Haiti - France (Haiti and the Indemnity Debt of 1825) PDF

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Haiti and the Indemnity Debt of 1825...

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Week 22 Seminar questions – Haiti and the Indemnity Debt of 1825 Saint Domingue Maroon Slaves Haitian Revolution Even free black people owned slaves. Independence Day of Haiti – on New Year’s Day 1st Jan Even after independence, Haiti wasn’t granted diplomatic recognition. April 17, 1825, Haitian President Jean-Pierre Boyer signed the Royal Ordinance of Charles X. The ordinance promised French diplomatic recognition to Haiti in exchange for a 50% tariff reduction on French imports and a 150,000,000 F in Gold indemnity [Indemnity is a contractual obligation of one party (indemnifier) to compensate the loss incurred to the other party (indemnity holder) due to the acts of the indemnitor or any other party.] Payable in a five-year annual installment. Theoretically, the indemnity would compensate the French planters in cash for their lost property – land and slaves, although the amount demanded exceeded estimates of their actual losses by 30% (50,000,000F). Haitian President signed the agreement under the pressure of a flotilla of French warships just out of sight of the Haitian coast, with orders to blockade Haiti if negotiations failed. ( leverage)

IT TAKES A HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO YEARS 122 FOR HAITI TO REPAY ITS INDEPENDENCE DEBT.

Claim of Restitution

Slavery in a minor key was the focus of last night’s Storyville: Circus Elephant Rampage (BBC4), about a baby elephant captured in Mozambique in 1974 and gunned down 20 years later in the streets of Honolulu after escaping from her life of performance and captivity with the circus. After the abolition of slavery, Britain paid millions in compensation – but every penny of it went to slave owners, and nothing to those they enslaved. We must stop overlooking the brutality of British history. Slavery Abolition Act 1833

Instead, the money went exclusively to the owners of slaves, who were being compensated for the loss of what had, until then, been considered their property. Not a single shilling of reparation, nor a single word of apology, has ever been granted by the British state to the people it enslaved, or their descendants. British Taxpayers - taxes were used to pay off the loan, and the payments only

ended in 2015. British slave trade was not abolished in 1833, but in 1807. Second, slavery was not abolished in all parts of the British empire in 1833. The new law applied to the British Caribbean islands, Mauritius and the Cape

Colony, in today’s South Africa, but not to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) or British India, for instance. Comparing the compensation paid by the British government to British slaveowners upon the abolition of slavery and the compensation paid by the government of Haiti to French slaveowners upon the independence of Haiti, think and comment on the following: 1) From what you have learned from the materials (readings, videos and lectures), is there a moral difference between the two cases? Explain your reasoning. In 1825, Haiti paid France $21 Billion To Preserve Its Independence -Time for France To Pay It Back I would argue that both are morally wrong but are different in the way that France was compensating slave owners who are the oppressor and who believed that that they have lost their property rights but only by extorting and placing leverage on an ex-colonized island impoverishing them to the brink. Whilst what the UK Govt did in 1835, paid millions in compensation to slave owners and nothing to those enslaved. What was also morally wrong was that it was the British taxpayers would have to compensate until 2015.

2) If there a legal difference?

3) How would you argue for or against some kind of reparations or restitution in each of the cases? On what basis?

This debt is a case that is unique in history. This is the only time the victors have paid tribute to the vanquished. I’m a specialist on colonialism and slavery, and what France did to the Haitian people after the Haitian Revolution is a particularly notorious examples of colonial theft. Just as the legacy of slavery in the United States has created a gross economic disparity between Black and white Americans, the tax on its freedom that France forced Haiti to pay – referred to as an “indemnity” at the time – severely damaged the newly independent country’s ability to prosper. French economist Thomas Piketty acknowledged that France should repay at least US$28 billion to Haiti in restitution.

I would argue on the basis that Haiti is not indebted, but a creditor.

4) If you were designing the ideal form of remedy for Haiti as a result of its payment of the indemnity debt, what would it be composed of? You can be as creative and include as many different items as you think would help to address some or all of any wrongs committed....