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Haiti is an easy place to ignore, even when a civil war is underway there. Even so, it holds an important role in American history. If it weren't for Haiti, there never would have been a Louisiana Purchase, which brought a big chunk of Colorado under the United States.
Columbus encountered the Caribbean island of Hispaniola in 1492, and French pirates set up shop there in the 17th century. In a 1697 treaty, the western third of the island was formally ceded to France as the colony of Saint-Domingue; the eastern part eventually became the Dominican Republic.
With slave labor (500,000 of its 556,000 residents in 1789 were slaves), Haiti was a cash cow for France, producing cotton, indigo, cocoa, coffee and sugar.
The French Revolution started in 1789. Thus inspired, the Haitian slaves rose in rebellion in 1791. Hoping to keep the profitable colony, revolutionary France formally abolished slavery in 1794.
However, Napoleon ended up in charge of France, and he began re-installing slavery in other French colonies. Haitians feared the same fate and raised an army.
To restore French control, Napoleon sent a big army under his brother-in-law, Gen. Charles Leclerc. The French were defeated; yellow fever was a major factor.
Meanwhile, France had re-acquired the Louisiana Territory from Spain. The territory's actual boundaries were rather vague, but the claim was for everything drained by the Mississippi on the west side of that river.
U.S. President Thomas Jefferson wasn't worried about Spain, but he saw France as a threat. Further, Americans in the West of that era -- Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio -- often shipped their produce down the Mississippi to New Orleans, a foreign city then.
Getting control of that port was vital to America's future, which explains why Jefferson sent negotiators to France to buy New Orleans. Napoleon had just lost an army in Haiti, and faced war with England. Unsure that he could hold Louisiana, he decided to get whatever price he could from the Americans.
Thus the Louisiana Purchase, whose bicentennial was celebrated last year. Without the successful revolution in Haiti, it wouldn't have happened.
The boundary out here wasn't settled until the Transcontinental Treaty of 1819 between the United States and Spain. All of Colorado north of the Arkansas River and east of the Continental Divide officially became U.S. Territory.
Jefferson wrote eloquently of the need for revolution to
protect the inalienable rights of all men, but he was also
a plantation owner who feared slave revolts. So he was no
friend to the Haitian rebels. He told a French envoy that
nothing would be easier than to furnish your army and
fleet with everything, and to reduce [Haitian leader]
Toissant to starvation.
Thanks to the persisting influence of slaveowners in American government, the U.S. did not recognize Haiti as an independent country until 1862.
Haiti's history since then does not make for pleasant reading: civil wars, assassinations, revolutions, military coups, dictatorships.
Along the way, there's also an eerie parallel to current events not involving Haiti. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson never announced that Haiti was supporting terrorists or developing weapons of mass destruction, but he did see that Haitians were being grossly mistreated by their own government, and feared that the little country might come under the domination of a European power.
So in 1915, he sent our Marines to run the country, and
they stayed until 1934. To quote from an encyclopedia,
Many Haitians believed that the Marines had really come
to protect U.S. investments.
To quote from Marine Gen.
Smedley Butler, I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent
place for the National City [Bank] boys to collect revenue
in
while serving as a high-class muscle man for Wall
Street.
The Marines built roads, hospitals and schools. They supervised an election in 1918 which gave Haiti a new constitution (written, at least in part, by Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was then assistant secretary of the Navy).
But the Marines were attacked often by guerrillas before they withdrew in 1934. Despite those U.S. effort to improve Haiti's infrastructure and build a democratic government, Haiti has an impoverished, war-torn basket case of a country. Let us hope that Iraq doesn't suffer a similar fate.
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