A little project I've been obsessed with over the last few days is the question of the 'pre-proletariat' in Haiti, before the US Occupation. Although I am still waiting for access to a few sources (Pean, Gaillard, Corvington), I believe I can lay out a sketch of what I am trying to do here. Haitian Marxist historian Michel Hector has written about this "embryonic proletariat" and is my main source, but, unfortunately, he doesn't cite sources for some of his dates of early strikes in Haiti (in the 1890s and 1900s, among barbers, cordonniers, etc.). I am also struggling to find information about the Coeurs Unis des Artisans (founded in Cap-Haitien, in 1870, this organization of artisans and government functionaries persisted into the 1890s) and the Association Ouvrière (founded in July 1894, in Port-au-Prince), the only labor organizations I have come across for the 19th century. Regardless, here is a schematic overview of what I have been attempting to uncover.
Beginning in 1848 (or 1860, if one cites another essay by Hector published in a Mexican academic journal), assuming one agrees with Michel Hector's chronology, one sees the encroachment of foreign capital in Haiti (particularly in agriculture) and early attempts at improving industry, importing new technology, and a growing population of wage laborers. The period of 1804-1843, although including some plantations for sugar production (especially 1804-1820) and centers of local industry (such as hat production, in 1840s Port-au-Prince), Haiti did not attract significant foreign capital for new industries or agriculture.. Under Geffrard and successive presidents, attempts were made to improve productivity and attract foreign capital through concessions, educational reforms, public works projects, and imported technology (steam engines, cotton gins, coffee processing plants, soap factories, etc.) and new agricultural exports (cotton, for instance, was profitable in the Geffrard years). Unfortunately, state economic policies inhibited the growth of industry because of the growing dependence on foreign firms for imports, dependence on coffee exports, and trade policies which made it more difficult for Haitian industries to compete with Europe or the United States for various goods and products. In fact, Michel Hector cites a petition of Haitian artisans and workers to the government of Port-au-Prince, demanding a change in prices of consumer products and state support for Haitian-produced products, to which Edmond Paul, also responded. Paul, a proponent of industrialization and Haitian economic independence, certainly saw the need to support Haitian self-sufficiency and development in order to protect national independence. Under Salomon and successive governments, various expositions in Port-au-Prince and abroad (such as Chicago's 1893 fair) promoted Haitian industry, agriculture, and attempts at economic modernization. Both the Liberal and National parties were devoted to progress, agricultural improvements, and industry, at least rhetorically.
By the 1870s, Cubans, who were migrating through the circum-Caribbean region as a result of the Cuban Wars of independence, came to Port-au-Prince and other cities. Many were tailors, shoemakers, barbers, and small businessmen, who revitalized Haitian trade professions in urban areas, employed local workers, and were an important segment of the foreign population in Haiti in the late decades of the 19th century. Like the Cubans, Jamaicans and other migrants and artisans from the Caribbean and Europe also came to Haiti. Much of the skilled labor and specialized labor was performed by these foreign workers in Haiti, which may have inhibited or influenced early Haitian labor organization (assuming that many of these foreigners only passed through Haiti for a few years, and were mostly in urban areas). Thus, the Haitian 'working-class' of the second half of the 19th century was mostly based in skilled trades, and associated more with pre-industrial productivity and organization. In the rural areas, a growing number of people were working for commercial houses that exported coffee and other products, while others were employed in plantations, distilleries, refineries, and the coffee processing centers (which appear to have improved productivity and the quality of Haitian coffee beans for export, thereby spreading to other regions of the country). From going through various sources for the late 19th century and early 20th century, many of these ventures employed 50-100 laborers, and in some cases, more (including some urban workshops and factories as well as larger commercial firms preparing and processing export products). For example, Riviere's steamship company suppposedly employed 120 workers, according to an 1876 article in Les Bigailles. However, Hector's articles and essays which touch on this reveal that wages were low, and primary sources contradict each other on the availability of labor while many of these ventures did not survive for more than a few years.
Regrettably, one must delve deeper into the newspapers, financial records, the National Bank of Haiti, and state records of the period to uncover specific informaton about the rural wage laborers of this time. For instance, how many were seasonal? Were the women trieuses of the Haitian coffee industry, such as those of Maison Vital, paid less than males who worked for these commercial houses and plantations? How many were paid in wages and in the demwatye system? How did the agrarian "pre-proletariat" relate to the "feudal" and peasant economies of the rural area? Did the landless poor and sharecropper of rural Haiti of the time begin to migrate to the cities, and if so, were any eventually employed in the new industries (such as cola factories, ice factories) or the cordonneries, cabinetmakers, tanneries, and other forms of employment? What about the educational reforms, such as the 1892 Ecole Libre Professionelle? Were skilled workers trained there, and if so, how many? What were labor relations like at Les Plantations d'Haiti, established in 1901, in Bayeux? According to various sources, this venture, founded with Belgian capital, employed perhaps 300 or more workers to grow sugar, rubber, bananas, and other products for export. Were labor relations "cordial" as some sources indicate? What about references to socialism and anarchism, which appear in 1890s and 1900s Haitian journals and texts? Or references to Anglo-Saxon/Latin dichotomies of labor and labor organization in Le Matin? Did provincial industries based on pre-industrial methods, such as the production of hats and pipes in Bainet, disappear with the rise of US capital in the 20th century? How many commercial firms were directly involved in growing coffee, cotton and other crops versus buying from speculateurs? Were the workers in the new hotels, cigarette and cigar factories, bakeries, foundries, and other ventures from the countryside or the peri-urban peripheral neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince? How did Haitian bourgeois capitalists compete with foreign firms and commercial houses also engaged in coffee, cotton, and similar ventures?
And what about labor strikes, organizations, mutual aid societies, guilds, radicalism and resistance? Hector cites Joseph Justin and Joseph Jeremie to demonstrate the non-existence of strikes, workers associations and unions in 19th century Haiti, but mentions strikes in the 1890s (barbers in Port-au-Prince, for example, in 1891) and early 1900s. The 1890s witnessed the formation of an Association Ouvriere, of a mutualist character (despite fears of socialism and anarchism among some in the Haitian political class). One of its leaders, Stanislas Madour, was involved with some of the Haitian artisanal products displayed at the 1893 Chicago Exposition, presumably since he was a cabinet-maker. Through Hector, one can locate a source for a 1905 strike of shoemakers, which was organized by a union (Syndicat des Ouvriers Cordonniers) founded in 1903 with 47 workers. This union, though small and ephemeral, even sent aid to Jamaican laborers after a natural catastrophe there, indicating an internationalist conception of labor solidarity. Of course, the non-peasant working population in Haiti remained small (one estimate I found indicated only 25,000 agricultural workers by 1915), but I am curious as to the social formation of the period as Haiti made the transition to global capitalism dominated by the United States. For example, were any of these aforementioned workers and artisans exposed to or influenced by Cuban worker and artisan radicalism or educational efforts, as indicated in the works of authors like Casanova, James, or Poyo? What else besides support political revolutions in Port-au-Prince did the urban/semi-urban popular classes accomplish? How did popular beliefs, Vodou, and different conceptions of labor and value shape worker-boss relations and resistance? What about the impact of class stratification in the Haitian countryside during this period (1860-1915)? How did the expansion of Port-au-Prince affect the semi-urban workers and unemployed in Bizoton and other districts? What about cooperatives, communal work projects, and gender relations? How did urban workers and artisans engaged in associations and the early unions of the 1900s differ from their rural counterparts?
As for sources, this work in progress has not pressured me to forming a proper bibliography. The works of Michel Hector have been the main source, as well as various 19th century and early 20th century commercial registries, consular reports, Haitian state documents, some newspapers, and contemporary Haitian texts and essays on education, labor, political econony, and industry. The Blue Book of Hayti, published during the US Occupation, is a priceless source for information on various firms that operated in Haiti in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In addition, it includes photographs of various offices, warehouses, and factories, as well as estimates on the number of employees and the commodities produced, processed, and exported. Pierre-Charles, Joachim, Dupuy, Trouillot, Jean Luc, Richman, Dubois, Plummer, Gaillard, and others have been useful secondary sources, although future references from Latortue, Corvington, Brisson, Redsons, Pean and additional newspapers shall be beneficial. Richman's oral history and archival research on Lacombe's land theft and HASCO in the Leogane plain is fascinating, but one wonders how representative it is of the ways in which Haitian landowners and foreign firms seized land from Haitian peasants in the second half of the 19th century and used the sharecropping system for production of coffee and sugar. One wonders to what extent the Simmond Brothers and other firms would have done what Lacombe did, who, since he lacked the capital and access to credit, persisted in using the sharecropping system to grow coffee and sugar. Perhaps, even before HASCO, wage laborers for agro-industrial companies were already experiencing dislocation and preferred to work outside of their communities, while their more fortunate counterparts persisted in the 'traditional' peasant economy. If the peasant moral economy was under threat already by Lacombe, and further weakened by the enroachment of HASCO, it would be interesting to see if this development was similar to that of other regions of Haiti, and in what manner agricultural workers may have responded similarly to other large-scale plantation developments and displacement.
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