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Dan Keniston's avatar

As a fellow economist interested in the history of Haiti, I think this is spot on. A few areas I would add are that, even if Haiti had a 2.15% rate of GDP growth during this period, the marginal capital would (likely) have a lower return that the average, thus we would not expect this money to have had the same return if it were retained by Haiti (all else equal). And even supposing these calculations were correct, according to the IMF Haiti's 2015 total capital stock was $61.11 billion, vs. $220.80 for the DR. So while I agree that the indemnity was certainly bad for Haiti (and morally repugnant for France) it can explain only a small part of Haiti's modern economic problems. Of course your advisors would probably not recommend believing IMF capital stock data...

However, I don't think it's clear that Haiti's turn to small farms under Petion was the foundation of its future economic problems (although it may have prevented the country from benefiting from the sugar boom). I would argue that the extremely large gap between Haitian elites and population (racial, cultural, linguistic, urban/rural, etc.) is the driving force, and was even before the revolution. Haiti's development resembles cases in which a small ethnic elite struggles for domination with the rest of the country-- Liberia, Rwanda, etc. Even when the majority group manages to get control (Duvalier, Dessalines) they are so focused on extracting resources from the wealthier minority group that investment suffers radically.

Finally, I thought it was interesting that the NYTimes carefully calculated conservative estimate was *exactly the same* (to the nearest billion dollars) as Aristide's calculation.

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RA's avatar

One quibble with this piece. It is reasonable to say that Haitian militarization prior to 1825 was because the leaders knew as soon as the revolution was over that France could attack at any time. Yes, the ultimatum may not have *caused* the over-militarization but it certainly validated it.

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