AHC: Haiti is a functional country

[Circle of Willis]

So Haiti's been making the news again recently, for being even more of a shithole than it had previously been between...er, now and the 2010 Haitian earthquake, I guess. Suffice to say that the country's history looks like a comedy of errors mixed with the occasional horrific genocide/war crime spree, with virtually nothing ever going right for Haiti since even before they fully won independence from France in the early 19th century. And before independence, working conditions on Saint-Domingue's sugar plantations were hellish even by Caribbean slaver standards, I've read that as many as 50% of newly-imported slaves died within a year of arrival while the planters worked them to the bone out of the belief that since they'd probably die from the heat or disease soon, they might as well extract the most labor possible while they still can. Conditions were bad enough that apparently forming a blood pact with Satan to escape Saint-Domingue slavery seemed like a good idea by the late 18th century, the damnation of their own descendants to unending failure & misery be, uh, damned.

And from there, welp. Over the last 200 years Haiti has tried just about every form of government known to man (and several anarchic periods where there was no functioning government to speak of, like the period immediately preceding the US occupation of 1915-34) and literally none of these, to my knowledge, have succeeded in bringing any meaningful level of stability & prosperity to that blighted western half of Hispaniola. Even on the occasion where they're free of a comically corrupt and/or evil tyrant for a change, a hurricane/earthquake/some other natural disaster usually comes along to ruin the party before too long.

So yeah, that's the challenge then. With a POD no earlier than 1791, how can you bring about a Haiti that is 1) actually independent and 2) not a hellhole, with living standards comparable to at least the neighboring Dominican Republic (itself an incredible contrast to the utter trainwreck that is Haiti IRL)?

 

[Skallagrim]

as many as 50% of newly-imported slaves died within a year of arrival while the planters worked them to the bone out of the belief that since they'd probably die from the heat or disease soon, they might as well extract the most labor possible while they still can.

This is the core problem. They kept importing people from Africa, who in turn had been snatched from the interior by the coastal slave-traders. Total inland primitives, ripped from their world and dropped into... basically hell. And never any investment in them; no attempts to turn them into good Christians. They were just bodies to be worked to death.

And then they revolt, and it's a brutal carnage of revenge, and then... they're left there. How would one expect them to build a society? Various other post-slavery countries did far better, because at least some attempt had been made to turn the slaves into "good little Christians" of some sort. @Lord Sovereign asked this elsewhere, and I hadn't gotten around to answering yet, so I might as well do it here, and say yes: the difference with the Dominican Republic is that that's essentially a Hispanic state, where the former slaves were already made (and remain as) part of that Hispanic culture. It has problems, but it functions.

Haiti is the African interior, nakedly dropped into the Caribbean, with no guidance what-so-ever. It literally could not go well.

The only way to make Haiti work with a post-1791 POD is to have an external force assume control, retain control, and carry out a "civilising mission". For practical purposes, it doesn't matter what civilisation. You need to bring some form of encompassing structure, and root it in society so firmly that the people will follow the basic precepts demanded by that structure.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

I’m going to sound like a pompous dickhead here, but here it goes:

At the end of the Seven Years War, France loses a little harder than it did originally, and Haiti falls under the control of the British Crown.

Job done.

 

[49ersfootball]

So Haiti's been making the news again recently, for being even more of a shithole than it had previously been between...er, now and the 2010 Haitian earthquake, I guess. Suffice to say that the country's history looks like a comedy of errors mixed with the occasional horrific genocide/war crime spree, with virtually nothing ever going right for Haiti since even before they fully won independence from France in the early 19th century. And before independence, working conditions on Saint-Domingue's sugar plantations were hellish even by Caribbean slaver standards, I've read that as many as 50% of newly-imported slaves died within a year of arrival while the planters worked them to the bone out of the belief that since they'd probably die from the heat or disease soon, they might as well extract the most labor possible while they still can. Conditions were bad enough that apparently forming a blood pact with Satan to escape Saint-Domingue slavery seemed like a good idea by the late 18th century, the damnation of their own descendants to unending failure & misery be, uh, damned.

And from there, welp. Over the last 200 years Haiti has tried just about every form of government known to man (and several anarchic periods where there was no functioning government to speak of, like the period immediately preceding the US occupation of 1915-34) and literally none of these, to my knowledge, have succeeded in bringing any meaningful level of stability & prosperity to that blighted western half of Hispaniola. Even on the occasion where they're free of a comically corrupt and/or evil tyrant for a change, a hurricane/earthquake/some other natural disaster usually comes along to ruin the party before too long.

So yeah, that's the challenge then. With a POD no earlier than 1791, how can you bring about a Haiti that is 1) actually independent and 2) not a hellhole, with living standards comparable to at least the neighboring Dominican Republic (itself an incredible contrast to the utter trainwreck that is Haiti IRL)?

Wouldn't this butterfly the Duvaliers ?

 

[Circle of Willis]

This is the core problem. They kept importing people from Africa, who in turn had been snatched from the interior by the coastal slave-traders. Total inland primitives, ripped from their world and dropped into... basically hell. And never any investment in them; no attempts to turn them into good Christians. They were just bodies to be worked to death.

And then they revolt, and it's a brutal carnage of revenge, and then... they're left there. How would one expect them to build a society? Various other post-slavery countries did far better, because at least some attempt had been made to turn the slaves into "good little Christians" of some sort. @Lord Sovereign asked this elsewhere, and I hadn't gotten around to answering yet, so I might as well do it here, and say yes: the difference with the Dominican Republic is that that's essentially a Hispanic state, where the former slaves were already made (and remain as) part of that Hispanic culture. It has problems, but it functions.

Haiti is the African interior, nakedly dropped into the Caribbean, with no guidance what-so-ever. It literally could not go well.

The only way to make Haiti work with a post-1791 POD is to have an external force assume control, retain control, and carry out a "civilising mission". For practical purposes, it doesn't matter what civilisation. You need to bring some form of encompassing structure, and root it in society so firmly that the people will follow the basic precepts demanded by that structure.

Damn. Only example I can think of where a foreign power thought occupying Haiti in full would be worth it was the long US occupation, and that didn't quite benefit Haiti since the main objective was protecting American business interests in Haiti (ex. HASCO, the Haitian-American Sugar Company) and making money for Citibank. They did build some infrastructure (using Haitian forced labor...) and implement some educational reforms, but these were marred by atrocities both by the occupation troops (not helped by the deployment of soldiers from the Deep South, with the expected racial attitudes and equally obvious consequences thereof) and the Haitian Gendarmerie organized under their watch, and the Haitians pretty much let it all rot after the Americans left.

Perhaps an earlier US occupation in the mid-19th century, tied in with a successful acquisition of the Dominican Republic (whose western border they would now have to secure, since Haiti was - as usual - in a state of chaos around that time IIRC) under the Grant administration, might be the better bet. Give them a couple of decades under less brutally exploitative American tutelage as a territory and an infusion of black American emigrants fleeing the Redemption of the South by white supremacists, with the feds tolerating the use of Haiti as a release valve in line with (and massively expanding on) the tradition of 'Haitian emigration', and maybe there's hope for a less godawful Haiti to eventually regain independence like a sort of Philippines-in-the-Caribbean. (I know, obvious counterpoint: Liberia. Counter-counterpoint: Even Liberia is less shit than Haiti, General Butt Naked and friends included, with greater political stability on a consistent basis and they actually just had a close election that didn't end in civil war a year ago.)

Alternatively, I wonder if Toussaint L'Ouverture not dying and being the one to lead the charge for independence after his final betrayal by the French rather than the genocidal and politically incompetent Dessalines might help. He doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would go down that path, considering he actually worked to protect white prisoners from his own vengeful followers during the revolutionary war. If the Federalists can hang on in the US (whether through Adams winning the 1800 election or Alexander Hamilton being elected as Washington's VP earlier and then succeeding him, thereby avoiding the factional infighting with Adams - apparently Hamilton even helped them draft their first constitution) that could help too, since the Federalists were friendlier to Haiti than Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans (who eventually broke off relations entirely after the 1804 genocide).

A Haiti under L'Ouverture that's on friendlier terms with the US and Britain, and has avoided covering itself in diplomatic opprobrium from the genocide, seems like one that would be in position to avoid being completely diplomatically isolated and then financially crippled when the French come knocking for reparations. Even at my most optimistic I daresay it might not be heaven on earth, it might not even be as nice of a place to live as the Dominican Republic next door, but pretty much anything would be better than what early-19th century Haiti was like. And managing to prevent the 'horrors of Santo Domingo' from ever happening should also reduce paranoia among the American planters toward their own slaves, making the road to a peaceable abolition of slavery (and avoidance of the ACW) easier as well - a huge win all around if it can be achieved.

I’m going to sound like a pompous dickhead here, but here it goes:

At the end of the Seven Years War, France loses a little harder than it did originally, and Haiti falls under the control of the British Crown.

Job done.

Unfortunately that's a bit before the 1791 POD, and I don't think it leaves British Saint-Domingue ('Saint Dominic'? Would Protestant Britain keep that name?) with nearly enough time to improve enough that they can successfully offset the factors that caused the Haitian Revolution. After all, the 7YW ends not even 30 full years before the outbreak of the first uprisings.

Wouldn't this butterfly the Duvaliers ?

Certainly, and all the better for Haiti.