Capture Haiti: The Tumultuous HistoryFrom Pearl Of The Caribbean To Broken Nation Penned By Philippe Girard Available In PDF

in history and useful in prep to visit, Also appealed to my 'social worker' side, Highly readable, broad strokes history of Haiti, Exactly what I was looking for to put Aristide in context and learn a little more about this wretchedly poor country, The title seems quite appropriate, The author even details a sort of 'check list' to recovery, which is a reminder that change is possible if not easy.
Well done. Girard has nailed it. If I were going to write a book on Haiti where I have been resident for a year, this is what it would have looked like in my imagination obviously in reality it would have been nowhere near as good.
This is part history, part socioeconomic analysis, part advocacy, I suspect that many would charge, some Haitians in particular, that the narrative is too soft on the damaging effects of foreign intervention and I would sympathize with that view.
However the political elite and what Girard refers to as the "predatory class" are clearly the root of the majority of the challenges facing the country.
As he suggests

in the final chapter, it seems unlikely that a hero is going to rise from the ashes to take the country forward, a la Lee Kwan Yew or Paul Kagame.
It seems more likely that the populace will rise, spurred on by a communal sentiment of ça suffit to demand that their government, that the individuals at the top of their government, and those who aspire to retain the rewarding status quo, remember that there are ten million plus people in Haiti and that ninety percent of them deserve far better.
I wanted a book more about the slave uprising, and this was not it, thus I was a bit disappointed, The author's voice at times was accusative and paternal towards the history and people of Haiti, which sometimes came off a bit off taste.


I did learn a lot, however, Excellent and thorough history of Haiti that seems to do a good job of presenting the Haitian and an outsiders point of view on things.
A pretty good primer on Haiti's history, Need to take the author's very onesided view that Haitians are at fault for everything with a pinch of salt, But accessible and very readable, Conclusion: Haiti is very complex, And it is a disservice not to recognize that when trying to "help" there, Very interesting of Haiti's history, I read this book to gain greater insight into the history and experiences of Haiti, I walk away with good understanding of the colonialist/imperalist narrative of the history of Haiti, however, Girard injects his own predjuces that veer towards the edges of racist.
He consistently frames the history and narrrative of Haitian back upon themselves to blame them for their struggles, and to highlight his perception of Haitian entitlement within their nationalism.
Admittedly, I ended up "finishing" the book only through active skimming whenever he jerksoff about this entitlement, I still feel there must be a better way to tell this story without being so distinctly prejudiced to blaming Haitians, and not just see Haiti as a "flawed state" but to analyze it from the role of being the first majority black "western" nationstate.
Though I do appreciate the historical information and timeline, I am NOT a fan of the authors constant condescending tone, Oh, my poor Ayiti Cheri reading this comprehensive history of the nation, from its colonial past to its struggling present, made me want to cry several times.
Girard explained many things I noticed during my two months volunteering and manages to do so very honestly but also with great affection and respect for Haiti's people.


When I try to tell people why Haiti is in such a bad state, that it's not as simple as saying "Slavery/Western imperialism/US interference did it", I always say that everything that can go wrong, usually does, and that it's mainly caused by the rich elite not caring one bit about the poor majority but only about their own power and money.


Despite all this, Girard has hopes for Haiti's future, that it will regain its status as "Pearl of the Caribbean" I sincerely hope so, too! Very thorough and insightful description of Haiti's history and current problems.
The author goes out of his way to push his thesis that Haiti's troubles are due to corrupt leadership and not to the racism of the international community nor to the legacy of slavery.
I'm not entirely convinced, but this stated bias doesn't keep this from being a wellbalanced history that emphasizes the recent past over the revolution and other distant events.
I read this history in anticipation of a trip to Haiti this summer, Reading Haitian history is a foray into the fallibility of the human soul, Rectification of Haitian problems will require a change in the hearts of all those that reside in or deal with this troubled nation

Columbus amp Spanish Domination

Christopher Columbus arrived on Haitis northern coast inand landed in a magnificent natural harbor that he named Mole SaintNicolas.
From there, Columbus made his way East to the bay where the city of Cap Haitien would later be built, The Santa Maria hit a reef in Haiti and foundered, Columbus had to leave some crewmembers on shore, The abandoned crew were killed by the Taino natives, This was the beginning of a blood thirsty and murderous history that has continued to this day,

Columbus noted in his log that: “the natives appeared submissive and could likely be easily enslaved”, Columbus and later Spanish colonists were not settlers, they were “conquistadors”: ambitious nobles and merchants who despised manual labor and sought to conquer the natives, kill their leaders, enslave the people, and make away with a quick windfall of gold and spices.


The author relates the story of the Taino Haitian princess Anacoana, who the Spaniards asked to organize a feast for the arrival of their Governor.
But when Anacoano had gathered all her finest people for the festivities, the Spanish set the meeting hall on fire and wiped out the Taino leadership.
The Taino commoners were subsequently put to forced labor in the gold mines and on the plantations,

The author relates another story of Hatuey, a Taino resister, who persisted for years in guerilla warfare against the Spanish.
Hatuey eventually fled to Cuba, but was pursued by the Spanish and captured there in, Hatuey was sentenced to be burnt alive, Before the burning, a Franciscan friar suggested to Hatuey that if he would repent and convert to Catholicism, he would go to heaven and his captors might show mercy and put him to death in a more humane way.
To this, Hatuey inquired as to whether or not Spaniards went to Heaven When the Franciscan responded that Spaniards indeed did go to Heaven, Hatuey responded that he would prefer fire and hell to going where there would be Spaniards.




A young Spaniard named Bartolome de Las Casas was so profoundly shaken by witnessing the burning of Hatuey that he embraced religious orders and spent the rest of his life defending the cause of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
He wrote of his experiences: “I saw here cruelty on a scale no living being has ever seen or expects to see”.
Within two generations, Spains cruel exploitation of local laborers, combined with the plight wrought by European diseases, resulted in the complete disappearance of the Taino population in nothing less than “genocide”.


The French

By thes, Spain had killed off all the Haitian natives, taken what little gold there was, and moved on to more promising riches in Mexico and Peru.
All that really remained on the island was a small Spanish presence in the east, The western part of the island became an overgrown tropical forest, overrun with the wild cows and pigs introduced by the Spanish.


Eventually a mixed lot of French settlers began to accumulate in Haiti, being primarily those desirous of distancing themselves from French courts, such as naval deserters and runaway indentured servants.
These Frenchman chose Haiti because the Spanish presence on the other end of the island was negligible and because of the seemingly inextinguishable supply of wild pigs and cattle for food.
These French vagabonds eventually started attacking the many Spanish galleons passing by Haiti and became pirates, The island of Tortuga, off the northern coast of Haiti, became an independent pirate state protected by a large fortress,

In, the Treaty of Ryswick gave France the western third of Hispaniola and the colony of Haiti was born, France began to grow sugar cane, which was the oil of theth century, So valuable to France was Haiti, Martinique, and Guadeloupe, that it relinquished all of her other North American possessions including Canada and the U.
S. , after losing the Seven Years War in,

But attracting settlers to Haiti was difficult, The French King rounded up criminals, orphans, and prostitutes to ship off to Haiti under the guise of cleaning up the streets of Paris.
Drunken revelers in French ports would sometimes awaken in the hold of ships bound for Haiti, having unsuspectingly signed away their freedom during a night of carousing.
Haiti harbored a colorful mix of Parisian prostitutes, descendants of pirates, and other undesirables of French society,

But European indentured workers could not withstand the hard work associated with producing sugar, which required clearing the land, planting, weeding, cutting cane, and boiling the juice.
So the importing of African slaves occurred throughout theth century, Many of these Africans similarly died in great numbers but the French simply imported more, Nevertheless, the Africans soon outnumbered the planters as much as a hundred to one, Out of their fear, the planters resorted to cruelty, even sadism, to keep the Africans subdued,

An army officer, Baron Wimpffen, visited Haiti inand described having dinner with one of the white settlers who, after her black servant brought out an overcooked dish, had the servant thrown into the oven and himself roasted.
In the same year, planter Nicolas Lejeune burned off the legs of two of his female slaves, who he thought were conspiring to poison him.
American scholars describe colonial Haiti as one of the cruelest slave societies in the world, Accounts of past French atrocities fuel Haitian nationalism today,

Makandal was an Africanborn slave who was embittered because he had lost an arm while working on the sugar plantations.
Makandal was taken from the Congo at age, He claimed various magical powers, mixing Allah, Jesus, and African gods in some sort of syncretic fusion typical of the Haitian religious tradition.
After escaping, he organized a conspiracy to kill the planters by poisoning them, He created poisons from island herbs and distributed the poison to slaves who added it to the meals of the plantation owners.
Thousands were killed and Makandal could not be caught, Makandal claimed that he had the ability to transform into a mosquito and fly away when cornered, However, the French captured Makandal in, Thousands of slaves were brought together to witness his brutal torture and execution by being burnt at the stake, But remarkably, as the flames consumed him, he broke free of the pole, Many reported that he made an amazing escape, while the French contend they caught him and threw him back into the fire.
Various supernatural accounts of his execution are preserved in island folklore and are widely depicted in paintings and popular art, His public torture and execution is depicted vividly in Guy Endoresnovel Babouk, The “Statue of the Unknown Maroon” shown below is located in Haiti and was erected by the Duvalier government as a monument to Makandal and others who paved the way for the Haitian Revolution that began in.




Revolution and the Haiti Republic

Escaped slaves built mountain strongholds and perfected the principals of guerrilla warfare.
The Haitian slave revolt occurred from, Many a planter made the painful discovery too late that their most reliable slaves were at the forefront of the revolt,

Upon seizing power from the French, much infighting began among the new black Haitian leaders, The Haitian leaders dressed themselves up in royalist garb and wore the insignia of kings, Inthe French Revolution sent Louis XVI to the guillotine and most of the conservative slaveowning monarchies of Europe declared war on France.
Spain attacked Haiti by land from the Dominican Republic and England with her navy, France announced the emancipation of slavery and encouraged the Haitians to fight, which they did until the departure of British and Spanish troops in.


Toussaint Louverture, a black soldier, was left to reign in Haiti, Louverture had been freed by his master a decade before the revolution and had been an important military figure in the French army.
Louverture understood that dividing the land into small plots for subsistence farming would destroy productivity and so he preserved the plantations, Because the plantations required much labor, Louverture implemented laws requiring people to be employed as servants, soldiers or plantation workers,

In, Louverture announced to the world that he was ruler of Haiti and implemented a constitution, This action motivated Napoleon Bonaparte to send an expedition to Haiti, charged with the task of deporting all prominent black officers and restoring French authority over the island.
As the French troops landed, Louverture ordered his men to burn the cities, the plantations, refineries, and houses, in order to deny the French food and income.
However, the French were victorious on the battlefield and forced Louverture into exile, where he died in,

The French began to divvy up the plantations among themselves, However, many of the French began to die of yellow fever and other tropical diseases, Those that survived held magnificent parties on the French ships and battled over the spoils of war, The French general, Donatien de Rochambeau, organized a weird ball, to which he invited all the elite mulatto women, and wined and dined them in a room decorated with back crepe and other macabre paraphernalia.
Rochambeau then led the women into a room where, to their surprise, their husbands bodies lay in state, They had just unknowingly attended their loved ones funeral,

As entertainment for Cap Francais high society, Rochambeau unleashed slavehunting dogs upon unfortunate black servants tied to poles, Amidst such atrocities, the French suddenly found themselves surrounded by rebel armies that forced them to disembark to sea, where they were immediately attacked by British ships, patrolling the Caribbean.


The last French troops departed Haiti in, Black and mulatto officers gathered in the city of Gonaives to declare their nations independence, In signing their new Declaration of Independence, it was suggested that they: “use the skin of a white man for parchment, his skull as an inkwell, his blood for ink, and the bayonet that killed him for a pen”.


The first Haitian dictator was JeanJacques Dessalines who, in his early address to the people remarked as follows about white people:

“May they shudder when they approach our coastline, either because they remember all the exactions they committed, or because of our horrifying pledge to kill every Frenchman who soils this land of freedom with his sacrilegious presence.
” JeanJacques Dessalines

And Dessalines was not joking, Over the following months he rounded up all remaining French planters, soldiers, and merchants from all over Haiti and slaughtered them, They were beheaded, bayoneted, and drowned, Dessalines exulted that it was every Haitians duty to avenge the many relatives they had lost to French exploitation, Like children brought up in a bad environment, the primitives followed the example of violence that had been demonstrated to them by their white masters over the preceding years.
Dessalines was black, not Mulatto, and he viewed the mulattoes with suspicion,

Because of all the violence, whites all over the Caribbean became horrified by the Haitians and wary of doing business with them.
This immediately put the country on an illfated course, as the most educated people were killed, Those who had organized labor, engineered building projects, administered the government, and other professionals were all slaughtered, Those that remained were illiterate and unskilled, Dessalines included,

Throughout theth century, and to some extent even today, potential trading partners have stayed away from Haiti, Immigrants that flocked to the New World refused to go to Haiti, Dessalines banned foreign ownership of land in Haiti, Like Louverture, Dessalines forced the peasants to remain on large sugar plantations, Dessalines maintained a vast army that enforced order and humiliated mulattoes,

Civil Strife

In, civil war broke out and Dessalines was lynched by his own officers, The country became divided between black and mulatto leaders, Henri Christophe, a black, came into control of the northern plain and Alexandre Petion, a mulatto, controlled the western and southern provinces.
Christophe continued the forced labor that Dessalines had used and instituted a police state, Christophe built a network of massive fortresses, the most impressive of which was Citadelle La Ferriere shown first below and the mansion Sans Souci for himself shown second below.
Christophe set up a network of schools, In contrast, Petion started carving up the colonial plantations and dividing them among his soldiers, This resulted in small subsistence farming and a plummet in sugar production, Petion created schools only for the mulatto elite,





Petion died inand Christophe died in, JeanPierre Boyer, a mulatto, took over for Petion and then reunited the whole country under his rule, Boyer carved up the plantations in the north and abandoned Christophes beloved schools, From this point, until today, smallscale farming has been the norm and sugar exports diminished, As the population increased, people had to feed their families on ever dwindling parcels and clearing land in Haitis mountainous terrain caused severe soil erosion.
This focus on lowmargin foodstuffs and misguided agricultural policies, explains why Haiti today is a nation of peasants eking a meager living off a few acres of bare hillsides.


In, France finally agreed to recognize Haitis independence in exchange formillion francs, earmarked to indemnify French planters who had lost their fortune in Haiti.
Amazingly, Boyer agreed to these terms, but Haiti ultimately found itself incapable of paying the sum and had to resort to usurious external financing atpar.
Haiti ultimately defaulted on its debt and banks became wary of loaning to the country, Boyer also expended State funds on U, S. organizations that offered free passage to Haiti, promising black men and women they could live free in Haiti on their own plot.
Five hundred black Americans arrived on Haitis southern coast, but they returned after only a year, To blame was the language barrier, poverty, and epidemics, The failure to attract and retain settlers was one of Haitis biggest missed opportunities, Boyer attacked and defeated the Dominican Republic and Haiti occupied the whole island foryears, The Dominicans regained their independence in, Haitis repeated attempts over the years to retake the Dominican Republic have failed,

Faustin Soulouque came to power in, Soulouque was from a family of slaves and arose as a solider, The great French writer, Victor Hugo, wrote of Soulouque that “he was a black Napoleon”, as he was frequently derided as a black emperor who aped European courts with his aristocratic pretensions.
Soulouque was the first Haitian leader to practice Voodoo openly, Soulouque promoted blacks to the highest ranks of government, substituting skin color for competence, Soulouque continuously attacked the Dominican Republic, mimicking European imperialism, He harassed and killed prominent mulattoes, He doubled the military forces and relied on the military to retain his power, He spent a fortune on royal pomp and unsuccessful forays into the Dominican Republic, He defaulted on foreign loans, extorted funds from Haitians, and printed so much money as to make the currency near worthless,

FabreNicolas Geffrard, a disaffected officer, assembled troops and marched against Soulouque in, sending Soulouque into exile, There followed political mayhem in which presidents were overthrown with such regularity that civil disturbance became the norm, At each revolution, property valued at several million dollars went up in flames, No one wanted to invest money in Haiti under these circumstances, Each president that was overthrown left with the national treasure, thus keeping Haiti in persistent poverty, Economic growth could not spring up under these circumstances, Schools, roads, factories, and sewer systems were neglected, Recurrent epidemics and fires occurred, State revenues rewarded and financed an oversized army, This continued until, in, when the U, S. decided to intervene.

The is Continued in the first comment below,
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