Caribbean Project: Economic Impact of the US Occupation In Haiti, 1915-1934

34 Comments

1. Thanks for all the interesting information. Haiti is a country that holds my fascination as well. I recently read Haiti: The Tumultuous History – From Pearl of the Caribbean to Broken Nation and liked it a lot. The author is very critical on Haitians themselves. So much in fact that I was surprised to find out he is white.

   http://www.amazon.com/Haiti-Tumultuous-History-Caribbean-Broken/dp/0230106617

2. HW- As you amass more and more data to conclusively bury the liberals who actually believe in the fallacy of ontological equality between the races, you concurrently need to point out the philosophical underpinnings of such fallaciousness.

   As I’ve noted over at my blog, and left a link here, the series of posts by one Mr. Land are spot on in analyzing the religio-political nature of all this brouhaha.

   When it comes to ‘the race problem’, OD readers have gone beyond the fundamental divide that still paralyzes our white countrymen- who is to blame for the ‘race’ problem.
   Oh, sure the ’14 words’ and ‘anti-racist is a code word for anti-white’ go a long way towards helping awaken fellow Whites, but it is the RELIGIOUS nature of the issue that still is not addressed- either in the public sphere, or from the namby-pambypulpiteers.

   Thus, pursuant to this post today, look at post #4a of Lands’ and see the corrollaries.

   “The two simplest, quite widely held, and basically incompatible answers to the first question deserve to be considered as important parts of the problem.

   Question: What is America’s race problem?

   Answer-1: Black people.

   Answer-2: White people.

   The combined popularity of these options is significantly expanded, most probably to encompass a large majority of all Americans, when is taken to include those who assume that one of these two answers dominates the thinking of the other side. Between them, the propositions “The problem would be over if we could just rid ourselves of black hoodlums / white racists” and / or “They think we’re all hoodlums / racists and want to get rid of us” consume an impressive proportion of the political spectrum, establishing a solid foundation of reciprocal terror and aversion. When defensive projections are added (“We’re not hoodlums, you’re racists” or “We’re not racists, you’re hoodlums”), the potential for super-heated, non-synthesizing dialectics approaches the infinite.

   Not that these ‘sides’ are racial (except in black or white tribal-nationalist fantasy). For crude stereotypes, it is far more useful to turn to the principal political dimension, and its categories of ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ in the contemporary, American sense. To identify America’s race problem with white racism is the stereotypical liberal position, whilst identifying it with black social dysfunction is the exact conservative complement. Although these stances are formally symmetrical, it is their actual political asymmentry that charges the American race problem with its extraordinary historical dynamism and universal significance.”

   You ( and your readers) need to read both before and after this quote, but I really think Land is on to something big, that will help those who actually think, rather than the merely emotive among us. FWIW.

   http://bam-pow-oof.tumblr.com/post/37857338807/the-dark-enlightenment-the-complete-series-by-nick

3. Is this http://www.flickr.com/photos/nygus/sets/72157620721130385/ the future for multiracial Poland?

   Re: ‘Whites were forbidden to own land and property in Haiti’:

   But it is NOT true that ALL Whites were forbidden to own land and property in Haiti. The Constitution of 1805 stated: ‘NO WHITE MAN MAY HOLD LAND IN HAITI APART FROM GERMANS AND POLANDERS’. Exceptions that prove the rule:

   ‘Amongst Leclerc’s soldiers were the ‘less-elite’ French soldiers, 5,000 Polish legionnaires and some German and Swiss soldiers as well. The Polish soldiers were led by Jan Henryk D?browski, a former high-ranking officer in the army of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (…) THE POLES HAD BEEN TOLD THAT THEY WERE THERE TO LIBERATE the people – not restore them to slavery. After a short time (…)realized that they had been deceived, and they stopped fighting, became deserters and in most cases, joined Jean-Jacques Dessalines and his slave army*** (…) Most of the Polish soldiers perished. About 700 returned to Poland, and about 400 remained on the island (…) In January, 1804, independent Haiti was declared, and White people were prohibited to own property there with the exception of the Poles, in gratitude for their defecting from Napoleon’s army. ” (….) The Polish people formed communities over the next two centuries (…) referred to as blanc polone (…) and there is a high proportion of very light-skinned, blue-eyed Haitians’: http://zmblackhistorymonth2011.blogspot.com/2011/02/feb-17-polish-haitians-how-they-came-to.html

   ***I believe this is exaggeration, and probably less than two hundred actually fought WITH the Haitians, and then mostly out of fear for their lives. Also, all capitalisations in the quotation are mine, added for emphasis.

   There is a paragraph on the Haitian campaign in the Wikipedia article on the ‘Dabrowski Legions’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Legions_(Napoleonic_period) and many other articles online, for a balanced view, such as:
   http://www.soldiers-of-misfortune.com/history/polish-legion-haiti.htm and
   http://www2.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/bookreviews/pachonski.htm

   Polish liberal Democrat expresses solidarity with Haitians: http://toussaintlouverturehs.org/PolishContribut.htm

4. Re: Mosin

   A handful of German and Pole soldiers who deserted Leclerc’s army were made into honorary blacks under the Haitian constitution.

5. Not a handful but about 400 stayed. They became farmers, owning land and forming at least six communities — but lacking females they of course had to breed with the native subspecies….

   But some Haitian mulattoes claiming to be of Polish descent really are not.

   It is true that among the Polish legionnaires in Haiti there must have been some with radical revolutionary ideals: ‘FROM THE PEOPLE OF POLAND TO THE PEOPLE OF HAITI, our warmest regards and a reaffirmation of our Solidarity with you for another two hundred years. I am honored by your invitation to address you on this auspicious occasion, the eve of the two hundredth anniversary of the Independence of Haiti. The road to independence for Poland and Haiti was not without horrible suffering and sacrifice. Two hundred years ago the world was dominated by empires and ruled by despotic leaders who not only oppressed their own countryman, but also those of other nations. The Polish people not only fought for their independence (…) BUT ALSO FOR THE FREEDOM OF OTHER COUNTRIES LIKE THE UNITED STATES (…) UNDER THE BANNER, FOR YOUR FREEDOM AND OURS. On May 3, 1791 the Poles established the first democratic constitution in Europe, 2nd in the world to that of the United States. FEARING THAT THE POLISH DEMOCRATIC DISEASE WOULD SPREAD to their borders and liberate their serfs, the emperors of Russia, Prussia and Austria entered into an alliance to destroy Poland. In 1792, only months after the Poles established the first democratic Republic, Russia attacked Poland later joined by Prussia and Austria and partitioned the country in three parts. Poland did not exist as a nation until 1918 except for a brief time during the Napoleonic era. By 1796, Napoleon Bonaparte promised the Poles that he would re-establish Poland as a nation if the Poles joined his army. The Poles joined his ranks by the millions and formed the Polish Legions serving under Napoleon’s command. When he became victorious and an emperor, he forgot his promise to the Polish people’: http://toussaintlouverturehs.org/PolishContribut.htm

6. The Haitian defeat of Napoleon’s army helped to prevent his intended occupation of Louisiana — and if that had been successful, the Haitians (and their African-derived yellow fever disease) actually helped to prevent the intended Latin/RC domination of North America!

7. The naturalised Poles were very influential: Their RC favourite ‘Matka Boska Cz?stochowska’ (Our Lady of Cz?stochowa) was syncretised to create a new voodoo deity: Erzulie Dantor, the protector of abused women, children and homosexuals.

8. I guess it’s Haiti week (month?) here at OD.

   I don’t believe that Haiti is a case of freedom, equality or autonomy failing, but rather a straight-up racial issue: The poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere is also the blackest, something as predictable as the sun rising in the east.

   Case in point is a comparison with its neighbour on the island of Hispaniola, the Dominican Republic. According to the 2014 World Almanac, the ethnic makeup of the DR is 73% mixed, 16% white and 11% black. Haiti is listed as 95% black and 5% mulatto and white. Now let’s compare some vital stats between the two countries, which have almost identical populations (DR 10.2 million, Haiti 9.9 million).

   Per capita GDP (PPP):
   DR: $9,800
   Haiti: $1,300

   Life expectancy:
   DR: 75.4 male, 79.9 female
   Haiti: 61.5 male, 64.3 female

   Infant mortality:
   DR: 20.4 per 1000
   Haiti: 50.9 per 1000

   Literacy rate:
   DR: 90.1%
   Haiti: 48.7%

   Electricity production:
   DR: 14.7 billion kWh
   Haiti: 560.4 million kWh

   Exports:
   DR: $9.1 billion
   Haiti: $785 million

   Motor vehicles:
   DR: 140 per 1000 pop.
   Haiti: 8 per 1000 pop.

   Internet connections:
   DR: 45%
   Haiti: 10.9%

   There are many more such comparisons to be made, but you get the idea. The difference in living standards between the “Brown” Dominican Republic and “Black” Haiti is stark. In fact the differences between the two are even more pronounced the differences between two other neighbouring countries, the “White” (still, barely) United States and “Brown” Mexico.

   I would argue that Haiti is the only true “Black” country outside of sub-Saharan Africa, and that all other Caribbean nations, for demographic and historical reasons, should be lumped in with the DR and Mexico as “Brown” countries. Even Jamaica. At Jamaica’s independence in 1962, it was a truly multiracial society with significant British, Chinese, Indian, Middle Eastern and mulatto minorities. All of Jamaica’s significant political, economic and cultural figures (such as Alexander Bustamante, Donald Sangster, Manley père et fils, Edward Seaga, and even the half-white Bob Marley) were from these minority groups. Fifty years later Jamaica is blacker than it once was, but I believe it is still better classified as a “Brown” nation, especially in comparison with truly “Black” Haiti.

   Every nation in the world can be classified as either Yellow, White, Brown or Black. It’s a simplistic but effective way to explain worldwide racial differences in intelligence to the uninitiated. Think of it as HBD for Dummies. Later I will flesh out this idea a bit more.

   As for Haiti, all the longwinded explanations for its present state can be summed up in just two words: Blackness failed. What else could it do?

   • Back in 2012, I said that I was going to write a book about the Caribbean. I want to wrap that project up.

   • Is it a straight up racial issue?

     It’s true that Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, today, but that wasn’t always the case. In the Caribbean, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Tobago, the British Virgin Islands, and St. Barts were poorer than Haiti through most of the 19th century. It wasn’t until around the 1930s that Haiti fell to its current place at the absolute bottom of the Caribbean rankings. The Dominican Republic overtook Haiti under Trujillo during the Second World War.

     Blackness alone doesn’t explain everything. See the Bahamas (a quarter of the population is Haitian) and Turks and Caicos (nearly half the population is Haitian). See also the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Barbados, Guadeloupe and Martinique, etc. In Jamaica (2005) and Barbados (1996), 16 percent and 14 percent of the population were “poor. Compare that to Haiti where 72 percent of the population was “poor” in 2001.

     There are lots of black countries in the Caribbean, but only Haiti is chronically impoverished. It is now in a category by itself. Also, there are some countries like the British Virgin Islands which have gone from being poorer than Haiti in 1900 to among the the wealthiest in the region and the world in 2014.

9. Polish Haitians remind me of the Irish Jamaicans, who also didn’t immigrate to the Caribbean by the tens of thousands entirely willingly. The white and Talmudic planter elite took the best-looking Irish women who came along, and the male Irish slaves were left to breed mostly with Africans. The Golden Circle is the original multiracial experiment in the New World.

10. Re: Fr. John

    Lothrop Stoddard’s book on the Haitian Revolution is still a classic. I would like to write a similar book about Haiti.

11. Maybe Haiti at least partly coasted on the agricultural wealth built up by the French in the Saint-Domingue era. It was the richest colony in the world at that time, which speaks to the natural richness of its volcanic soil compared to other islands in the Caribbean. Also they basically logged the entire country, sacrificing long-term environmental pain for short-term gain. No colonial power would be that short-sighted in their own territorial possessions.

    Haiti is easily the blackest country in the Caribbean; at 95% pure African I doubt anywhere else comes close. Cuba was majority white until Castro chased off much of the middle class to Miami. Puerto Rico and the DR are mostly mixed. Trinidad and Tobago is half Indian. Barbados and the Bahamas have significant white minorities. The still-extant British, French and Dutch colonies also have large white minorities. St Barts is majority white. There are important Chinese and Indian minorities in all the Caribbean Commonwealth countries, and of course there are lots of mulattoes everywhere. Except Haiti, the black hole of the West Indies.

12. Partially true.

    Haiti’s largest export was coffee until well into the twentieth century. The coffee was harvested from wild coffee trees in the mountains that had grown out of the wreck of colonial era plantations. Logwood and cacao were marginal exports in Saint-Domingue, but later became much more important in independent Haiti.

    As for deforestation, Barbados (93 percent black) was deforested under British rule by the end of the 17th century. The British Leeward Islands were also deforested to make room for sugar monoculture plantations. Haiti (95 percent black) wasn’t deforested until well into the 20th century.

    St. Barts is majority White, but it was poorer than Haiti in the 19th century, and so was the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Tobago, and the British Virgin Islands. Some of the British, French, and Dutch West Indies have large Asian populations, but that was because those countries, unlike Haiti, remained colonized under white supremacy and Asian indentured servants were brought in after abolition in order to salvage the export based plantation economy.

    Haiti – $1,242 GDP per capita – 95 percent black

    The Bahamas – $31,382 GDP per capita – 85 percent black
    Barbados – $25,372 GDP per capita – 93 percent black
    Guadeloupe – $21,780 GDP per capita – 90 percent black or mulatto
    Martinique – $24,118 GDP per capita – 90 percent black or mulatto
    Jamaica – $9,029 GDP per capita – 76 percent black
    Turks and Caicos Islands – $17,112 GDP per capita – 90 percent black
    Cayman Islands – $43,800 GDP per capita – 60 percent black or mulatto
    St. Kitts and Nevis – $15,573 GDP per capita – 90 percent black
    Antigua and Barbuda – $18,026 GDP per capita – 91 percent black
    Dominica – $14,166 GDP per capita – 86 percent black
    Grenada – $13,900 GDP per capita – 82 percent black
    Aruba – $23,831 GDP per capita – 80 percent black or mulatto
    British Virgin Islands – $43,366 GDP per capita – 83 percent black
    Bermuda – $84,381 GDP per capita – 54 percent black
    Anguilla – $8,800 GDP per capita – 90 percent black

    Haiti is a regional outlier, but it is not because it is black.

13. The purpose of the “Caribbean Project” is three-fold:

    1.) Explain why Haiti is Haiti.
    2.) Explain why every other country in the region but Haiti has been so much more economically successful.
    3.) Explain the connection between the Deep South and the Caribbean.

14. My own personal theory is that it is because 1.) Haiti has been “free” so much longer than the other countries and 2.) there are so many more Haitians. Jamaica is more like Haiti than any other country in the region.

15. I think all these racial stats have to be taken with a big grain of salt. For example the World Almanac lists Jamaica as 91% black and 6% mixed. Yet Wikipedia lists it as 76.3% African, 15.1% Afro-European, 3.4% East Indian and Afro-East Indian, 3.2% Caucasian, 1.2% Chinese and 0.8% other. The Wiki stats seem far more accurate to me, but who knows?

    As for Barbados being 93% black, I’m calling major BS on that. Maybe 93% black andmulatto, with mulattoes forming a large chunk of that 93%. It’s widely perceived that Jamaica (and I think most West Indians would back me up on this) is the “blackest” island in the English-speaking Caribbean, so Barbados is almost certainly less than 76% pure African.

    And “blackness” is perceived far differently in different parts of the Caribbean. On the Spanish islands it’s a stigma to be avoided if possible. Mixed race is a far more socially respectable self-designation, even if it’s only a white great-great-grandfather in an otherwise African mix. I think it might be the same way in Haiti and the French Caribbean.

    On the other hand, in the English Caribbean–really the entire English-speaking world–blackness is cool and hip. Maybe not in the past but definitely now. Obvious mulattoes proudly self-identify as black. Exhibit A: Bob Marley. Exhibit B: Barack Obama. So racial comparisons between the islands are fraught with mismatched definitions.

    And it’s not really fair to compare GDP stats between microscopic colonial outposts/tax havens like Bermuda, the Caymans, St Barts or Aruba with good-sized nations like Jamaica, Haiti or the DR. It’s apples to oranges, or maybe apples to rotten apples.

    But I agree that Haiti gaining its dubious “freedom” 150 years before most of the rest of the Caribbean has been an unmitigated disaster for the Haitians. That extra century and a half under the white man’s tutelage did wonders for the other islands, at least in comparison with Haiti.

    The crucial difference, however, is racial. While Haiti was slaughtering all of its whites, the rest of the Caribbean was importing significant numbers of Europeans, Indians, Chinese, Middle Easterners and growing a large population of mulattoes. That’s why the fundamental socio-economic divide in the West Indies is between all the 3rd World “Brown” nations on one hand, and 4th World “Black” Haiti on the other.

16. I agree with both points of your personal theory, if I understand it correctly: 1.) Free-er to be Black longer with less regular assistance and intervention, and 2.) more Africans were concentrated in one critical mass ???

    Why have other Caribbean nations or colonies been more ‘economically successful’? Easy. Haiti remained primitive, subsistence agricultural, while other areas industrialised and/or served wealthy tourists. The Caymans have poor soil (bauxitic like the infertile parts of Jamaica) and very little of it, but they have BANKING, as well as tourism. ‘Dirt farmers’ are generally at the bottom of any economic pyramid. Try growing tomatoes and watermelons with hand tools and selling the harvest along the road somewhere for a living, and working for minimum wage for a capitalist enterprise afterwards will feel extremely prosperous.

    In Haiti, African nature is beginning to return to its natural, pre-Western-contact condition. They are not ‘failing’ after all, but only reverting. Their ways are not our ways. Now what I would like to understand is the dynamics of mulattoism.

17. If Saruman had been in charge he would have set up factories and sweat shops all over Haiti and the economy would still be booming, and an elite would be reaping the ‘immense wealth created’.

18. Hey Nagant,

    Your thoughts on the Protocols of the Learned Elders?

    Forgery or Accurate dossier?

19. “Your thoughts on the Protocols of the Learned Elders?”

    Stop it John, you’re better educated than that. This site doesn’t need anti-semitism of the whack-o variety. The truth is good enough.

20. “If Saruman had been in charge”

    Further proof that you actually inhabit a delusional fantasy world inside your skull. You need psychiatric help.

21. Actually, let’s see what he has to say. I’m no officionado of the text but, the way people react to the title is quite telling.

22. Rudel is a fighting mood tonight:

    ‘“If Saruman had been in charge” Further proof that you actually inhabit a delusional fantasy world’:

    A manner of speaking, Rudel. ‘Saruman’ is a character in Tolkien’s novel The Lord of the Rings — who breeds and manages Orcs to industrialise his own wizard domain, and then the Shire itself, and has no use for trees and greenery, and farming. If the Orcs of Haiti had been industrialised and sweat-shopped, we wouldn’t be having his discussion of why Haiti ‘failed’. But I won’t say that YOU are crazy if you still can’t understand.

    ‘Stop it John, you’re better educated than that. This site doesn’t need anti-semitism of the whack-o variety’:

    Rudel clearly belongs to the ‘Mainstreaming’ movement that opposes ‘blaming Jews for everything’ and rejects all ‘conspiracy theories’.

    Re: ‘The Protocols’:

    John, we don’t know who were the human authors of many canonical Scriptures*** yet they have ALL been proven accurate and useful.

    ***Note that I am not denying, doubting or even referring to the Divine inspiration, only the human writers who remain anonymous, perhaps not even Jewish.

23. Failed to read it before posting, again. Corrections: ‘is a fighting mood’ should be ‘is in a fighting mood’ and ‘Mainstreaming movement’ should have been ‘Mainstreaming WN movement’.

    BTW, jeppo’s comment above http://www.occidentaldissent.com/2014/01/25/caribbean-project-economic-impact-of-us-occupation-in-haiti/comment-page-1/#comment-2415717 is on target.

24. John, you are exactly right. How people react to that title is absolutely telling!

25. Rudel is right. We don’t need “Anti-Semitism of the whack-o variety” on this blog. The truth is enough.” The Protocols is a known, proven fraud. There’s no need to read junk like that when there are so many good, well documented books by people of various religious and ethnic backgrounds on the history of the Jews. Look around this site and you will see references to several of them.

26. The reaction is, as I said telling.

    It is an example of conspiracy literature. Yet, it was quite instrumental in Russian history as Imperial Czarist propaganda.

    Hitler and Henry Ford both based their politics around it.

    The reaction is all important. Abbé Burruel’s account of the French Revolution is one of the first examples of such literature.

27. Re: ‘there are so many good, well documented books by people of various religious and ethnic backgrounds on the history of the Jews’:

    There are indeed. Here is one of your ‘diverse background’ author recommendations to help OD readers understand the People of your ancestry: http://www.imninalu.net/origins.htm#list (
    http://www.occidentaldissent.com/2014/01/18/caribbean-project-spenser-st-john-on-haitians/comment-page-1/#comment-2402948 ) which much less accurate than the ‘known, proven fraud’. You have also recommended other Jewish authors who claim responsibility for creating/guiding the Reformation and Spanish Inquisition.

    All I said was that not knowing the authorship doesn’t necessarily make the content worthless. ‘Protocols’ are still in print and very widely read. Of course I think they are spurious, but interesting. John is right, your reaction is ‘telling’.

28. What would we do, where would we be, without ‘conspiracy literature’, including some that is ‘forged’, John? Would there ever have been an American revolution by the thirteen colonies without those wildly exaggerating, inflammatory ‘radical’ pamphleteers? Would there be any discussion of NSA violations of our rights without ‘whacko nutcases who have problems with authority’, like Edward Snowden? There is of course a gradient between the most accurate and useful ‘CT’ nonsense and REAL nonsense about the ‘faked’ moon landing, ‘the planet Nibiru’ and ‘Tesla’s free energy invention’ that ‘the government is hiding from us’. LOL We are fortunately still free to examine the evidence for each ‘theory’ and decide for ourselves. ‘What will you do without freedom’? ‘They’ really SHOULD censor that line from the Braveheart movie!

29. Mosin, the stuff I recommend is well researched and documented. You have never recommended anything of the sort. All you do is spout your silly prejudices or chant “It’s a conspiracy” regardless of the lack of proof. I only except theories or ideas that can be proven by a preponderance of evidence or absolute proof beyond a shadow of a doubt. That’s why I don’t believe in the Protocols. There’s no evidence that it’s a genuine document of a Jewish conspiracy. I do believe in well researched books like “Fire In The Minds Of Men” and the other books I recommended, but I’ll never recommend crap like the Protocols.

30. “A manner of speaking, Rudel. ‘Saruman’ is a character in Tolkien’s novel The Lord of the Rings”

    No shit Sherlock, that’s why I used the term “fantasy world.” You subsequent incomplete exegesis on Saruman just proves it.

    Of course I don’t blame the Jews for everything and neither should you. There aren’t enough of them to go around. As for conspiracy theories, there is little need for them. Most pertinent facts are all in the pages of Investor’s Business Daily every morning.

31. “Hitler and Henry Ford both based their politics around it.”

    Hitler did nothing of the sort. He based his politics solely on his concept of a “volkisch” German nation.

32. There is commenary on the Protocols, there’s even audio with Hitler talking about it. It is inextricably linked to NSDAP policy.

    The takeaway from Mein Kampf is all about Lebensraum anyway. Seize Poland and Ukraine breed 10s of millions of Germans there.