France should repay billions of dollars to Haiti to cover a debt formerly enslaved people were forced to pay in return for recognising the island’s independence, according to a coalition of civil society groups that is launching a new push for reparations.
The Caribbean island state became the first in the region to win its independence in 1804 after a revolt by enslaved people. But in a move that many Haitians blame for two centuries of turmoil, France later imposed harsh reparations for lost income and that debt was only fully repaid in 1947.
The debt was incurred because Haiti was a French slave plantation and the Haitians freed themselves in revolt.
The debt was basically for the loss of human property i.e. slaves and the profits derrived from their slave labor.
First the French enslaved and brutalized them, and then crippled their country with debt because they had the nerve to free themselves.
So no, it’s not just another historical dispute not worth rectifying.
Conquering countries, then extracting wealth from the population – usually farmers – was pretty much what empires were in the business of doing. Haiti and France aren’t unique in that regard. And that goes way, way back. Estonia was controlled by the Russian Empire, but Estonia isn’t arguing for reparations today (though they would like Russia to stop trying to re-conquer countries today).
The world is very unlikely to go back and try to choose some fixed point in time and say “we lock all property rights at this point in time, and try to reassess today based on where they were at that point in time”. I’m all for aiming to avoid some of the problems of the past coming up again today, but that’s taken care of – France isn’t trying to create a new French Empire 2.0 as things were in 1820. I don’t think that trying to re-zero based on some point in time is likely a great idea.