Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies
split into two parts. Christophe ruled the north from Cap-Haitien,
while Petion governed the south and west. In 1811 Christophe
crowned himself King Henry I of Haiti, and the
northern dominion became a kingdom. He installed a nobility
of mainly black supporters, who assumed titles of earl, count,
and baron.
Christophe, who was born a slave in Grenada and served
masters at sea, in Georgia, and in Saint-Domingue, remained a
life-long anglophile. He spelled his first name, Henry, with the
English orthography. As president, he hired English teachers
to establish national schools, and encouraged British investment
in Haiti.
Christophe's career was also influenced by his association
with Toussaint Louverture. During the Haitian Revolution,
Christophe had become a protege of Toussaint and helped
develop the fermage program that returned Haitians to the
plantations as paid laborers. When Christophe became president,
he also attempted to restore the sugar plantations, using
workers who were bound to the land.
Christophe sought to open up international trade, but he
was afraid such trade would encourage foreign invasions. He
brought 4,000 warriors from Dahomey in West Africa, the
Royal Dahomets, as a security force to protect himself and Haiti
and to encourage honesty and morality among his subjects.
Christophe remains conspicuous among Haitian leaders for his
emphasis on public and personal morality.
Meanwhile, in the south and west, Alexandre Petion was
head of a military oligarchy. He ruled under two constitutions.
Under the first, he was president of the republic from 1807 to
1816, and under the second, he became president for life.
An important difference between the northern kingdom
and the southern republic was the treatment of land ownership.
Christophe gave the bulk of the land to the state and
leased large tracts to estate managers. Petion distributed stateowned
land to individuals in small parcels. He began distributing
land to his soldiers in 1809, and later extended the land
grant plan to other beneficiaries, lowering the selling price to a
level that almost anyone could afford. Petion's motivation was
to reward people for the travails of slavery. A legacy of this wellintentioned
program has been to create a region of familyowned
farms, which have become increasingly unproductive
through subdivision according to inheritance laws.
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