What if the world recognized Haiti after it's independence?

I was bored when I wrote this but I saw a Vox video about Haiti and the DR which stated that Haiti faces racial segregation and abuse from it's only neighbor, the DR, and even in it's earlier years European countries and the US were hostile or uninterested in Haiti as the first black republic. I am now interested in seeing what would happen if Haiti's independence was greeted kindly with the European superpowers.

Here it goes:

Right after independence, Haiti was greeted by the international community with support. Immediately, countries started to engage in trade and may help the new country to recover after it's revolution. France doesn't latter decide to demand Haiti to pay war debts so their economy doesn't completely destabilized. When I mean "economy doesn't completely destabilized" I mean their economy doesn't get worse than it already is since their main produce, agriculture, was almost destroyed by the revolution and the resources deprived by France's aggressive use of the colonies' resources. Haiti then has to use different ways of making a sustainable economy such as reforesting their land by planting trees so they can get fertile soil to grow crops and will have to base their economy on mining as Haiti contains valuable minerals such as bauxite, copper, calcium carbonate, gold, silver, and marble. After their land becomes fertile, they start to plant crops and develop practices such as crop rotations and using plants to replenish nutrients in their soil. During the World Wars, Haiti in our timeline was under US occupation but in this timeline, Haiti remains neutral and is a dictatorship. In the Cold War, they side with the US due to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Fast-forward to the 21st century, Haiti's economy and standard of living is similar to that of the DR(Dominican Republic) since their economic recovery after independence and better foreign relations allowed then to have a better economy and similar to that of the DR than the Haiti in our timeline.

Note: This is just a guess on what would happen and is primarily based on guesses and some quick historical data.
 
One of the biggest problems is that Haiti after independence is still a complete and utter disaster. http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/haiti/history/earlyhaiti/postrev.htm
To quote my link "With the dawn of 1804, Haiti's highest hour has passed."

A point of departure that happens during independence is probably too late to help Haiti economically as they were economically and politically a mess. Former slaves wanted land and to be left alone while the wealthy ruling class wanted to force them back onto plantations so that the utterly broke country could start making money again. I think that immediate recognition does little to nothing to improve the conditions in Haiti but it might very well provide the small but powerful ruling class with enough wealth and support to solidify their hold over the country and partially re-establish the plantation system. An internationally recognized Haiti may very well end up with an almost feudal oligarchical system with wealthy planters ruling sharecropping former slaves
 
Following up on Escape Zeppelin I now think that maybe they will become communist in the mid 20th century due to the poor suffering from the rich which was a similar experience of the Russians under the Tzardom and that the Haitians would rebel to get paid fairly.
 

samcster94

Banned
One of the biggest problems is that Haiti after independence is still a complete and utter disaster. http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/haiti/history/earlyhaiti/postrev.htm
To quote my link "With the dawn of 1804, Haiti's highest hour has passed."

A point of departure that happens during independence is probably too late to help Haiti economically as they were economically and politically a mess. Former slaves wanted land and to be left alone while the wealthy ruling class wanted to force them back onto plantations so that the utterly broke country could start making money again. I think that immediate recognition does little to nothing to improve the conditions in Haiti but it might very well provide the small but powerful ruling class with enough wealth and support to solidify their hold over the country and partially re-establish the plantation system. An internationally recognized Haiti may very well end up with an almost feudal oligarchical system with wealthy planters ruling sharecropping former slaves
How would this be possible if their country had to made deals with countries who believed slavery was a justified good under God's hand?
 

Lusitania

Donor
I would counter that if the rulers / plantation workers had done the following:
1) divide up plantation land plus give former slaves additional lands. So now each feels like empowering by being land owner.
2) tax each farmer a specific amount of sugar cane with ability to sell remainder on the market for $ to buy imported items
3) Enforce the taxation by confiscating land or sending farmer and family to debtor prison.

If the system is run decently there would be chance of an upper and merchant society growing and developing in the country. Also if the taxation and debtor system is also implemented fairly with people able to get out of prison do they no longer “slaves” then the country could of had a chance of being more developed and stable. But that is a big IF
 
One of the biggest problems is that Haiti after independence is still a complete and utter disaster. http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/haiti/history/earlyhaiti/postrev.htm
To quote my link "With the dawn of 1804, Haiti's highest hour has passed."

A point of departure that happens during independence is probably too late to help Haiti economically as they were economically and politically a mess.

I disagree with this. You can't claim that Haiti's entire economic destiny was shaped by (or before) 1804 because historically Haiti's economic performance and political stability has been highly variable. Late 19th century Haiti shows that the country was capable of political stability and high economic performance, while mid-century Haiti shows it was capable of complete decentralization and economic decline. The point is there's nothing set in stone about it at 1804.

Also it's not true that the entire wealthy ruling class wanted to force slaves back onto plantations. First of all, you can't speak of the wealthy and the ruling class as the same in Haitian history, because there were several periods where that was not the case. But also there were a lot of the wealthy who had no interest in continuing the plantation system and focused instead on external shipping or light industrialization.

Following up on Escape Zeppelin I now think that maybe they will become communist in the mid 20th century due to the poor suffering from the rich which was a similar experience of the Russians under the Tzardom and that the Haitians would rebel to get paid fairly.

Not happening IMO. There were and are already a bunch of Haitian communists. My uncle was killed trying to start a communist revolution against Papa Doc. But none of the left-wing movements succeeded because the U.S. was both willing and able to prop up anti-leftist dictators.

Haiti then has to use different ways of making a sustainable economy such as reforesting their land by planting trees so they can get fertile soil to grow crops and will have to base their economy on mining as Haiti contains valuable minerals such as bauxite, copper, calcium carbonate, gold, silver, and marble. After their land becomes fertile, they start to plant crops and develop practices such as crop rotations and using plants to replenish nutrients in their soil.

First of all, Haiti doesn't have to reforest the land because we already have 42% forest cover which IIRC is slightly higher than that of the USA. The idea that Haiti is undergoing desertification is quite literally a made-up myth that has been debunked several times. I also don't think soil fertility is really an issue in most places. We also don't have enough minerals for a sustained mining economy, we'd run out in 50 years max IMO. Historically Haiti's peak economic growth occurred when the leadership promoted urbanization and light industrialization. I think the wealthiest Haiti you can get is one that continues that policy, taking advantage of the fact that the country sits on an approach to the Panama Canal to become a manufacturing hub like Singapore OTL.
 
Last edited:
A good PoD would be Bonaparte accepting Toussaint Louverture’s constitution and de facto dictatorship on the island. This butterflies away the destructions of Leclerc’s invasion. After a failed British landing, all lines of communication are broken with Europe. Toussaint understands his best chance is to ditch Napoléon and cut a deal with the Allies. If only to spite the French, the British accept the idea of independant Haiti in 1815, without the blood money paid to France. TTL Haiti has a far better start and Toussaint Louverture would be an iron fist ruler. However he was born in 1743 and I do not know how stable can Haiti be after his death.
 
One of the biggest problems is that Haiti after independence is still a complete and utter disaster. http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/haiti/history/earlyhaiti/postrev.htm
To quote my link "With the dawn of 1804, Haiti's highest hour has passed."

A point of departure that happens during independence is probably too late to help Haiti economically as they were economically and politically a mess.

I disagree with this statement, especially after listening to the excellent series on the Haitian revolution by Mike Duncan. The first thing to understand is that during the course of the revolution there was a number of different competing visions for Haiti's future. Any one of them could have changed things.

However IMO the biggest thing that screwed Haiti was when Jean-Pierre Boyer agreed to the french terms that Haiti pay them 90 million francs in exchange for their recogonition. If somehow you can get france to recogonize Haiti without demanding the 90 million francs that would change things quite a lot.
 
Top