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Comment by Orou | Hacker News Reader

The Haitian revolution ravaged the new nation's economy. The machinery used to process raw materials for Haiti's valuable export products, in particular sugar and coffee, were mostly destroyed in slave uprisings, and they could not be produced locally. Haiti also lacked the natural resources necessary to develop an independent industrial base, and even if plantation outputs increased again (as many tried to make happen), luxury goods like sugar and coffee are only valuable as trade goods.

Simply put, Haiti was highly dependent on international trade for the resources it needed, which meant that the embargoes from major powers crippled the nation.

Mike Duncan has an excellent series on the Haitian revolution in his Revolutions podcast series, which includes a final episode that summarizes the history of the nation up to the mid-20th century.

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Haiti's historical issues notwithstanding, it is also incredibly dysfunctional politically. The difference in forestry policies alone between Haiti and the Dominican Republic make their land border almost possible to identify from satellite/aerial photos alone:

http://latinamericanscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/H...

Wow, that's a striking photo.

"It has been widely reported that in 1923 over 60% of Haiti's land was forested; the source of this assertion remains unknown but may be linked to the U.S. Marine Occupation in Haiti. In 2006, the country was claimed to have less than 2% forest cover."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_Haiti#Estimat...

It wasn't just the embargoes. They really did pay back the billions of dollars-worth of "debt".

Yup, and the debt was due 200 years ago and worth around 21 billion dollars.

For fun I ran the numbers, at 4% real interest which is realistic for a developing country, that's 2.55 trillion dollars in lost interest.

I wonder what is owed Haiti for the profits extracted from the enslaved peoples forced to work to death there.

Given that the slaves rose up and murdered their slaveowners, who were also Haitian, there is no one left for them to collect from, even if you could find someone still alive from that period who worked as a slave. In other words, those slaves took payment, via genocide, a long time ago. That's one of the problems with murdering all your oppressors and seizing all their assets -- at that point you have no one left to blame when things go bad over the next few hundred years.

Haiti wasn't a country then, so no, they weren't Haitian.

I recommend reading up on the history of Haiti. Independence was declared first (by the upper classes) and the 1804 massacre came later. There were, of course, a number of slave revolts that happened throughout that time, but the genocide was in 1804.

November 1803 to 1804 doesn't make much of a difference there. They were still french when they were extracting massive profits from the slaves.

"That's one of the problems with murdering all your oppressors and seizing all their assets -- at that point you have no one left to blame when things go bad over the next few hundred years."

Haiti was indebted to France for over 100 years after the revolution. They were forced to pay the losses sustained by the French, which included slaves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti_indemnity_controversy

It doesn't get more unjust and wrong than that. To say they have no one to blame for their country's condition is misguided.

But that was 200 years ago. And does the Dominican Republic have natural resources that Haiti lacks?

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