Friends Betray Friends & Enemies Collaborate

“If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development”.

                     - Aristotle

History offers us the possibility to understand our present; it can also act as a brake on the imagination: “However painful this might be for a historian to write, Haitians would be better served forgetting their past and looking at their current problems afresh”[1]. 

Given the record of failed reforms, this is understandable advice. Economist Vilfredo Pareto puts the problem succinctly: “Assume a collectivity made up of a wolf and a sheep. The happiness of the wolf consists in eating the sheep, that of the sheep is not being eaten. How is the collectivity to be made happy?”

For those who dream of a better Haiti, this is not a useful assumption. To move beyond this impasse, I’m reminded of Hegel’s remarks about the inter-dependencies of master and slave. 

Yes, there are friends and enemies. But when friends betray friends and enemies collaborate, a space opens up for the world to be the kind of place where unlikely things like a free and prosperous Haiti remains possible.

Political instability, random violence and rampant desperation will be countered the same way the colonizer was defeated, through unexpected coalitions. 

So the historian should prescribe more rather than less history!

[1] Philippe Girrard, Haiti : The Tumultuous History – From Pearl of the Caribbean to Broken Nation, 15.

How Did It Get Here?

The worse way to tell a story is to start at the beginning and then skip to the end. Any child will tell you that "it's not fair" and the middle parts matter. So it is with Haiti. There is more than independence glory and the post-earthquake quagmire. The slide from hope trope may be compelling in its simplicity, but it is not Haiti's story.


It also grates against the sense that something great happened in this place, something that hasn’t been fully appreciated, assimilated, or even realized. But it cannot be otherwise, unless we start making the connections between things, people and events.


Here is a game: When you come across a history of the American or French revolutions, go to the index and look for Haiti or Saint Domingue.  It is shocking how many attempt the story without reference to the place that paid the bills, a place richer than all 13 American colonies combined.


It takes multi-layered understanding to gain proper perspective on the many deficits on display (financial, governmental, environmental, social and humanitarian) against the background of poverty, illiteracy, environmental devastation, political violence, and drug trafficking.


If you want to do something about it, you need to know what is the 'it' you want to do something about.


A detail: much is made of France forcing the newly formed Haiti to indemnify French former property owners. It is not often remarked that it was the Haitian President Alexandre Petion (veteran of the revolutionary wars) who offered to pay France, and his successor President Boyer who accepted to borrow the money from French banks.


Not sure exactly why yet, but this does seem like an important thing to know.

What Is this Place?

No one talks about Haiti unless talking about Haiti.  Think about it, that’s odd. It is as though Haiti were unrelated to anything else. Imagine talking about the US only when talking about the US; that would be odd. What kind of place would that make America? And what kind of place does that make Haiti?!


At one point, Haiti seemed to touch everyone. As the French colony Saint-Domingue, it supplied enough of Europe’s consumption of sugar, coffee, cacao and indigo dyestuff to sustain many European fortunes. In contrast, on a cost/benefit basis, Voltaire considered Canada as “a few acres of snow” not worth the fight.


This was a widely shared view so, as part of the Treaty of Paris (1763) to end the Seven Years War, France gave up most of its North American possessions to the English but kept its richer sugar islands.


So Haiti mattered because it made individuals, cities and empires rich.


It also mattered because it presented a special problem. The Enlightenment ideas that fuelled the American and French revolutions made much of freedom as a basic human right. Yet, some had the leisure to write some things precisely and directly because of the wealth extracted from slave labour.


So why does no one talk about Haiti except when taking about Haiti? Because it makes too few people rich, no longer weighs on the conscience, both, something else?


What do you think? As a Builder of Haiti you should have an informed opinion on this.