The cost of Freedom

[Gils]

" Haiti’s legacy of debt began shortly after gaining independence from France in 1804.

In 1825, France, with warships at the ready, demanded Haiti compensate France for its loss of men and slave colony. In exchange for French recognition of Haiti as a sovereign republic, France demanded payment of 150 million francs (modern equivalent of $21 billion)....

The transfer of wealth from Haiti to the French government and from Haiti to the various banks that financed the Independence Debt is well established. Detailed claims, submitted by former slave owners for compensation, including the monetary value of the “lost” slaves, and which formed the basis for the French government’s demands have been documented.

Likewise, the terms of the 1825 Ordinance and accounts of its negotiation have survived.

The French government acknowledges the payment of 90,000,000F. The story of the first payment - 24,000,000 gold francs – being transported across Paris, from the vaults of Ternaux Grandolphe et Cie to the coffers of the French Treasury was recorded in detail. Historians have traced loan documents from the time of the 1825 Ordinance, through the various refinancing efforts, to the final remittance to National City Bank in 1947 ".

So in 1825, after the French, English and Americans had stopped warring, the French took the opportunity to blockade Haitian ports and demand reparations with the threat of violence

150 Million francs Note - The Plantocracy in Jamaica were given only £20 Million in 1834 and 4 - 6 year apprenticeships. It took Haiti 122 years to pay the French, 1947.

America, France and England, again. I'll have to pay a lot more attention to this particular trinity of terrorists and the time line of their exploits throughout history. Knowing the identities of all the financial house's that managed this debt will probably fall under the same umbrella. http://en.wikipedia.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;"

[mikesiva]

'Whether Jean-Bertrand Aristide ever returns to the homeland he left under such controversial circumstances, his call for France to make reparations to his troubled Caribbean nation of Haiti is as important as ever and must not be allowed to die, say observers. Some analysts believe that France’s refusal to support the deployment of an international peacekeeping force to Haiti until after the president’s departure was linked to Aristide’s unpopular – in Paris – demand for reparations. The United Nations Security Council, of which France is a permanent member, rejected a Feb. 26 appeal from the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) for international peacekeeping forces to be sent into its member state Haiti, but voted unanimously to send in troops three days later, just hours after Aristide’s controversial resignation. "I believe that (the call for reparations) could have something to do with it, because they (France) were definitely not happy about it, and made some very hostile comments," Myrtha Desulme, chairperson of the Haiti-Jamaica Exchange Committee, told IPS. "(But) I believe that he did have grounds for that demand, because that is what started the downfall of Haiti," she says. Last year, Aristide demanded that France pay Haiti over 21 billion U.S. dollars, what he said was the equivalent in today’s money of the 90 million gold francs Haiti was forced to pay Paris after winning its freedom from France as the hemisphere’s first independent black nation 200 years ago.'

http://www.ipsnews.net/2004/03/haiti-ar ... ly-to-die/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Gils]

" This demand(for reparations) certainly did not endear him (Aristide) to the French, but their recent actions in Haiti may have more to do with attempting to form some kind of alliance with the U.S. after the falling out over Iraq,"
Says French professor and commentator on Haitian issues at New York University, Michael Dash

" France refused to back Washington’s call for support in the U.N. Security Council as it prepared an invasion of Iraq last year. But the Haitian crisis has clearly pulled the two countries closer after a chill in relations over the U.S.- led invasion of the Middle Eastern nation.
Days after the intervention in Haiti, U.S. President George W. Bush telephoned French President Jacques Chirac to express pleasure over the two countries’ cooperation on the issue " .

No surprise to see two of the trinity of terrorism still actively arresting Haitian development. There seems to be nothing better than oppressing Haiti to pull these country's closer together. Haiti, a country rich in natural resource's, 210 years old this year, the USA is not much older, the disparity in standard of living is vast.

Ten years after paying off the debt, in 1957, Francois Duvalier, Papa Doc, came to power. Five years before any other Caribbean nation had gained independence, his son Jean Claude succeeded him and was in office until 1986.

[Gils]

The Haitian Revolution was the only slave revolt which led to the founding of a state. Furthermore, it is generally considered the most successful slave rebellion ever to have occurred and as a defining moment in the histories of both Europe and the Americas. The rebellion began with a revolt of black African slaves in August 1791. It ended in November 1803 with the French defeat at the battle of Vertières. Haiti became an independent country on January 1, 1804.

In 1789 Saint-Domingue produced 60% of the world's coffee and 40% of the world's sugar imported by France and Britain. The colony was the most profitable possession of the French Empire. Saint-Domingue was also the wealthiest and most prosperous, for the plantation owners at least, of all of the colonies of any country in the Caribbean.

[Gils]

The Three-Fifths Compromise was a compromise between Southern and Northern states reached during the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 in which three-fifths of the enumerated population of slaves would be counted for representation purposes regarding both the distribution of taxes and the apportionment of the members of the United States House of Representatives.

So while Haiti had managed to release herself from the clutches' of colonial oppression, Africans were still viewed at the time, by Europeans, as only 3/5ths of a person.

(This allowed the European to reconcile his bible with the inhuman treatment of Africans, who were not considered to be whole, men, and so were not considered to be subject to the laws within it. ).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;"