Thoughts on Dubois's Haiti: The Aftershocks of History

Laurent Dubois, Duke University professor and specialist in Haitian history, has written a very accessible, yet powerful and meaningful history of Haiti from it's revolutionary past to the 21st century. A very ambitious project, Dubois nevertheless cuts back on the Aristide and post-Aristide years, particularly on the question of whether or not Aristide's government succumbed to corruption and the function of a predatory state which has characterized Haiti's central government for quite some time, prior to the Duvaliers. In addition, Dubois's coverage of MINUSTAH and the current affairs of Haiti is quite brief, though clearly he is in opposed to perhaps most of the international community's responses to post-earthquake Haiti, such as the unnecessary UN presence or the various forms of economic imperialism that have defined relations between Haiti and the 'great powers,' such as France, the United States, Germany, and others. His evaluation of the self-declared emperor Soulouque is also fresh in that it avoids the racist generalizations and stereotypes of previous scholars, and his analysis of the violent period of American occupation in the early 20th century demonstrates the power of transnational ties between cacos in Haiti and similar groups operating in the Dominican borderlands, also resisting American occupation. Furthermore, his defense of the "counter-plantation" mindset of Haitian ex-slaves and their rural, Kreyol-speaking descendants is useful for dismantling some of the racist myths regarding Haitians as lazy or barbarous as well as a useful historical precedent for analyzing the troubles with attempts to institute sweatshop-styled labor and other forms of exploitation in Haiti after the earthquake, such as the industrial park in the north of the country, far away from the center of the earthquake. All in all, Dubois's text is necessary for all initiates in Haitian studies or a general audience interested in learning more about the nation after the horrendous earthquake and the ignorant, racist statements about Haiti and its history coming from the likes of Pat Robertson and the mainstream Western press. 

His writings on post-revolutionary Haiti in the first half of the 19th century is also very useful. He clearly has benefitted from other scholarship, such as that of Mimi Sheller. His coverage of both Alexandre Petion/Jean-Pierre Boyer and Henri Christophe's leadership actually supports that of a commentator on this blog, with the latter being a more positive force for the betterment of the rural population than the latter. Although Christophe's rule was more progressive in some ways, all successors to Dessalines, Toussaint, Sonthonax, Poverel, and the French colonial system maintained a militarized system of governance where democratic, civil institutions were neglected or suppressed and the Kreyol-speaking, rural majority of the population were mostly left out of the formal political process. 

According to Dubois, Christophe supported public education (13 schools in Christophe's kingdom were created between 1816-1820, and perhaps as many as 72,000 students benefitted from these initiatives, and a medical school was established in Le Cap through the use of Duncan Stewart, a Scottish doctor), introduced legal reform, some of which was progressive (such as legislation intended to curb deforestation),  all inhabitants without a specialized skill and not appointed to a landed aristocratic position to oversee parishes or members of the military had to work on a plantation, and the Code Henry limited the movement of the workers, but recognized their right to wages (1/4 of annual production), stipulated that landowners had to provide medical service, and, theoretically, the rural population could complain to royal officials. Christophe also sought to introduce the plow to improve Haitian agriculture, but language barriers impeded it's dissemination. 

In addition, Christophe saw Haiti as needed to prove the capabilities of the African or black race, so, despite a paternalistic attitude toward his subjects, intellectuals of color, such as de Vastey, or Prince Saunders, worked with the king and wrote on topics relevant to the king's interest in demonstrating the equality of the races. Though Christophe, like Petion, Boyer and their predecessors (Dessalines, Toussaint, the colonial state), did not practice a democratic form of governance, according to his own laws, the people legally had the right to resist unfair labor relations with elites. What's more, Christophe had the French agent, de Medina, executed upon learning about his mission to reenslave Haiti through acceptance of French sovereignty in 1814. Christophe refused the indemnity to France for lost (human) property in the course of the Haitian Revolution, which probably helps explain his interest in securing a British alliance and his close relationship with British abolitionists, such as Wilberforce and Clarkson, who apprised the king on European affairs. Oh, and Dubois suggests that Christophe was the first to attempt to attract African-American free black settlers to Haiti, which is why Clarkson introduced him to Prince Saunders, an educated free black from the US. 

What is unclear, however, is the question of how the famous Citadel was constructed. Dubois hints at forced labor, which would, naturally, lead to popular resentment. Why, exactly, the soldiers of his kingdom revolted, remains unanswered in Dubois's book, but the king's stroke, immobilizing him, created a space for a military revolt. This could either hint at solely military leaders' unhappiness with Christophe's system or style of rule, but soon after his death, Boyer, successor of Petion's republic in the southern half of Haiti, would reunite the country. If soldiers were the main coercive agent in enforcing the peasant majority to remain on large estates, how did peasants then respond to the death of Christophe? These are questions I want to know, but were not answered by Dubois's overview of Haitian history.

As for Pétion, who, according to Dubois, led the coup against Dessalines, he established one elite school, later called Lycée Pétion. His nominally liberal state, defined in the 1816 Constitution and centered in Port-au-Prince, featured a lower house, called the Chamber of Deputies, who were voted in but the Senate and president were autocratic, positions dominated by Pétion himself and his allies. The president was the only one able to propose a new law and was elected by the Senate,  Like Christophe, his entry into political power began as a military general so autocratic governance practices defined his "republic" where he was life-long president. He also suggested the indemnity to France itself, hoping for recognition! Moreover, what drove the separation between a northern and southern Haiti began with Pétion and his allies proposing a constitution after the assassination of Dessalines that would have granted Christophe the presidential position but taken all the power out of it by empowering the Senate, leaving the presidential position as mostly symbolic. Naturally, Christophe did not like this, and took over the northern half of Haiti while Pétion and his supporters retained control of what were the South and West of the former colony of Saint-Domingue. 

The one good thing about Pétion, however, is the "republicanization of the soil" which occurred through land redistribution and land payments for soldiers. Indeed, some have alluded to this process as the first Latin American land reform, which was practical for the cash-strapped Haitian state in order to pay soldiers (and the military consumed a large part of the state budget of Haiti in these days, no surprise since the Haitian state was always characterized by large military influence and control, no doubt due to the Haitian state's origins within military rule and the failure to subordinate the military apparatus and power to civil institutions). Despite the lack of real republican government where all citizens had the right to vote or participate in the political system, Pétion's land reform indicates some complacency with the "counter-plantation" mentality of the ex-slaves and peasants. He also encouraged sharecropping, or métayange, and his tax system, referred to as a "territorial tax" in Dubois's book, was levied at ports of export, not based on the estates where coffee and other export products were grown. This, in turn, left more profits for the agricultural workers and small-scale producers. Thus, Pétion's rule was at least supportive (most likely against its will) in allowing the Kreyol-speaking, rural majority to engage in its own forms of organization and local autonomy through the quite egalitarian lakou system which determined questions of land inheritance and land distribution among extended families, as well as other forms of social organization rooted in cooperatives and religious associations. Of course, the predatory Haitian state sought to limit their control and access to mainstream, dominant sources of power (except through the military, which remained the main way to access national or regional political power, since generals often had great power and collected taxes in 19th century Haiti) as well as profitted from the agricultural products of rural Haiti while not providing basic services (healthcare, education, suffrage, etc.). Another positive contribution of this president was his support for Bolivar and the liberators of Venezuela and  Colombia, whose leaders received Haitian military aid and supplies to defeat Spain. 

Jean-Pierre Boyer, who inherited Pétion's political system in 1818, would reunite Haiti under his authority and secure French recognition of Haiti by accepting a massive indemnity (and gigantic loans to pay off that debt). Boyer, like his predecessor, ruled in an authoritarian manner, carried out human rights violations, censored and cracked down on critics of his regime (such as Félix Darfour), blocked the election of opposition members in the bicameral legislature, and attempted to recreate an export-oriented, plantation-styled estate system through the Code Rural, which gave landowners extensive power over laborers, outlawed agricultural cooperatives, limited the movement of rural residents (like the Code Henry, or the laws of Dessalines and Toussaint before him), created a rural police to enforce this,  and enacted corvée labor to force rural residents to work on road repairs without pay. Boyer, in addition to subjecting the Haitian state to great debt with France (and the long legacy of debt and poverty that many postcolonial nations would suffer in the 20th century) and attempting to confine the rural Haitian majority to plantations (though it was a huge failure, since rural farmers and workers continued to control, for the most part, cultivation, and focused on growing subsistence crops and coffee for export (often through land they had come to acquire on their own or through lease),  Boyer's state relied on keeping the Haitian people uneducated, according to French abolitionist Victor Schoelcher, who saw the Haitian peasant as little better off than Caribbean slaves (a perspective Dubois is careful to criticize). Indeed, Boyer's Haiti only had 10 schools, and upon unification of Haiti with Christophe's former kingdom, the schools established there were destroyed. So, the majority of the Haitian population were blocked, for the most part, access to schools, hospitals, and the vote, which enabled Boyer to keep his grasp on power for over two decades, in Haiti as well as the Spanish-speaking East, which would not sever ties with Haiti until 1844. As Dubois describes, Boyer's Haiti produced two classes: urban residents governed by national laws and rural dwellers subject to a different, highly restrictive set of rules.

Boyer's Haiti also enabled the forms of economic imperialism that would weaken Haiti (and many other postcolonial "Third World" states), such as relinquishing further and further control of the foreign trade to merchants from Europe and other parts of the world (Germany, later on, Syria, and others). The Haitian state, which relied on taxes on imports which caused the rural peasants to pay more for these imported goods, also levied a tax on the coffee produced in the interior and sold to merchants in the port towns. Haitian coffee, a high quality export, was favorable to Haitian peasants and could be grown on small plots, and, indeed, by the 1820s, Dubois states that nearly 1/3 of all coffee consumed in the US was from Haiti. However, foreign merchants, who often married local women so as to gain access to property-owning status in Haiti, were able to eventually replace local Haitian merchants and control trade through their trans-Atlantic contacts. This is a dangerous trend because such a large portion of the Haitian government's revenues derived from custom houses, rising to 92% in 1842 from 73% in 1810. Basically, Boyer helped initiate and further establish Haitian economic dependence and allowed foreign merchants to gain control of the foreign trade, which was also increasingly one of the main sources of government revenue. His militaristic rule, from 1818-1843, exclusionary and undemocratic, undeniably helped permanently place Haiti into a position it has not yet escaped from, debt-ridden, subject to political and economic imperialism from the US and Europe, and an inefficient, oppressive state. Indeed, the often seen warships from Germany, France, the US, and other states in Haitian waters, threatening to invade over allegedly unpaid debts to foreign merchants would reveal the weakness of the Haitian government to respond to its economic woes and the degree to which foreigners controlled the trade and could dictate the course of the state.

Unlike Papa Doc, however, Boyer never faced accusations of practicing Vodou, and his 1835 penal code included prohibitions on Vodou, witchcraft, zombification, and other African-derived and influenced practices. And, as Dubois himself recognizes, Boyer never had the direct, rule of terror over all of Haiti that Papa Doc abused, since the Haiti of the 19th century was defined more by regionalism less than a centralized state in Port-au-Prince. But nevertheless, Boyer's long rule of Haiti and the island of Hispaniola consisted of abuses of power, patterns of economic dependence, and a militarized state that would only grow exponentially by the mid-20th century when Papa Doc's dictatorship and rule based on fear ensnared all of the Haitian population. Surprisingly, the relatively peaceful revolution of 1843, which unseated Boyer, was mostly non-violent, and revealed the degree to which radical ideologies (such as socialism) were known to some Haitan elites, and, of course with the Piquets, led by Acaau, who were referred to by Maxime Reybaud as black communists (Dubois says they demanded reduced work with increased salaries, lower costs on imported goods and more money for their crops, as well as a national education system). So, the Haitian peasants were not an apolitical mass lacking consciousness and disconnected from the obvious deficiencies of the government which largely excluded them.

In summation, Dubois's book does a decent job explaining certain trends in Haitian history and their origins, which often date back to the colonial period and early national periods. Indeed, we can clearly see some of the future roads Haiti would walk in Boyer's agreement to the massive indemnity to France and the creation of two separate and unequal Haitis: one of elites based in the military or descendants of colonial elites and the majority group, mostly Kreyol-speakers and often denied access to the very sources of power which sought to prey off their exclusion. Clearly, Michel-Rolph Trouillot's work on the origins of Duvalierism and other studies of Haitian social history and political conflict have contributed to Dubois's analysis, which is, for the most part, more accurate and fair than any rendering one would get in the mainstream media or news coverage of Haiti during and after the earthquake. If we only just supported a "counter-plantation" system there and at home, while recognizing the necessity for the Haitian state to develop its own accountability and democratic institutions, then perhaps Haiti could thrive once again.