GEO Haiti 2010

State of the Environment Report 2010
Later on, French and English pirates who attacked
and looted the cargo ships en route to Spain,
subsequently settled in the island of La Tortue (to
the north), but the depletion of gold deposits on
the island and the discovery of larger deposits in
Mexico, and also the continuing conflicts with
France, led Spain to cede the western third part of
the island to France in 1697 by way of the Treaty
of Rijswijk. This was the beginning of the colony of
Santo Domingo.
As a result of the shortage of labor on the
plantations, the French settlers brought back
Africans from the West African coast. Captured,
chained in slave ships (ships engaged in the slave
trade) they were transported by force to America
and used as slaves on coffee, cotton, cocoa, sisal,
indigo and sugarcane plantations. The slave trade
continued until the end of the 17 th century.
Once harvested, the largest share of the
production was then transported by ship and sold
in France, after which the ships continued on to
the coast of Africa to embark more slaves bound
for Santo Domingo. This system was known as
the “triangular trade”. Many slaves did not survive
long under these conditions, forcing the settlers
to continually replace them. The slave market was,
unfortunately, extremely prosperous.
Saint-Domingue was the most prosperous of all
American colonies, even worldwide. One third of
the French foreign-trade revenue came from Saint-
Domingue (WARGNY, 2004) and many French,
even among the nobility, depended directly or
indirectly on the colony. The luxurious wealth of
Paris and the elegant French palaces, all which
made France one of the finest countries, and Paris
the capital of the world, were largely paid for by
the industries of Saint-Domingue (MERCIER, 1949).
For its part, the town of Cap-Français (now Cap-
Haïtien) was the center of French culture and
knowledge in the Americas.
A generalized slave rebellion began in 1791. The
French commissioners then, given the fact that
the colony was in turmoil, were left with no other
choice in order to stabilize the situation, but to
proclaim the general freedom of the slaves. The
decision was ratified in the first instance by the
National Convention in 1793 and revised shortly
thereafter.
This revolutionary movement began under the
leadership of Toussaint Louverture, then a general
in the French army. Faced with more and more
persistent rumors concerning the restoration of
slavery, he assembled a Constituent Assembly
and had the Constitution ratified in 1801. This act
was considered an impertinence by Bonaparte,
who sent an expedition commanded by General
Leclerc who had Toussaint Louverture arrested
and deported to France in 1802. Louverture finally
died in prison. Then Jean-Jacques Dessalines,
supported by other local generals, took command
of the rebellion and led it to victory. Nearly 100,000
slaves lost their lives, but the Haitians nevertheless
defeated the 30,000 most aggressive troops of
Napoleon Bonaparte’s army, the best army at that
time. This heroic and unique historical uprising
led to the creation of the first black Republic on
January 1 st , 1804 20 .
The context within which Haiti won its
independence brought the country enormous
difficulties. The victory over Napoleon’s army,
an army victorious in Europe and Africa, was an
affront to the hegemony of France, a dangerous
precedent in the New World, in addition to being
a threat to the interests of France and to those of
the other colonialist countries. It was necessary to
squelch this young nation in the strongest possible
way, and the strict trade embargo coupled with
quarantine and isolation on the international
arena was extremely harmful (D’ANS, 1987). Haiti’s
agricultural production, its main source of foreign
exchange, was hard-hit.
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Combined sources