AHC: Better Haitian Revolution?

Is there any way to change the Haitian Revolution so that things end up better for Haiti than they did in the Haiti-screw known as OTL? And if so, what's the best way to do it?
 
The best chance to change things for the better is probably in the post-revolution, as is usual for revolutions. While Haiti admittedly faced very serious external difficulties throughout the 19th century, it also had fantastically incompetent and very infighting-prone leadership, which just compounded those problems beyond all recourse. Had it been better led, I suspect it could have become a moderately prosperous nation, perhaps even with a flawed (rather than utterly laughable) democracy by the end of the century. It couldn't reach the financial heights it did before the revolution, but then that was built on slavery and perhaps wasn't desirable.

In particular, one point of departure I was struck with while reading about the revolution and the early 19th century in Haiti was how several of the early governments attempted to force freed slaves back onto plantations as if the revolution had never happened, in an attempt to gain hard currency through exporting the same agricultural products that Haiti had relied on before the revolution. The former slaves, meanwhile, wanted to carve up the plantations to establish small, individual farms, similar to Jefferson's vision of a nation of agricultural yeomen to the north, and were willing to fight to keep from going back onto plantations. This policy was therefore doomed, and attempts to enforce it only led to the country spilling blood and treasure fruitlessly on civil war rather than economically developing or preparing to defend itself against its many external enemies. If Haiti's leadership had decided to work with this social current instead of fruitlessly struggling against it, then the country could have been much strengthened early on. Perhaps this could have allowed them to resist the French reparations demands that caused so much trouble later.
 

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You need both political stability in the revolution and smooth transitions of power. Following this, Haiti needs international allies; the poor country was diplomatically isolated for decades.

The easiest way to do that wluld be to have Gran Colombia survive, as the two countries were allied until GC's dissolution.

As well, there needs to be a way to butterfly away the French indemnity that really crippled the country. How to do that, I have no idea unfortunately.
 
You need both political stability in the revolution and smooth transitions of power. Following this, Haiti needs international allies; the poor country was diplomatically isolated for decades.

The easiest way to do that wluld be to have Gran Colombia survive, as the two countries were allied until GC's dissolution.

As well, there needs to be a way to butterfly away the French indemnity that really crippled the country. How to do that, I have no idea unfortunately.

The indemnity was mostly Charles X's doing. Just get him kicked out of government. No one really liked him, even in France. You also need to get the "French" elites out of the way, because they were the primary ones pushing for state-imposed serfdom and blocking initiatives to help the poor.
 
The indemnity was mostly Charles X's doing. Just get him kicked out of government. No one really liked him, even in France.

Either that or have Boyer tell him to pound sand. The French fleet might have bombarded Port-au-Prince or mounted a punitive expedition, but there was no stomach for a full-scale invasion. The debt issue would then have lingered and would probably have been forgiven in 1848 or later.
 
If Haiti's leadership had decided to work with this social current instead of fruitlessly struggling against it, then the country could have been much strengthened early on. Perhaps this could have allowed them to resist the French reparations demands that caused so much trouble later.

Would this have generated enough income for the country? An economy based on subsistence farming usually is very poor. I think Haiti realistically needed some form of plantation economy to continue.
 
I asked this years ago, but supposing Napoleon decides to work with Toussaint Louverture rather than trying to reintroduce slavery to Haiti?

Then the end of the Haitian Revolution (1804) would be butterflied away, and Haiti would probably remain under French sovereignty. Not to mention that Louverture was also very much aligned with the interests of the mulatto elite and not so much with the interests of the peasants. I think he was actually the first to try and bring back plantations after the rebellion, actually. Louverture always struck me as in the same vein as Christophe and Haiti's other founding fathers, which is to say that he was more concerned with maintaining his own power (in his case, as an autonomous part of France) than developing Haiti.
 
I asked this years ago, but supposing Napoleon decides to work with Toussaint Louverture rather than trying to reintroduce slavery to Haiti?

I think that may be the best bet. Instead of having Haiti pick up the pieces on its own and try to create a new society from scratch, have it gradually evolve into one under the protection of France and gain independence later on, like the British islands did.
 
Would this have generated enough income for the country? An economy based on subsistence farming usually is very poor. I think Haiti realistically needed some form of plantation economy to continue.

Well, coffee was usually grown like that anyways, but the point was that they ended up with a subsistence economy anyways, only they had to fight a couple of what were essentially small civil wars to get there. They weren't going to be able to establish "some form of plantation economy," and they needed to recognize and work with that rather than try to fight it.
 
I think that may be the best bet. Instead of having Haiti pick up the pieces on its own and try to create a new society from scratch, have it gradually evolve into one under the protection of France and gain independence later on, like the British islands did.

The French Caribbean territories (Guadeloupe and Martinique) aren't really a good model for equitable development. Even after the formal abolition of slavery, black people in both colonies worked on plantations under wage slavery, and you still had social stratification between whites, mulattos, and blacks. It's marginally better than Haiti OTL, but I think it's a low bar to settle for.

Well, coffee was usually grown like that anyways, but the point was that they ended up with a subsistence economy anyways, only they had to fight a couple of what were essentially small civil wars to get there. They weren't going to be able to establish "some form of plantation economy," and they needed to recognize and work with that rather than try to fight it.

They probably could have established a plantation economy based on sharecropping if the elites weren't as exploitative. Part of the reason the current for a subsistence economy developed was because many of the guys in charge were basically reimposing slavery through other forms, such as the corvée; so Haitians resisted that outright and said screw it to plantations. If you could get a sharecropping system with good pay for the farmers and room to grow some of their own crops, Haiti could do pretty well.
 
The French Caribbean territories (Guadeloupe and Martinique) aren't really a good model for equitable development. Even after the formal abolition of slavery, black people in both colonies worked on plantations under wage slavery, and you still had social stratification between whites, mulattos, and blacks. It's marginally better than Haiti OTL, but I think it's a low bar to settle for.

To be sure, they are far from ideal. But I think it is very challenging to remake a society in which 90% of the population has been treated as chattel and denied any kind of education beyond learning how to harvest cash crops. The other Caribbean islands benefitted from continued investment by their ruling countries, but Haiti had to build roads, schools, hospitals and so forth on its own. (Granted, it might have fared a lot better without having to pay the reparations to France.)
 
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The French Caribbean territories (Guadeloupe and Martinique) aren't really a good model for equitable development. Even after the formal abolition of slavery, black people in both colonies worked on plantations under wage slavery, and you still had social stratification between whites, mulattos, and blacks. It's marginally better than Haiti OTL, but I think it's a low bar to settle for.

Well to be fair, I just offered a PoD, not the entire subsequent AH of Haiti. Could it be that wage slavery would be helpful as a transitory phase from actual slavery, paving the way for a more successful economic transition or social revolution down the road?
 
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