Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies
output. The leadership of the new nation faced the daunting
task of reviving economic activity without relying on slavery.
After the 1806 assassination of Haiti's first national leader, Jean-
Jacques Dessalines, Haiti operated under a dual economy, with
forced labor on large plantations in the north and small-scale
farming in partitioned land in the south. The 1820 unification
of the nation entailed the abandonment of plantation agriculture
and the establishment of a peasant-based agricultural
economy. Although policies of land redistribution and limited
social and economic reform improved the lives of the former
slaves, the policies also produced a severe and ultimately irreversible
decline in agricultural production.
Haiti's slave-based plantation economy, which had made the
island France's most lucrative overseas possession, with thousands
of profitable large plantations producing massive
amounts of sugar, coffee, and cotton, was badly shattered by
the dismantling of the large estates. The products produced on
these estates accounted for almost 65 percent of French commercial
interests abroad and about 40 percent of foreign trade.
They also accounted for 60 percent of the world's coffee and 40
percent of the sugar imported by Britain and France. The
sharp decline in economic productivity was largely caused by
the fact that small landholders lacked the motivation to produce
export crops instead of subsistence crops. Although coffee
dominated agriculture in the south because of its relative
ease of cultivation, the level of production was too low to generate
worthwhile quantities of exports. Sugar production, which
was primarily in the north, also dropped off, and when sugar
was no longer exported in substantial quantities, the cultivation
of cane ceased and sugar mills were closed.
Despite the lowered productivity, this system lasted until
plantation agriculture was replaced by a peasant-based agriculture
economy. The shift took place after the rival regimes of
Henry Christophe's kingdom north of the Artibonite River and
Alexandre Petion's republic in the south were unified in 1820
(see Early Years of Independence, 1804-43, ch. 6). Land redistribution
policies and limited social and economic reform
improved the lot of the peasantry, but these same policies also
resulted in a severe and irreversible decline in agricultural production.
In 1825 Haiti's economy was crippled when its leaders
agreed to pay France a staggering indemnity of 150 million
francs in exchange for recognition. United States recognition
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