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University Microfilms International 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 USA St. John's Road, Tyler’s Green High Wycombe, Bucks, England HP10 8HR 77-16,813 BELLEGARDE-SMITH, Patrick Dantes, 1947- EXPRESSION OF A CULTURE IN CRISIS: DANTES BELLEGARDE IN HAITIAN SOCIAL THOUGHT. The American University, Ph.D., 1977 Political Science, general Xerox University Microfiims,Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 0 1977 PATRICK DANTES BELLEGARDE-SMITH ALL RIGHTS RESERVED EXPRESSION OF A CULTURE IN CRISISi DANTES BELLEGARDE IN HAITIAN SOCIAL THOUGHT by Patrick Bellegarde-Smith Submitted to the Faculty of the School of International Service of The American University in partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in International Studies Signatures Commi^ttee Chairman* Dean of the School -A>, /Ç77 Date 1977 The American University Washington, D.C. 20016 t h e MEEICAif UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Pour Simone et Leslie, en toute affection. 111 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION...................................... 1 Chapter I THE CONTEXT OF THE CULTURAL CRISIS: HAITIAN SOCIAL POLICY AND FOREIGN RELATIONS................................ 18 The Economic Dimension The Social Dimension The Political Dimension Early Foreign Policy The United States Occupation, 1915-1934 II THE BASIS FOR HAITIAN SOCIAL POLICY: SOCIAL THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY . 83 The Pre-Independence Period: The Colonial Class Struggle The Post-Independence Period: The Consol idation of Bourgeois Hegemony III MILIEU, MOMENT, INTEREST, THE CAREER AND LIFE OF DANTES BELLEGARGE................ 137 The Formative Years The Generation de la Ronde In the Service of Haiti Missions Abroad A "Pan-African Spirit" On Several Fronts The Years of Sadness IV SYNTHESIS OF AN APPROACH: HISTORY AND CULTURE.................................. 211 History and the Developmental Process Society and Nation V SYNTHESIS OF AN APPROACH; EDUCATION AND COMMERCE................................ 272 Internationalism, Westernization, and the Rights of Small States iv Page Government and Education in Society Individualism and the Family VI IN CONCLUSION: PERSPECTIVES ON SOCIAL CONFLICT AND CULTURE .................... 348 Nationality and Liberalism Negritude as Cultural Politics Epilogue: The Trauma of Insignificance APPENDICES........................................ 424 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................ 430 V INTRODUCTION Have the courage of wanting to become a people, and soon you shall equal the nations of Europe. , — Leger-Felicite Sonthonax Little effort has been expended outside Haiti in 2 studying the pattern of Haitian intellectual development. Throughout the nineteenth century, and well into the twentieth. Western scholarship overwhelmingly reflected the racialist ideologies then in vogue, as more con servative forces replaced the liberal outlook that accompanied the American and French Revolutions of 1776 and 1789.3 The Haitian Revolution of 1791 expressed a tragic misunderstanding between individuals that should have been political allies, the colonial bourgeoisie and its subgroup, the affranchis. Intoxicated by the egalitarian spirit of the Revolution in France, the metropolitan petite-bourgeoisie, which was exempt from the peculiar psychology that seems to develop in every colonial enter prise, had indicated its common cause with the affranchis and the slaves against the plantocracy's grands seigneurs which formed a haute-bourgeoisie. Thus, in Saint Domingue, the complex struggle acquired the superficial aspect of a race war. The slave insurrection that assured Haitian 1 independence made the fledgling state threatening to all slave-holding powers; Sidney W. Mintz has argued that the subsequent denigration by Western historians of the Haitian movement which, according to him, was the most significant single event of the eighteenth century in the New World, is thus explained.^ Latin America, the West Indies and Haiti share a common history: the impact of colonization, the sub jugation of native races, slavery, cultural assimilation and neo-colonialism, are factors influencing contemporary life in these nations to a varying degree. Once the pervasive factor of "race" is taken into account within a colonial mentality, the economic factor finds its own "level of significance" in furthering an understanding of history. Only then does Harold J. Laski's statement emerge with full meaning: "So long as the state expresses a society divided into economic classes, it is always the servant of that class which owns or dominates the owner ship of the instruments of production. If "Haiti was born without a head," to use Dantes Bellegarde's expression,^ it rapidly acquired one through the emergence of the affranchis, filling the vacuum created by the elimination of colonial and metropolitan whites. The elite that arose satisfied the need for an ideology of development. Therefore, the documentation for a probing study of Haitian social thought exists in the numerous volumes and articles written by Haitian intellec tuals over a century and a half since independence. These works remain untranslated from the original French, and the motivations of the elite, unfathomed. Harold E. Davis, in two influential volumes on Latin American thought, failed to treat the Haitian variant, although recognizing elsewhere in his writings, the general impact 7 of Haitian independence upon the continent. Pedro Henriquez Urena and W. Rex Crawford did no better. More recent scholarship has not attempted to fill the gap either.® Writing in 1957, P. W. Buck and M. B. Travis, Jr. envisioned a unique role for Haiti within the scope of Latin American diplomatic action; Haiti, by reason of its special character and history, is almost a unique link in the fabric of international society. Its people being Negro, its culture French, its political and geographic situation American, Haiti may well interpret America to Europe, and both to Africa. .9 Without entering into a dispute over the specific elements and assumptions of this declaration, one can accept its overall intent in the sense of acknowledging that foreign and social policy is likely to be a prerogative of elites, everywhere, and that this is particularly true where non literate masses subsist. Ideology and ideas are challenging. Part of their complexity is the effort that must be made to assess the impact upon the society at large, either as ideology or as policy results in the economic and social life of a polity. The history of ideas, and more generally, intellectual development, have been the concern and the preserve of a coterie of intellectuals in all societies. But the impact of such thought is no less real. This is part of the "social realities" understood by Karl Marx to affect societal development. Ideology, together with other social realities such as race and religious beliefs, aids in the understanding of a more complex reality that seems dominated by international and domestic economic interrelationships. An analysis of social thought is justified further, whether it is "practiced" by an in-bred elite whose power is based on social prerogatives and economic exploitation of other groups, or by a proletarian party that defines itself as a vanguard. In either case elitism persists, and ideas retain their influence all the while. Dantes Bellegarde, the quasi-official historian of successive Haitian governments,^^ offers a key for the understanding of the development of Haitian social thought. His books and large number of articles make him, together with his life-long friend Jean Price-Mars, one of two major figures in Haitian social

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