(second of two articles)

World History: Perspective on the Past (Houghton Mifflin Co.) and World History: Connections to Today (Prentis Hall) don’t treat Haiti’s history from 1804 to 1860. That was before U.S. capitalism had matured enough to aggressively expand into the Caribbean, as it did a few decades later.

In 1825, France forced Haiti to begin paying reparations amounting to 90 million gold francs (worth about $3.3 billion in today’s currency) for freeing the slaves. Those are the reparations that Haiti is demanding France restitute today.

Although the U.S. did not recognize Haiti until 1862, Haiti still did surprisingly substantial trade with both France and the U.S.

With the end of the U.S. Civil War in 1865, the Caribbean soon became a cockpit of imperialist interventions and maneuvering. The two high school textbooks under examination mention Haiti from time to time as part of a laundry list of countries where the U.S. intervened.

But the U.S. was not the only imperialist power splashing around the Caribbean. In the years leading up to the first U.S. military occupation of Haiti in 1915, warships of Spain, France, Germany, and the U.S. invaded Haitian territorial waters more than 20 times. Even Sweden and Norway got into the act.

Germany, an imperialist latecomer, aggressively pursued its interests in Haiti because it was restricted in other colonized parts of the world. Columnist Fleurimond Kerns, in a recent article in Haïti Progrès (Vol. 21, No. 10, 5/21/2003), described one typical incident. “Let us recall the case of two German businessmen established in Haiti in Miragône and Cap-Haïtien,” he wrote. “After going bankrupt during the period of instability under the governments of Fabre Geffrard [1859-1867] and Sylvain Salnave [1867-1869], these two Germans asked Berlin to demand immediate payment from the government of Nissage Saget [1870-1874] of an indemnity of US $15,000. The Haitian government had to give in faced with the inequality of forces posed by two German warships, the Vineta and the Gazella, under the command of Captain Batsch. When the Germans left, they returned Haiti’s captured warships in a sorry state. For example, the national bicolor was smeared with excrement. The date was June 11, 1872.”

While historians and some textbooks do list imperialist interventions in Haiti and the larger Caribbean, finding descriptions of resistance is much harder. In her 294-page book Haiti and the United States, Brenda Gayle Plummer has a paragraph on what happened in Port-au-Prince on July 6, 1861. The Spanish navy was threatening to bombard the city if Haiti did not offer a 21-gun salute and pay a big indemnity. The people of Port-au-Prince were so upset when their government capitulated that they came out into the streets. The government had to declare martial law to control the situation (p. 41).

The case of Haitian Admiral Hamilton Killick is another outstanding example of Haitian resistance. At the start of the last century, both the U.S. and Germany deployed Caribbean naval squadrons. The United States was planning to build the Panama Canal to tie its Pacific coast to the Eastern seaboard and further penetrate into Latin America. Germany wanted to project its military power to reinforce its commercial and financial push into Haiti.

In 1902, Germany was meddling in a Haitian power struggle, backing one leader while Admiral Killick backed another. Kerns describes what happened on Sep. 6 of that year. “There was a major political struggle going on at the time between Nord Alexis and Anténor Firmin over taking power in Port-au-Prince, after the precipitous departure of President Tirésis Simon Sam [1896-1902],” Kerns wrote. “Admiral Killick, who commanded the patrol ship La Crête-à-Pierrot, supported Firmin and consequently had confiscated a German ship transporting arms and munitions to the provisional Haitian government of Alexis... [which] ordered another German warship, the Panther, to seize the Crête-à-Pierrot. But it didn’t realize the determination and courage of Admiral Killick. At Gonaïves, the Germans had the surprise of their life. When the German ship appeared off the roadstead of the city, Admiral Killick, who was then ashore, hurried on board and ordered his whole crew to abandon the ship. The Germans did not understand this maneuver. Once the [Haitian] sailors were out of danger, Admiral Killick together with Dr. Coles, who also did not want to leave the vessel, wrapped himself in the Haitian flag, like Captain Laporte in 1803, and blew the Crête-à-Pierrot up by firing at the munitions. The German sailors did not even dream of an act so heroic.”

Through his self-detonation, Killick not only denied the Germans possession of a Haitian ship and the German munitions it had seized, he also came close to blowing up the Panther, according to one German crewman who wrote a postcard home (Postal History: Germany -- Haiti -- United States at http://home.earthlink.net/~rlcw).

German influence in Haiti waned after the U.S. Marines invaded Port-au-Prince on Jul. 28, 1915 and began their 19-year occupation of Haiti. At that time, the U.S. had not officially entered World War One, but it wanted to stop any attempt by Germany to set up a base in Haiti. It also wanted to protect the Panama Canal, which had opened for business the year before. The U.S. occupation also ended the close financial and commercial ties between Haiti and France, though not the cultural ones. (France was a U.S. ally at the time, but also an imperialist competitor in the Caribbean.)

The U.S. occupation met with four years of fierce armed resistance from guerillas known as cacos, who were led by Charlemagne Péralte and, later, Benoît Batraville. The occupation of Haiti caused great controversy in the U.S., and deep resentment in Haiti.

But the only mention that Perspective and Connections make of the U.S. Occupation is to say how President Franklin D. Roosevelt was true to his word and to his “Good Neighbor Policy” when he withdrew the U.S. Marines in 1934.

U.S. textbooks don’t mention that Roosevelt’s needed to wind down Washington’s expensive military interventions since the United States was in the midst of the Great Depression. They also don’t mention that Haiti had an anti-occupation nationwide strike and a series of demonstrations in 1929, one of which the Marines put down with deadly force (Nicols, From Dessalines to Duvalier, p 151). Over the next five years, the U.S. pull-out was hastened by growing agitation, outcry and popular bitterness.

These two textbooks, Perspective and Connections, ignore and obscure the important role that the Haitian people played in Haiti’s history, and the important role Haiti played in the hemisphere’s history. They camouflage the imperialist interests behind U.S. and European military interventions by giving only brief and simplistic descriptions of major events. Even though the word “imperialism” does appear in them, the textbooks give U.S. students no real understanding of the racism, violence, and greed that the U.S. used to repress and exploit the Haitian people for almost two decades. 

By Greg Dunkel