An­tho­ny Wil­son

With­out doubt, Prof Hi­lary Beck­les is one of the re­gion's most dis­tin­guished em­i­nent his­to­ri­ans and aca­d­e­mics. He earned a PhD from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hull at the age of 25 and was pro­mot­ed to a per­son­al pro­fes­sor­ship in 1993 at age thir­ty-sev­en, the youngest in the his­to­ry of UWI. His list of pub­lished man­u­scripts and books is very long and his rep­u­ta­tion for out­stand­ing re­search has been se­cured for decades now. Apart from his work on var­i­ous as­pects of the his­to­ry of Bar­ba­dos and the Caribbean, Prof Beck­les is al­so a not­ed re­searcher on the nexus be­tween West In­di­an crick­et and so­ci­ety. In 2007, he was knight­ed for con­tri­bu­tions to high­er ed­u­ca­tion, the arts and sport. He finds the time to run the Cave Hill cam­pus as its prin­ci­pal and pro vice chan­cel­lor. In terms of in­tel­lec­tu­al heavy­weights, they don't come much big­ger than Prof Sir Hi­lary.

So it is with some trep­i­da­tion that I en­ter a de­bate with some­one who is a world-recog­nised ex­pert in Caribbean his­to­ry. I would have been pre­pared to let it go had the fol­low­ing cir­cum­stances not led me to con­clude that Sir Hi­lary's es­say had "gone vi­ral." A for­mer lec­tur­er sent me the es­say on Mon­day but I didn't get around to read­ing it un­til Thurs­day. When I did, I found the piece to be provoca­tive, but pop­ulist, sim­plis­tic and a lit­tle pro­pa­gan­dis­tic. I wrote down my thoughts and sent them to the lec­tur­er about 15 min­utes lat­er. I would have been pre­pared to for­get the es­say, had I not re­ceived an e-mail from my el­dest broth­er, who has lived in France for more than 25 years, ask­ing whether I had seen the es­say and did I know of its es­sen­tial points. On Thurs­day, as well, UWI St Au­gus­tine's Pro­fes­sor of His­to­ry Brid­get Br­ere­ton was quot­ed in a Guardian news sto­ry as agree­ing with Sir Hi­lary's po­si­tion that France has a "huge moral oblig­a­tion to Haiti" be­cause of the ter­ri­bly un­just re­quire­ments which it im­posed on Haiti.

Giv­en the fact that the es­say was ob­vi­ous­ly be­ing e-mailed wide­ly, I was con­vinced that I need­ed to re­spond pub­licly and pro­voke a wider pub­lic de­bate on this is­sue. I have not stud­ied the Hait­ian Rev­o­lu­tion in 25 years but I am sure that one of the things peo­ple like Carl Par­ris and Anslem Fran­cis taught me at the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions more than 20 years ago is that sov­er­eign na­tions have the abil­i­ty to make (and break) agree­ments. Sir Hi­lary seeks to blame the French for seek­ing to im­pose an oner­ous agree­ment seek­ing "com­pen­sa­tion and repa­ra­tion in ex­change" for recog­ni­tion. But Sir Hi­lary as­cribes ab­solute­ly no blame to the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment which en­tered in­to this agree­ment, one as­sumes, with its eyes wide open. As I un­der­stand it from his es­say, the sov­er­eign Hait­ian gov­ern­ment, feel­ing the pinch of its iso­la­tion, en­tered in­to an agree­ment with France af­ter 21 years of In­de­pen­dence.

It can't be said, there­fore, that it rushed to sign this agree­ment which con­signed thou­sands of Haitians to mis­er­able lives of des­ti­tu­tion. Beck­les ar­gues that as a re­sult of the agree­ment be­tween these two sov­er­eign, in­de­pen­dent na­tions cap­i­tal "was il­le­gal­ly ex­tract­ed from the Hait­ian peo­ple and should be re­paid." He states that the 150 mil­lion gold francs is es­ti­mat­ed by fi­nan­cial ac­tu­ar­ies to be the equiv­a­lent of US$21 bil­lion to­day. It is sopho­moric, at best, to sub­scribe to a no­tion that the 1825 agree­ment was ren­dered in­valid or il­le­gal be­cause Haitians were small, weak, im­pov­er­ished, je­june and with their "backs to the wall" while France was large, strong, rich and so­phis­ti­cat­ed. Sure­ly thou­sands of agree­ments are struck be­tween un­equal par­ties all over the world every day. Isn't any ne­go­ti­a­tion in which the bor­row­er needs the mon­ey to buy a house, fi­nance an ed­u­ca­tion or pay a med­ical bill an un­equal ne­go­ti­a­tion? Are such agree­ments made in­valid or il­le­gal as a re­sult of the fact that the bank ex­ec­u­tive is big­ger, stronger, wealth­i­er or more so­phis­ti­cat­ed than the bor­row­er?

Can it be ar­gued, for ex­am­ple, that the Sep­tem­ber 1941 agree­ment be­tween the US and Great Britain to trade 50 old war­ships in ex­change for land for mil­i­tary bases in sev­en coun­tries in­clud­ing T&T was "il­le­gal­ly ex­tract­ed" be­cause Britain's back was against a wall or lit­er­al­ly look­ing down the bar­rel of Hitler's guns? Shift­ing the goal­post every so slight­ly, one won­ders whether Beck­les would con­sid­er the US$1.3 bil­lion debt agree­ment that Ja­maica is about to sign with the IMF, cap­i­tal that will be "il­le­gal­ly ex­tract­ed" from them. Sure­ly Ja­maicans find them­selves with their "backs to the wall." Is Beck­les go­ing to blame the IMF for the "mer­ci­less ex­ploita­tion" of Ja­maicans that's "de­signed and guar­an­teed to col­lapse the (Ja­maican) econ­o­my and so­ci­ety?" Shouldn't the blame be placed square­ly on the de­ci­sions made by gen­er­a­tions of Ja­maica's po­lit­i­cal elites to spend more mon­ey than the coun­try earned?

An­oth­er thing that I learnt more than 20 years ago is that coun­tries have na­tion­al in­ter­ests and seek to pro­tect and pro­mote their na­tion­al in­ter­ests at every turn. I sus­pect that Haiti would have felt that this agree­ment with France was the means by which it could rein­te­grate it­self in­to the world econ­o­my. If Haiti had had any­thing to sell to the world, Haiti would have sur­vived and thrived, de­spite the oner­ous yoke of the need to re­pay the French. But I seem to re­call that the Hait­ian Rev­o­lu­tion led to the de­struc­tion of the plan­ta­tion econ­o­my, which pro­duced sug­ar as its main prod­uct and went search­ing among my old his­to­ry texts un­til I found Par­ry and Sher­lock's "A Short His­to­ry of the West In­dies," which states at page 169. From 1806 to 1818, Dessalines' suc­ces­sors di­vid­ed the coun­try be­tween them with the ne­gro Christophe tak­ing the north and the mu­lat­to Petion the south: Christophe's regime in the north was an as­ton­ish­ing tour-de-force, of which his great citadel stands as a grim wit­ness to this day.

With­out ad­min­is­tra­tive ma­chin­ery to his hand, he held his king­dom to­geth­er by sheer force of will, rul­ing through a kind of mi­latary feu­dal­ism based on forced labour, with­out the name of slav­ery. While he lived (un­til) 1820 he kept the great es­tates go­ing and de­layed the run­ning down of the eco­nom­ic ma­chine. Petion, more easy-go­ing, per­mit­ted in the south the pop­u­lar but eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­as­trous sub­di­vi­sion of the land in­to small peas­ant plots, which be­came in time the pat­tern all over Haiti." The rea­son that Haiti had lit­tle chance to thrive in its post-In­de­pen­dence pe­ri­od had more to do with the de­struc­tion of the sug­ar cane plan­ta­tions than with the em­bar­go or the French debt. All is­sues con­tributed to Haiti's per­sis­tent pover­ty but the end of the plan­ta­tion econ­o­my did the most.

It was Haiti's politi­cians (all those Em­per­ors and Dukes and Pres­i­dents-for Life!!!) who con­signed the coun­try to mis­ery by killing off the planters, sign­ing an oner­ous agree­ment and re­fus­ing to re­store the plan­ta­tion sys­tem af­ter Eman­ci­pa­tion/In­de­pen­dence be­cause, as Par­ry and Sher­lock in­di­cate, de­stroy­ing the plan­ta­tion was the pop­u­lar and pop­ulist thing to do. The most of­fen­sive part of this whole ar­gu­ment is that the lead­ers of this sup­pos­ed­ly proud, black na­tion ac­quisced in the in­famy that it was the own­ers of the hu­man cap­i­tal (ie the slave mas­ters) who de­served to be com­pen­sat­ed and not the slaves who were bru­talised. The an­swer to the ques­tion of why Haiti signed the 1825 agree­ment comes not in blam­ing France but in study­ing the role of Jean-Pierre Boy­er, a mu­lat­to who served as the pres­i­dent of Haiti from 1818 to 1843.

This, af­ter all, was some­one with a French fa­ther, who was ed­u­cat­ed in France, who shift­ed al­le­giance to and then away from Tou­s­saint L'Ou­ver­ture, who was ex­iled to France and re­turned to Haiti un­der French Gen­er­al Charles Leclerc with a mil­i­tary com­mis­sion and fi­nal­ly his dis­ser­tion from the army. There may be an ar­gu­ment that Boy­er want­ed recog­ni­tion from and by France. He may have craved French recog­ni­tion, both diplo­mat­i­cal­ly and per­son­al­ly and he may not have thought that com­mit­ting Haiti to mak­ing un­rea­son­able pay­ments to France was too high a price to pay. He was wrong. And while we all weep for Haiti, I would ar­gue that France has no more moral oblig­a­tion to pro­vide bil­lions to it than we do.