We can think all the bad things we want about the former French socialist president François Hollande. The voters, in any case, were so dissatisfied that he did not dare ask them for a second mandate. But I always felt that, despite his faults, he was a fundamentally good man. And when he was informed of the existence of a wrong, his first impulse was to want to right it.
This is probably what happened during his May 2015 visit to Guadeloupe. Participating in the inauguration of a place of memory on the slave trade and slavery, the ACTe Memorial, he recalled that in 1804, Haiti was the first black republic to have militarily defeated the reestablishment of slavery decided by Napoleon II years earlier.
Addressing the then Haitian president, Michel Martelly, present, Hollande recalled what no one in his island is unaware of: “Have we sufficiently emphasized that, when the abolition [de l’esclavage] was acquired, the question of compensation took on particularly surprising proportions and, above all, an orientation? This compensation was loudly demanded, not by the former slaves but by the former masters. […]. This happened under the monarchy of Charles »
The sum was colossal. The sale of Louisiana to the United States brought in 80 million. After a renegotiation, Haiti paid 90 million gold francs. But this is only capital. The interests were gargantuan, because Haiti had to go into debt to… French banks, which experienced a major boom thanks to this predation. This debt and the interest on the debt are known in Haiti as “double debt” and have undoubtedly plunged the country into abject poverty.
Today, criminal gangs control 80% of Port-au-Prince and part of the hinterland. Without scruple, they set fire, rape, mutilate and burn alive a desperate population. The UN will send a paltry force of 1,000 Kenyan police officers. The country has never completely recovered from the earthquake of 2001 and, politically, from the putsch of 2021. Corruption is a national sport and bad governance seems ineradicable. But when we look, beyond these misfortunes, for a structural source of Haiti’s inability to rise at least to the level of development of its neighbors, we come across the appalling economic strangulation imposed by France for more than of a century.
Yes, most colonies were emptied of their wealth by the metropolises. Yes, at the time of the abolition of slavery, the United Kingdom and Upper Canada provided compensation for losses incurred by slavers or a grandfather clause for slaves then held. (Not in Quebec, a precursor, or, later, in the United States). But these compensations were assumed by the state, not by the slaves and their descendants. Yes, invaders, defeated, had to pay reparations. France after the European tour of the Napoleonic armies. Germany, twice.
None of these scenarios apply to Haiti. Slaves who obtained their own liberation and independence had to bleed themselves for 125 years to repay… their tormentors. For what ? Under penalty of being invaded in 1825 by a vengeful French fleet. In a word: extortion.
It was not until 1952 that this debt was settled. THE New York Times carried out last year the first complete calculation of the wealth thus extorted from Haitians. The updated sum is equivalent to 750 million Canadian dollars. If it had been invested year after year in schools, roads, hospitals, public administration, what would have been the cumulative impact? Nearly 30 billion, the newspaper calculates, “even taking into account endemic corruption and incompetence”. Which would have brought Haiti to the same level of development as the countries of the region, if not higher.
Because at the moment when, with a gun to its head, the country gave in to the threat, it was the richest in the region. When the United States decided to occupy Haiti in 1915, its banks took over the predation.
François Hollande, therefore. May 2015. In his solemn speech, speaking of the double debt, he announces: “some have called this requirement “the price of independence”; well, when I come to Haiti, I will in turn pay off the debt that we owe.”
President Martelly jumped from his seat and applauded. Canadian-Haitian Michaëlle Jean, then secretary general of La Francophonie, was among the many guests: “People were crying. The African heads of state present shed tears. It was huge.” A miracle, after all this time.
A fleeting miracle. In a few hours, perhaps the time to explain to Hollande the financial extent of the promise he had just made, his advisors rectified the situation. The president obviously only wanted to talk about the “moral debt”. There would be no out-of-pocket costs. The disappointment matched the hope. The moral debt, wrote the main Haitian daily, The Nouvelliste, it is slavery. It is “irreparable”. The other debt persists.
If I were on the Security Council, I would say that the Haitian mess is a French mess. I would ensure that the UN delegates for 125 years to the ex-slavers and extortionists of France full responsibility for the recovery of Haiti, to the tune of, say, 30 billion.
“France is capable of looking at its history,” Hollande also said in this cursed speech, “because France is a great country that is afraid of nothing and especially not of itself. » This is not proven.
Jean-François Lisée led the Parti Québécois from 2016 to 2018. He has just published Through the mouth of my pencils, published by Somme Tout/Le Devoir. [email protected]