HAT3564: Haitian Culture and Society The Birth of Modern-Day Haiti (Part 1) (Lecture 1) Welcome to Haitian culture and society. My name is Ben Hebblethwaite, and this course is available at the University of Florida. And we are working on module five, and as you can see there, this module is concerned with the birth of modern day Haiti, which is situated roughly between 1860 and 1915. There you can see the measurable learning objectives, which you can also find at the top of the module page in Canvas. So the first part of this chapter, the birth of modern-day Haiti, is an introduction, and it addresses several matters beginning with political conflicts of earlier decades, that intensify as do fiscal and economic problems. So this is an introductory chapter that provides an overview of the latter part of the 19th century. You will also find a rapid succession of presidents that mark the turn of the century, into the 20th century in Haiti. There is a struggle between Nord Alexis, and Antenor Firmin, who struggled for power as we will explore in some detail. Then there is the tragedy of President Cincinnatus Leconte, and hundreds of others who died in an explosion of munitions at the National Palace. So this is the symbol of the disintegration of the Haitian state-- one that leads to the occupation of the United States military. And it was just three years after this explosion that the US Marines would disembark to occupy Haiti from 1915 to 1934, a subject for the next section. So the US had long sought control of Mole Saint-Nicolas as a naval station. In this period, this turn of the century period, discrimination against Syrians becomes codified in law. Political fragmentation and conflict took place when many of the country's national symbols were established and consolidated, including the national anthem. And then, there is a dramatic drop in coffee prices around the world, which, of course, undermined the economy of many rural areas, and set into motion the beginning of the rural migration into Haitian towns and cities. Something that kept the pace, and grew into the 20th century, and then became a massive migration in the second half of the 20th century. So it has these roots in the collapse of the coffee market. Now, Haitian nightlife began to develop going beyond homes and lakous. Urban and rural people commingled to a greater degree. The story tell genre of lodyans developed, so in Haitian creole, in telling stories, we say, [HAITIAN CREOLE], which means let's tell stories. And thereafter stories are delivered to the delight of listeners, usually in a family. So this is, of course, proceeding electronic media, and televisions, radio, and cell phones, lodyans was a kind of family entertainment before bedtime. You also see a decline in the French cultural influence in Haiti. Although this is debatable, especially given the [FRENCH] invites so many francophone Roman Catholic priests to establish Catholic schools in Haiti. So it's not clear if this claim is accurate. There's a concurrent rise of North American influence, which would deepen with the US occupation. So as French influence becomes sort of a waning feature, at least according to the editors, American influence rises-- that is certain. So we have here an article. The first one in this chapter called "Nineteenth-Century Haiti by the Numbers" by Louis Gentil Tippenhauer. So let's touch on some of the highlights from that reading in the Haiti reader. So coffee production was ideally suited to the small-scale peasantry that had replaced the largest states under French colonial rule. For one thing, the coffee is grown at higher altitudes, and Haiti has many mountains where the elevation is perfect for growing great quality coffee. And so being remote from the plains, where the sugar cane plantations were operated, and where the mass agricultural practices took root in the colony, these coffee plantations provided perfect opportunities to produce a cash crop within the context of a family, as opposed to the more industrious system of plantations. The government revenue was almost entirely based on the taxation of those coffee exports and other imports. So obviously, coffee was not imported into Haiti, but other goods were imported, so you see that your government revenue is largely generated from taxing items at the ports-- coffee going out, hardwoods going out, sugarcane also going out. And then other goods that Haitians needed to buy were then taxed at the ports also. This is still the case today. The nation government depends on these revenues on imported and exported goods. So the success of the Haitian coffee industry in the 19th century was comparable to what was found in the Dominican Republic, or Puerto Rico in the 1880s. However, overproduction in Brazil produced a crash in prices. One that set into motion, the migration of Haitian farmers from rural areas into the cities and the towns. Well, we learned from Tippenhauer, that no census was taken at the time of his writing, at the later part of the 19th century, so there was a great deal of uncertainty about population size. It was recorded that since the Declaration of Independence, coffee production tripled, so this is quite a noteworthy point of Haiti's agricultural development. Boyer's presidency is described as peaceful years by Tippenhauer, followed by Emperor Faustin Soulouque's long regime. Now, we mentioned him in the previous module largely because he's overlooked by the editors of the Haiti reader, even though he held power from 1849 to 1859-- that's a 10-year period. So this was a period, in general, in which the political upheavals were not too stormy, in which the revolutions were not accompanied by as much bloodshed as they were later on, in what matter we will touch on in the near future. So the 19th century is sometimes called by Haitian intellectuals like Jean Casimir, as the golden age of Haitian history. Since the population was more or less able to develop normally, which is, of course, not the case for African-Americans, or people of African heritage, in other colonial or neocolonial states in the Americas. This was an oasis of a black freedom in the 19th century, and that deserves recognition. And scholars like Jean Casimir, have made a point of this historical fact. So the 18-month long civil war was certainly atrocious enough. Here, Tippenhauer, is making a reference to the two years of Sylvain Salnave's chaotic rule from 1867 to 1869, after he ousted President Fabre Geffrard in a coup. I remember Geffrard, replaced Emperor Soulouque, and then you see Salnave, ousting Geffrard, in a coup. The coup was and still to an extent, is the main way that political alternation is manifested in Haiti as opposed to an election. Though elections are becoming more frequent over the last 30 years. So Salnave-- there, shown to the right-- was in turn, overthrown by Saget, and he was tried for treason and executed. The Haitian A. Paul, now turning to the matter of Haitian population size, in a pamphlet published in 1875, calculated the population at 943,000 individuals, which is considered a significant over estimate by Tippenhauer because-- and this is the reasoning of Tippenhauer-- of these 943,000 people, in his own quiet, private opinion, 495,000 were black, 420,000 mulatto, and 28,000 white or foreign. Since when have there been 28,000 white people or foreigners living in Haiti, or indeed 420,000 mulattos? So you have here, just examples of Haitian demographic. scholars disagreeing with each other, and this is really an outrageous claim that you would have nearly as many mixed race people as black people in Haiti. This is definitely not the case, at least if you visit Haiti at the end of the 20th century, and currently, you see that 5%, perhaps 6, 7% of Haitians are mixed race, and a 90, 93, 95% of Haitians are black. And foreigners represent an extremely minute portion of the population. So there's that. So the Haitian population in the 1880s and 1890s, was estimated between 725,000 and 990,000. OK, so approaching a million by the end of the 19th century. So Tippenhauer, also touches on voter turnout, in the context of Haitian elections, noting that 40,000 votes were cast in the last parliamentary election. 160,000 inhabitants of the country were entitled to vote. And sort of mockingly, Tippenhauer cites the Catholics, and I quote, "Bulletin religieux, was already putting the population at 960,000. As far as the outside world is concerned, it is in the strong interest of the Catholic clergy to find the highest possible number of believers." So Tippenhauer here is expressing some doubt about the accuracy and the motives of the population count provided by this religious bulletin of the Catholic church. Now, the last thing I'd like to mention in this first part of module 5 is the family portrait section. Really unfortunately, the Haiti reader doesn't have space to provide more exemplars of the family portrait, but the one it offers is beautiful. There you can see a highly pixelated reproduction that I created using my Mac Book. But anyway, it does attest to the rich tradition of portraiture in Haitian photography, documenting, and preserving kinship and domestic life. It's a wonderful picture there, showing you how the family dressed to the nines to take the very best picture for this rare occasion.