Let's say that in this TL, Henri Christophe either doesn't suffer that stroke which he suffered in August 1820 IOTL, or that said stroke is significantly milder than it was IOTL (in which it critically weakened him, rendering the entirety of the right side of his body completely paralyzed, and lending momentum to an uprising against his regime via a series of defections and betrayals, such that he committed suicide on 8 October 1820 by shooting himself in the heart with a silver bullet, during a mass in a church he had built, with his son being captured and killed by the rebels 10 days later). And that as such, whatever insurrection does break out in Cap-Haïtien (or 'Cape Henry', as he'd renamed it during its spell as his Kingdom's capital) in September 1820 winds up being far weaker (having only broken out after word of his paralysis got out, and been swelled greatly when the leaders of both the military forces he'd sent in succession to quell it; the 'Duke of Marmalade' and governor of the capital, Jean-Pierre Richard, and Prince Joachim; immediately defected and added their strength to the rebellion instead), and gets fairly easily stomped out.
Following on from this, let's say that King Henry I (having preferred the English spelling, obtaining greater favor from the British in doing so, and further clarifying his opposition to both the French and republicanism, thus securing their informal acknowledgement of his proclaimed kingdom, as an ally during the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars) survives for at least a few years longer in this scenario, and that his heir-apparent and sole surviving legitimate son, Jacques-Victor, thus makes it to his majority and adulthood before his father dies. What'd be the best-case scenario for the Kingdom of Haiti in this scenario? Remember, the Kingdom of Haiti was a lot more prosperous than its counterpart the Republic of Haiti in spite of the non-recognition policies of France and Spain (both of which didn't recognize Haiti as an independent country, and worked assiduously to implore other countries to follow suit economically and diplomatically, only fully succeeding in this goal after the Kingdom of Haiti's demise and annexation by General Jean-Pierre Boyer's Republic of Haiti).
This was true even prior to the catastrophically massive and extortionate Payment of Indemnity to France, which President Boyer agreed to pay in return for diplomatic recognition, which effectively permanently financially crippled and shackled the nation of Haiti from then on. A large part of this was on account of King Henry I having secured a critical agreement with Britain, whereby his Kingdom of Haiti agreed that it wouldn't threaten any British Caribbean colonies, or support any revolutions in British territories (whilst still having free reign, and in fact being encouraged, to support slave revolts in the territories of Britain's enemies, including the USA during the War of 1812). In return, the British promised to adopt a hands-off policy regarding the island of Hispaniola, which was to be respected as sovereign Haitian territory (with Santa Domingo's citizens having been almost entirely abandoned by the royal authorities of the Kingdom of Spain after its return to them, and Britain being unwilling to risk directly annexing it themselves, deeming its rule by a British-supported Kingdom of Haiti to be preferable to the inception of a 'Republic of Spanish Haiti' further increasing the growing momentum of trans-Atlantic Revolutions); along with promising that Britain would warn Haiti of any imminent attack from French troops, and abolishing the importation of African slaves to British colonies in the West Indies with the passing the Slave Trade Act of 1807.
Largely facilitated by this agreement, and the resulting massive increase in bilateral trade between his Kingdom of Haiti and the Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland- producing and exporting vast quantities of sugar, coffee and cotton to be sold to the British (with King Henry I having chosen to enforce corvée plantation work, a system of forced labor, in lieu of taxation, successfully restoring Haiti's agricultural production, whilst President Pétion in the south elected to implement a land-share system and subdivide the land into parcels for peasants' subsistence farming instead, which had been unsuccessful and greatly diminished productivity)- the Kingdom of Haiti's economy boomed. During his reign, Northern Haiti was despotic, but the sugar-cane economy generated revenue for government and officials, with its growing reserves of gold and British pounds enabling the coinage which Henri Christophe had introduced in 1807, called the Gourde (after the initial medium of exchange post-revolution which it'd replaced, the green gourd, with gourds having been used for bowls, utensils and bottles, making them indispensible to daily life), to become established as the monetary unit of Haiti (and still remain Haiti's principal monetary unit today). And he was given free rein by the British to build up a sizable Haitian Navy with which to control Hispaniola's coasts.
Trade relations were established with the U.S. and Britain, as well as with Prussia and a few Hanseatic Cities such as Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck, with their foreign businesses being granted absolute protection. With his advisors insistent that his newly founded kingdom needed the Europeans' expertise and knowledge, full Haitian citizenship was offered to any European men who'd marry a Haitian woman and reside in Haiti for one year, whilst any white European man who married a black woman anywhere in the world would be welcomed to settle in Haiti, and the government would set them up, with the Germans and Poles having been the most willing to marry and integrate into Haitian society, circumventing the constitutional prohibition on foreigners owning land in the process. But no commercial trading was conducted with either France or Spain, against whose forces he had fought during the Haitian Revolution and who still refused to extend diplomatic recognition to Haiti; Henri Christophe had never forgiven the French for the manner in which his dearly beloved first-born son François-Ferdinand had been taken hostage, imprisoned and tossed in an orphan's asylum in Paris, dying there at the age of 11 and being tossed into an unmarked mass grave.
Other considerations worth thinking about in this scenario, regarding what things might've been like in an enduring Kingdom of Haiti: Catholicism was proclaimed its official religion, although other beliefs would be tolerated. Every marriage had to be a civil contract, divorce was made illegal, and parents were not allowed to disinherit their children. Its royal constitution, the "Code Henry" was established after a revolt by liberal groups in early 1812, demanding the establishment of a parliament and constitutional rather than absolute monarchy; with a cabinet composed of various ministers being established to administer the kingdom. Albeit modeled after the 'Code Napoleon', Henri Christophe's idol and role-model was the King of Prussia, Frederick the Great, with Henri Christophe having modeled many of the laws and policies contained within the 'Code Henry' after those of the Prussians (though he'd modeled his Kingdom's military hierarchy after that of the USA, and created a 'Commander-in-Chief' position for himself to emulate that held by the US President), and after whose summer palace he'd named his own Sans-Souci Palace (rather than after the eponymous rival in the Haitian Revolution who'd he'd had executed).
Per its mandate, all able-bodied adults not otherwise employed were obligated to provide conscript labor in the fields from dawn to dusk Monday to Friday, with a minimum break of an hour for breakfast and two hours for lunch. Saturday was a day off from the fields to allow the workers to tend to their own land and take their goods to market, whilst Sunday was reserved for rest and going to church. In return, the plantation owners had to give one quarter of their gross profits to their workers, as well as providing free room, board and medical treatment, and were forbidden from transferring workers from one activity to another without the worker's permission, with the Kingdom's military police overseeing the plantation owners to ensure compliance. King Henri Christophe, however, monopolized the meat supply, since all the cattle in his kingdom grazed on state land. He built seven palaces and 15 chateaux, all surrounded by his royal estates and plantations, consisting of the most fertile land which produced, among other things, two-thirds of the kingdom's sugar export (thus, ensuring that the majority of these profits flowed directly into his royal coffers, and that since the plantations employing the most workers were state-owned, what little protection the kingdom's military police actually provided to safeguard these workers' rights was largely tokenistic).
Education, and the future of Haiti's youth, was very important to the king, with King Christophe telling Europeans that "My fellow citizens must be made capable by education. Enjoying the Constitution I intend for them… I think we (with 'we', in context, referring to 'Blacks') shall be able to prove that we are capable of thinking of ourselves." To that end, he created five national schools for boys modeled after Joseph Lancaster's British and Foreign School Society, with teachers quickly trained for two thousand students. Learning English was made mandatory (reflecting a full-blown governmental Anglicization policy), and advanced students could learn Spanish, with the curriculum also including French, reading, writing, arithmetic and grammar. During the summer, classes met from 6am to 11am, and then again from 2pm to 6pm (starting at 7am and ending at 5pm during winter), with Thursdays being a day off from school in addition to the weekends. In addition, every boy at least ten years old had to learn a trade, and choose vocational courses/apprenticeships. Upon the recommendation of the monarch's personal physician Dr. Duncan Stewart, a Scottish surgeon who visited many of the commoners working on the king's farms, it was deemed necessary to educate girls (in order to prevent voodoo from creeping back into public practice), and in 1818 Christophe issued an edict opening up education for girls (albeit stipulating that they'd still have to be taught in schools separate from boys), with a royal college for secondary education also founded in the same year, where students studied English, French, Latin, history, geography and math.
So, what do you reckon'd be the best-case scenario for the Kingdom of Haiti in this scenario? Could it stand a chance of modernizing, and enduring to the present day (or surviving the devastation that'd be inflicted upon it by the 1842 Cap-Haïtien Earthquake, for that matter)?
Following on from this, let's say that King Henry I (having preferred the English spelling, obtaining greater favor from the British in doing so, and further clarifying his opposition to both the French and republicanism, thus securing their informal acknowledgement of his proclaimed kingdom, as an ally during the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars) survives for at least a few years longer in this scenario, and that his heir-apparent and sole surviving legitimate son, Jacques-Victor, thus makes it to his majority and adulthood before his father dies. What'd be the best-case scenario for the Kingdom of Haiti in this scenario? Remember, the Kingdom of Haiti was a lot more prosperous than its counterpart the Republic of Haiti in spite of the non-recognition policies of France and Spain (both of which didn't recognize Haiti as an independent country, and worked assiduously to implore other countries to follow suit economically and diplomatically, only fully succeeding in this goal after the Kingdom of Haiti's demise and annexation by General Jean-Pierre Boyer's Republic of Haiti).
This was true even prior to the catastrophically massive and extortionate Payment of Indemnity to France, which President Boyer agreed to pay in return for diplomatic recognition, which effectively permanently financially crippled and shackled the nation of Haiti from then on. A large part of this was on account of King Henry I having secured a critical agreement with Britain, whereby his Kingdom of Haiti agreed that it wouldn't threaten any British Caribbean colonies, or support any revolutions in British territories (whilst still having free reign, and in fact being encouraged, to support slave revolts in the territories of Britain's enemies, including the USA during the War of 1812). In return, the British promised to adopt a hands-off policy regarding the island of Hispaniola, which was to be respected as sovereign Haitian territory (with Santa Domingo's citizens having been almost entirely abandoned by the royal authorities of the Kingdom of Spain after its return to them, and Britain being unwilling to risk directly annexing it themselves, deeming its rule by a British-supported Kingdom of Haiti to be preferable to the inception of a 'Republic of Spanish Haiti' further increasing the growing momentum of trans-Atlantic Revolutions); along with promising that Britain would warn Haiti of any imminent attack from French troops, and abolishing the importation of African slaves to British colonies in the West Indies with the passing the Slave Trade Act of 1807.
Largely facilitated by this agreement, and the resulting massive increase in bilateral trade between his Kingdom of Haiti and the Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland- producing and exporting vast quantities of sugar, coffee and cotton to be sold to the British (with King Henry I having chosen to enforce corvée plantation work, a system of forced labor, in lieu of taxation, successfully restoring Haiti's agricultural production, whilst President Pétion in the south elected to implement a land-share system and subdivide the land into parcels for peasants' subsistence farming instead, which had been unsuccessful and greatly diminished productivity)- the Kingdom of Haiti's economy boomed. During his reign, Northern Haiti was despotic, but the sugar-cane economy generated revenue for government and officials, with its growing reserves of gold and British pounds enabling the coinage which Henri Christophe had introduced in 1807, called the Gourde (after the initial medium of exchange post-revolution which it'd replaced, the green gourd, with gourds having been used for bowls, utensils and bottles, making them indispensible to daily life), to become established as the monetary unit of Haiti (and still remain Haiti's principal monetary unit today). And he was given free rein by the British to build up a sizable Haitian Navy with which to control Hispaniola's coasts.
Trade relations were established with the U.S. and Britain, as well as with Prussia and a few Hanseatic Cities such as Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck, with their foreign businesses being granted absolute protection. With his advisors insistent that his newly founded kingdom needed the Europeans' expertise and knowledge, full Haitian citizenship was offered to any European men who'd marry a Haitian woman and reside in Haiti for one year, whilst any white European man who married a black woman anywhere in the world would be welcomed to settle in Haiti, and the government would set them up, with the Germans and Poles having been the most willing to marry and integrate into Haitian society, circumventing the constitutional prohibition on foreigners owning land in the process. But no commercial trading was conducted with either France or Spain, against whose forces he had fought during the Haitian Revolution and who still refused to extend diplomatic recognition to Haiti; Henri Christophe had never forgiven the French for the manner in which his dearly beloved first-born son François-Ferdinand had been taken hostage, imprisoned and tossed in an orphan's asylum in Paris, dying there at the age of 11 and being tossed into an unmarked mass grave.
Other considerations worth thinking about in this scenario, regarding what things might've been like in an enduring Kingdom of Haiti: Catholicism was proclaimed its official religion, although other beliefs would be tolerated. Every marriage had to be a civil contract, divorce was made illegal, and parents were not allowed to disinherit their children. Its royal constitution, the "Code Henry" was established after a revolt by liberal groups in early 1812, demanding the establishment of a parliament and constitutional rather than absolute monarchy; with a cabinet composed of various ministers being established to administer the kingdom. Albeit modeled after the 'Code Napoleon', Henri Christophe's idol and role-model was the King of Prussia, Frederick the Great, with Henri Christophe having modeled many of the laws and policies contained within the 'Code Henry' after those of the Prussians (though he'd modeled his Kingdom's military hierarchy after that of the USA, and created a 'Commander-in-Chief' position for himself to emulate that held by the US President), and after whose summer palace he'd named his own Sans-Souci Palace (rather than after the eponymous rival in the Haitian Revolution who'd he'd had executed).
Per its mandate, all able-bodied adults not otherwise employed were obligated to provide conscript labor in the fields from dawn to dusk Monday to Friday, with a minimum break of an hour for breakfast and two hours for lunch. Saturday was a day off from the fields to allow the workers to tend to their own land and take their goods to market, whilst Sunday was reserved for rest and going to church. In return, the plantation owners had to give one quarter of their gross profits to their workers, as well as providing free room, board and medical treatment, and were forbidden from transferring workers from one activity to another without the worker's permission, with the Kingdom's military police overseeing the plantation owners to ensure compliance. King Henri Christophe, however, monopolized the meat supply, since all the cattle in his kingdom grazed on state land. He built seven palaces and 15 chateaux, all surrounded by his royal estates and plantations, consisting of the most fertile land which produced, among other things, two-thirds of the kingdom's sugar export (thus, ensuring that the majority of these profits flowed directly into his royal coffers, and that since the plantations employing the most workers were state-owned, what little protection the kingdom's military police actually provided to safeguard these workers' rights was largely tokenistic).
Education, and the future of Haiti's youth, was very important to the king, with King Christophe telling Europeans that "My fellow citizens must be made capable by education. Enjoying the Constitution I intend for them… I think we (with 'we', in context, referring to 'Blacks') shall be able to prove that we are capable of thinking of ourselves." To that end, he created five national schools for boys modeled after Joseph Lancaster's British and Foreign School Society, with teachers quickly trained for two thousand students. Learning English was made mandatory (reflecting a full-blown governmental Anglicization policy), and advanced students could learn Spanish, with the curriculum also including French, reading, writing, arithmetic and grammar. During the summer, classes met from 6am to 11am, and then again from 2pm to 6pm (starting at 7am and ending at 5pm during winter), with Thursdays being a day off from school in addition to the weekends. In addition, every boy at least ten years old had to learn a trade, and choose vocational courses/apprenticeships. Upon the recommendation of the monarch's personal physician Dr. Duncan Stewart, a Scottish surgeon who visited many of the commoners working on the king's farms, it was deemed necessary to educate girls (in order to prevent voodoo from creeping back into public practice), and in 1818 Christophe issued an edict opening up education for girls (albeit stipulating that they'd still have to be taught in schools separate from boys), with a royal college for secondary education also founded in the same year, where students studied English, French, Latin, history, geography and math.
So, what do you reckon'd be the best-case scenario for the Kingdom of Haiti in this scenario? Could it stand a chance of modernizing, and enduring to the present day (or surviving the devastation that'd be inflicted upon it by the 1842 Cap-Haïtien Earthquake, for that matter)?
