The “New York Times” estimates that the sums paid to France from 1825 to compensate slaveholders would have cost the country up to eight times its GDP in 2020.
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A series of articles from New York Times (in English) published on Friday May 20 brings to light the tragic history of Haiti’s independence and the astronomical debt that the country had to pay to France in the 19th century. After several months of archival analysis, the American daily estimated that the payments made from 1825 by the first black republic in history, to compensate former slave settlers, “have cost the economic development of Haiti between 21 and 115 billion dollars in losses over two centuries”.
This sum represents up to “eight times the country’s gross domestic product in 2020”recalls the New York Times. By declaring its independence on January 1, 1804, Haiti therefore found itself banned from the nations of a world then dominated by slave powers. The payments demanded by France have deprived the Haitian economy of resources vital to its growth as much as they have allowed its former metropolis to prosper.
The Eiffel Tower financed with Haitian money
the New York Times thus shows how, at the end of the 19th century, the CIC bank repatriated to France, via toxic loans supposed to help Port-au-Prince to purge its debt, the income of the young Haitian national bank. This capital has, for example, enabled the Parisian banking establishment to finance the construction of the Eiffel Tower.
Crédit Mutuel, parent company of CIC, reacted on Monday to the revelations of the New York Times. “Because it is important to shed light on all the components of the history of colonization, the mutual bank will finance independent academic work to shed light on this past”, the group announced in a press release.