while they started scheming against each other pretty much straight away, it's so tempting to imagine some kind of working relationship formed in which the two of them could talk each other out of their worst ideas. Unfortunately neither believed in democracy so you're at best getting a british style monarchy.

 

[Venocara]

Maybe if the massacre of whites in 1804 was avoided the country would be less of a pariah in the international community?

Also, keeping ahold of Santo Domingo would make the country richer, and potentially stronger.

 

[Gary Oswald]

Maybe if the massacre of whites in 1804 was avoided the country would be less of a pariah in the international community?

Also, keeping ahold of Santo Domingo would make the country richer, and potentially stronger.

I think the massacre of whites was a mistake but it's somewhat overplayed. There was the same horrified outraged reactions to Haiti from the slave powers prior to the massacre. Jefferson's party and the southern democrats later on would never recognise Haiti for ideological reasons even without the massacre. And I think, to some extent, as long as there's a restoration, the new French Monarchy likewise has to refuse to recognise Haiti or it's rewarding the revolutionaries. And then the UK didn't recognise it because they wanted to mend relations with the French and etc. The same logic is there even without Desalinises doing his best to paint himself as dangerous.

As far Santo Domingo. I think a friendly Santo Domingo is vital for Haiti. It's just I also suspect it's difficult to achieve that while the Haitians are in control and a friendly independent neighbour is probably more useful than constantly fighting rebels. At the least, you need a certain amount of self rule so that the worst brutality of the occupation doesn't happen.

 

[Ciclavex]

In terms of the latter of @Youngmarshall ’s points, my point of departure in Fashions Made Sacred is long before the OTL Haitian Revolution, but, considering the dynamic between Pétion and Henry I was part of how I developed the background behind with one of the dominant forms of republics in FMS — the “classical” republic, they call it.

In FMS’ timeline, there is a slave revolt in Haiti in the early 19th century in the midst of Yet Another Pan-European War. In that war, France and England are on the same side, but unhappily so, and it strikes the local English governor of Jamaica’s fancy to just sort of encourage the slave revolt, as he was a spiteful bastard who had been Reassigned to Antarctica due to his Francophobia making cooperation with France difficult.

He never intended it to get out of hand and succeed, but, well, it did.

The lack of a French Revolution as part of this mess is a significant change, but France finds itself lacking the ability to do anything about Haiti and even the more pro-French people in London are somewhat less than inclined to help France regain its most profitable colony, but they’re also not willing to try to take it for themselves in order not to jeopardize the alignment with France in Europe.

This gives Haiti just enough breathing room that two major revolt leaders, one mixed-race and culturally French, with less support but more understanding of the western way of doing things, the other Black African with more support (as most of the slaves are not Haitian-born), try to work together, fall apart, then come back together and finally, both agree to recognize one another as King, with the same authority over everyone on the island, but both being able to veto the other.

Somehow, this is sustained long enough that New Spain’s revolt against Spain - inspired by the apparent success of slaves in overthrowing their European masters, and after all aren’t we white men here, anyway - gets going and the other American Wars of Independence get going from here, and New Spain - which never really had such slavery take off in a major way develops a sort of weird simultaneous admiration-condescension for Haiti, such that when it wins independence, it happily becomes the big, wealthy, culturally western patron of Haiti — and the lionization of Haiti’s two-kings system, though born out of local necessity, in part leads New Spain to adopt a Roman-based system of two consuls, which in turn ultimately inspires Haiti to go the same way (though still calling them kings; they just have terms of office), as well as other republics elsewhere in the long run of history.

New Spain makes opposition to slavery into a crusade because of the romanticization of the Haitian revolt as the “Mother of American Independence”.

To some degree, this scenario is a bit wish fulfillment, but I suppose my broader point is that if you could somehow get them to both be ruler at the same time but being forced to hang together (or, most assuredly, they would hang separately) to a greater degree could see some success. Internal struggles are very often the key problem to development, and forcing ambitious people to work together against outside circumstances is the solution to many problems, and Haiti would have been much the better if they had been able to do so.

But making that happen is not exactly easy.

 

[Doctor Sulemain]

Issue 1) avoid wasting time and money on trying to reestablish plantation agriculture.
Issue 2) avoid the crippling French indemnity.
Issue 3) avoid international isolation.
Issue 4) don't massacre the white populace.
Issue 5) avoid dominance by the army or other factional interests.

 

[SenatorChickpea]

The problems start so damn early.

I'd be tempted to start by avoiding the French invasion. You could do that whatever framework you want- a surviving First Republic, Napoleon taking different advice, no Peace of Amiens- but the key thing is to avoid the economic and social disruption of reviving Slavery, the human devastation of the war that followed, and the political instability of the next generation of leaders.

Louverture's fundamental mistakes about the plantation economy need to be dealt with, but I think that using his government as a foundation for a (relatively) more prosperous and stable Haiti is promising for two reasons:

1. Though his government, like most revolutionary regimes then and now had its share of in-fighting caudillos I think he was unquestionably better at managing the different personalities than Dessalines.

2. Keeping a symbolic link to France could have dramatically helped the quasi-state of Haiti negotiate the tricky diplomatic waters in its first decades. I don't think any real role for Haiti in the French Empire would have worked- but I can imagine it as almost a Dominion, as it were, where it can't be shut out of markets by paranoid neighbours because the USA cannot afford a blockade of 'France.' The link would probably consist of a flag, an anthem and the occasional shipment of taxes and men- but I think that's a workable solution to Haiti's isolation.

Of course, if that all works- and it's a huge if- you then have the problem that Louverture's vision for the economy just won't work.

If we're being rosy-eyed, we might like to imagine a younger group of reformers gaining influence in the 1800s as the regime increasingly struggles with the expenses of forcing workers to stay on the plantations. So Pétion and Henry become equivalents to... Hamilton, perhaps, ambitious technocrats with no attachment to their elder's visions of society.

The White minority is a real problem, and will undermine the Republic at every point- but perhaps their survival could be the impetus for the break up of the Plantations? If they make another attempt to invite in the Spanish or British, their treason could be the excuse that the reform faction needs to call for the destruction of their power base itself.

Of course, Louverture would be steadily more entrenched and possibly ever more corrupt. Hmm. If Republican institutions (or even a Consulate) survive, you could always have him do a Putin or a Deng- step back from his formal role and allow election, confident in his ability to govern behind the scenes. Then kill him via natural causes, and to everyone's surprise the nominal democratic institutions get to exercise at least some of the power they supposedly wield.


Yeah, none of this is particularly convincing even me.

 

[Gary Oswald]

Issue 1) avoid wasting time and money on trying to reestablish plantation agriculture.
Issue 2) avoid the crippling French indemnity.
Issue 3) avoid international isolation.
Issue 4) don't massacre the white populace.
Issue 5) avoid dominance by the army or other factional interests.

Since you're posting in this thread, Sule. You've said before that you have a timeline about a more prosperous Haiti that you would like to write in the future, I get if you don't want to spoil it by revealing too much but if not would you share exactly what the plan was?

 

[d32123]

It's hard to make them genuinely rich, as opposed to less desperately poor. The richest Caribbean nations are the ones with the smallest populations, that can profit the most off of tourism and being tax havens. Not a viable path for a nation with the population of Haiti. But with a stronger, less corrupt government there's no reason they can't be more like Cuba or the Dominican Republic.

 

[Dan1988]

As far Santo Domingo. I think a friendly Santo Domingo is vital for Haiti. It's just I also suspect it's difficult to achieve that while the Haitians are in control and a friendly independent neighbour is probably more useful than constantly fighting rebels. At the least, you need a certain amount of self rule so that the worst brutality of the occupation doesn't happen.

In that case, the eventual Dominican Republic needs to maintain its independence early on; if it means bringing the Republic of Spanish Haiti sooner than OTL - which had aspirations of joining (Gran) Colombia, than so be it. As I see it, there's no way Santo Domingo could unify with Haïti because, language barrier and different colonial patterns aside, their cultures were different. Santo Domingo was more free settlers and cattle ranchers rather than plantations, although to be sure plantation slavery did exist in Santo Domingo but it wasn't to the same levels as Haïti and was becoming much less profitable (a similar problem that also happened with neighbouring Puerto Rico). So the immediate history after the French occupation needs to change so that it's less of an España Boba and more like, say, Argentina and Chile (for by that point in the early 19th century Santo Domingo could easily count as being peripheral since Cuba was the more important part of Spain's Caribbean possessions). What would be more interesting here is if the independence of Santo Domingo actually starts in Puerto Rico, somehow, and spreads from there. It would need a federal setup early on (and in this case it would have to mean formalizing the fuero system into something that could be used as a basis for a federalist setup as well as for a corporatist democracy along the lines of an idealized version of the medieval Cortes Generales in Spain.

 

[Alex Richards]

Potentially controversial option here- does Haiti actually need international recognition? At least initially?

I mean obviously the lack of recognition means the prospect of French intervention is always hanging over their heads, but some sort of model that basically just goes 'screw everyone else, we're just going to look out for ourselves' (drawing more from the Maroons and that tradition) might allow Haiti to at least get through the initial period with a stable system- albeit one that's not exactly strong.

There's going to be lots of underlying issues, the country probably can't afford to pay for decent education for any but perhaps a very small minority of people, and infrastructure's going to be limited to say the least, but there's examples of 'Peasant's Republics' being able to basically run themselves away from government interference for a number of years.

Of course, fundamentally all run into the issue of Central Government wanting to enforce control. Thing is, assuming France wants to do this post-1815, is it actually feasible? Or at least is it sufficiently infeasible that it's not an option.

Perhaps something along the lines of a really unpopular attempted intervention during the 1820s that sees a few costal ports held for a few years against a backdrop of mounting casualties, leading to Louis-Philippe just writing the place off?

 

[Charles EP M.]

From the latest article, this sticks out as a late potential way out:

If Pétion was hoping for direct support from the new countries though, he’d be disappointed. None would recognise Haiti as independent.

If Haiti is recognised, it could build better diplomatic & trade ties with the new Latin American states. Then whoever's in power in 1825, they won't feel they need to take France's many strings for recognition; some of the army could be scaled down; if Haiti still takes over the Dominicans, there's no French debt to drive a campaign of mass plunder and provoke a Dominican uprising (at least not the big one that happened then).

This, of course, depends on the new countries being willing to potentially nark off France and not yanking recognition if France is duly narked off.

 

[Avian Overlord]

One possible solution (although it’s an AHC in its own right) is for the United States to go abolitionist around the time of the American Revolution and be willing to support Haiti at least to the extent of considering them part of the American sphere of influence and putting a few ships in front of the French. Will it solve Haiti’s problems? No. But it would solve a big one. As for the American side of the equation, well, it’s a tall order. My initial thoughts are that Dunmore never issues his proclamation and that the British have a lot more political success in the south, which eventually leads to Laurens being let off the leash and allowed to start mustering slaves as soldiers and things get absurdly out of hand from there.