History
of Haiti
Officially called Republic of Haiti (2002
est. pop. 8,000,000), 10,700 sq mi (27,713 sq km), West Indies,
on the western third of the island of Hispaniola. It is bounded
on the north by the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Caribbean
Sea, and on the east by the Dominican Republic. Jamaica lies
to the west and Cuba to the northwest. The offshore islands
of Tortuga and Gonaive also belong to Haiti. The capital and
largest city is Port-au-Prince.
Land and People
The country is mostly mountainous, but about one third of
the land is arable. Haiti is divided into nine administrative
departments. In addition to the capital, other important cities
include Cap-Haitien and Gonaives. Haiti is the most densely
populated country in Latin America and has the lowest per
capita income, with about half the people unemployed and three
quarters living in the severest poverty. Prolonged economic
inequality, political instability and repression, and a near
total lack of medical care continue to be serious problems.
The economic and political situation have caused numerous
Haitians to emigrate, especially to the United States.
About 95% of the inhabitants are descendants of African slaves
who still follow West African cultural patterns. Since the
mid-19th cent., however, Haiti has been dominated by the mulatto
minority, which clings to the French cultural tradition. French
is the official languages of Haiti, although the vast majority
of the people speak Haitian Creole, a French dialect. Roman
Catholicism is the predominant religion, but African nature
gods are still worshiped and vodun (voodoo) rites are practiced.
Economy
Agriculture is the principal economic activity in Haiti. Subsistence
crops include cassava, rice, sugarcane, sorghum, yams, corn,
and plantains. Most Haitians own and farm tiny plots of land,
and great population density has caused rural poverty and
extensive deforestation. Haiti's major exports are light manufactures
and coffee; other exports include cotton, sugar, sisal, bauxite,
and essences. The United States is the country's leading trading
partner. Industry in Haiti consists largely of light manufacturing;
products include refined sugar and other foodstuffs, textiles,
cement, liquors, essential oils, leather goods, soap, and
footwear. Some bauxite and copper are mined, but other mineral
deposits have barely been tapped. Economic sanctions imposed
by the United States and others to force a military regime
to return power to the elected government, and later the government’s
inability to meet aid conditions, further damaged the impoverished
economy during the 1990s.
History
Early History to Independence
The island of Hispaniola was inhabited by the Arawaks prior
to the arrival of Columbus in 1492. Disease, ill treatment,
and execution by the Spaniards decimated the Arawaks, who
gave Haiti its name. While establishing plantations in E Hispaniola
(now the Dominican Republic), however, the Spanish largely
ignored the western part of the island, which by the 17th
cent. became a base for French and English buccaneers. Gradually
French colonists, importing African slaves, developed sugar
plantations on the northern coast. Unable to support its claim
to the region, Spain ceded Haiti (then called Saint-Dominque)
to France in 1697.
Haiti became France's most prosperous colony in the Americas
and one of the world’s chief coffee and sugar producers.
The pattern of settlement took the French south in the 18th
cent. and society became stratified into Frenchmen, Creoles,
freed blacks, and black slaves. Between the blacks and the
French and Creoles were the mulattoes, whose social status
was indeterminate. When French-descended Creole planters sought
to prevent mulatto representation in the French National Assembly
and in local assemblies in Saint-Dominque, the mulattoes revolted
under the leadership of Vincent Ogé. This rebellion
destroyed the rigid structure of Haitian society. The blacks
formed guerrilla bands led by Toussaint Ouverture, a former
slave who had been made an officer of the French forces on
Hispaniola.
When the English invaded Haiti in 1793 during the Napoleonic
Wars, Toussaint maintained an uneasy alliance with the mulatto
André Rigaud and cooperated with the remnant of
French governmental authority. In 1795, Spain ceded its part
of the island to France, and in 1801 Toussaint conquered it,
abolished slavery, and proclaimed himself governor-general
of an autonomous government over all Hispaniola. Napoleon
sent his brother-in-law, Gen. Charles Leclerc, with a huge
punitive force to restore order in 1802, but he was unable
to conquer the interior.
A peace was negotiated, and Toussaint, taken by trickery,
died in a French prison; but the revolt continued and forced
the French troops, already ravaged by yellow fever, to withdraw.
The rebels received unexpected aid from U.S. President Thomas
Jefferson, who feared that Napoleon would use Saint-Dominque
as a base to invade Louisiana. In 1804, Haiti became the second
nation in the Western Hemisphere, after the United States,
to win complete independence.
The Struggles of Nationhood
After independence the remaining French and Creoles were expelled,
and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, an ex-slave, proclaimed himself
emperor. His assassination (1806) led to the division of Haiti
into a black-controlled north under Emperor Henri Christophe
and a mulatto-ruled south under President Alexandre Petion.
After their deaths Haiti was unified by Jean Pierre Boyer,
who also brought Santo Domingo under Haitian control. Seeking
to indemnify French planters, Boyer brought financial ruin
to Haiti; he was exiled in 1843. Haiti's last emperor ( was
Faustin Soulouque. Since the end of his reign, the country
has been a republic. Political and social conflict persisted,
intensified by the mulatto-black hostility, and Haiti's economy,
which had never recovered from the violent struggle for independence,
declined further.
After the dictator Guillaume Sam was killed in a popular uprising
in 1915, the United States, troubled over its property and
investments in the country and fearing Germany might seize
Haiti, took the opportunity to invade Port-au-Prince. The
Haitian congress was forced to accept an agreement permitting
U.S. control over customs receipts; two years later the resident
American naval commander dissolved the congress and dictated
a new constitution. Although financial and general material
progress advanced under American military occupation, Haiti
protested against U.S. violation of its sovereignty, and a
U.S. Senate investigation in 1921 found that the avowed purpose
of preparing Haiti for responsible self-government had been
ignored. In 1930 a U.S. presidential commission recommended
that Haiti be allowed to elect a legislature that would, in
turn, name a president. Sténio Vincent, a vocal
opponent of U.S. military occupation, was chosen by the legislators.
The marines were finally withdrawn in 1934, although U.S.
fiscal control was maintained until 1947.
Political instability persisted in Haiti after World War II,
and the country's future was clouded by rising turbulence
in the Dominican Republic and by the emergence of a Communist
Cuba. Francois; Duvalier, who was elected president in 1957,
suppressed opposition through the creation of his paramilitary
secret police, the tonton macoutes. In 1964 he proclaimed
himself president for life. Upon his death in 1971 he was
succeeded by his 19-year-old son, Jean-Claude, who also became
president for life. After 15 additional years of corruption,
repression, and inequality under the younger Duvalier, popular
discontent became great enough to induce him to flee the country
in 1986.
Starting in 1986 there were several brief attempts at civilian
democracy, each terminated by a military coup. In Sept., 1991,
Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced to flee the country only
nine months after becoming the first freely elected president
in Haiti's history. The United States and the Organization
of American States responded with a trade embargo, and in
1993 a UN-sponsored oil embargo was imposed. An accord in
1993 providing for Aristide's return was repudiated by the
army, which used terrorist violence to maintain power.
In 1994 the United Nations approved a nearly total trade embargo,
and later authorized the use of force to restore democratic
rule. On Sept. 18, 1994, as U.S. forces were poised to invade
the island, an accord was negotiated. Haiti's military leaders
relinquished power under an amnesty, and U.S. forces landed
to oversee the transition. Aristide returned on Oct. 15 as
president; U.S. troops were largely replaced by UN peacekeepers
in Mar., 1995. In the Dec. presidential election that year,
Ren; Preval was elected to succeed Aristide. In Apr., 1996,
the last U.S. troops left, except for a few hundred in the
capital who remained until Jan., 2000; meanwhile, after a
wave of political killings, the United States suspended aid
to Haiti.
In Jan., 1999, following a series of disagreements with Haitian
legislators, Preval declared that their terms had expired,
and he began ruling by decree. Parliamentary elections were
finally held in May to June, 2000. They gave Aristide's Lavalas
Family party an overwhelming majority in both houses, but
the method of counting the votes, in which only those won
by the four leading candidates were tallied and candidates
thus did not need to win an actual absolute majority, was
widely criticized. In Nov., 2000, Aristide was again elected
president, winning nearly 92% of the votes cast, but turnout
for the election was light.
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