Haiti gained independence through a slave uprising. It makes sense that they would start off poor, but it’s deliberate Western interference that kept them down. Now it can be argued that this is so long ago it shouldn’t matter anymore, but these things are very much subject to the butterfly effect. Poverty generates poverty and the country was directly robbed of the ability to improve for 122 years, and faced with decolonization that left them with a power vacuum and political instability. And it’s not like US intervention stopped then. The US and France are about 80% responsible for Haiti’s modern situation; not to say they’d have necessarily been a developed country but they wouldn’t be this bad.
Edit: Just to be clear, I’m not saying decolonization is a bad thing, but decolonization without care for the colony’s post-decolonization government is setting it up for failure. See: Botswana, whose modern prosperity is a direct result of not having to deal with this.
The US and France are about 80% responsible for Haiti’s modern situation; not to say they’d have necessarily been a developed country but they wouldn’t be this bad.
I guess this is really where we come into conflict. I’m in agreement with everything else, but this ends up as “The broken fingers and the .50 cal through my heart are about 80% responsible for my death.”
The US is a piece of the puzzle, but not really a fundamental one. The situation’s not like Cuba.
In any case, we are certainly in agreement that Haiti was dealt a bad hand from the start, and the entire ‘system’ of colonial international relations in the 19th century bore its full weight against them, with France in particular being vindictive towards its former colony; and the entire post-WW1 system being ‘designed’ (for lack of a better word; I dislike the implication that larger-scope intentions were involved in its creation instead of an ad hoc mess) to privilege importers of raw resources, rather than exporters. And that US exploitation didn’t help Haiti’s situation in the least. A vulture picking at a man not-yet-dead.
Oh I see. Then let me change my stance a bit:
Haiti gained independence through a slave uprising. It makes sense that they would start off poor, but it’s deliberate Western interference that kept them down. Now it can be argued that this is so long ago it shouldn’t matter anymore, but these things are very much subject to the butterfly effect. Poverty generates poverty and the country was directly robbed of the ability to improve for 122 years, and faced with decolonization that left them with a power vacuum and political instability. And it’s not like US intervention stopped then. The US and France are about 80% responsible for Haiti’s modern situation; not to say they’d have necessarily been a developed country but they wouldn’t be this bad.
Edit: Just to be clear, I’m not saying decolonization is a bad thing, but decolonization without care for the colony’s post-decolonization government is setting it up for failure. See: Botswana, whose modern prosperity is a direct result of not having to deal with this.
I guess this is really where we come into conflict. I’m in agreement with everything else, but this ends up as “The broken fingers and the .50 cal through my heart are about 80% responsible for my death.”
The US is a piece of the puzzle, but not really a fundamental one. The situation’s not like Cuba.
In any case, we are certainly in agreement that Haiti was dealt a bad hand from the start, and the entire ‘system’ of colonial international relations in the 19th century bore its full weight against them, with France in particular being vindictive towards its former colony; and the entire post-WW1 system being ‘designed’ (for lack of a better word; I dislike the implication that larger-scope intentions were involved in its creation instead of an ad hoc mess) to privilege importers of raw resources, rather than exporters. And that US exploitation didn’t help Haiti’s situation in the least. A vulture picking at a man not-yet-dead.