Nicolette Bethel's Blog

A group of 90 leading academics, authors, journalists and human rights activists from around the world has called on France to repay the 17 billion euros £14bn “extorted” from Haiti in the 19th Century. In 1825 France demanded 150 million gold francs in compensation after the Haitian Revolution, through which the country gained independence.

via Repeating Islands.

Well now.

On the surface, there is not much to argue with here. The idea is interesting, arresting even, and exciting, given the names of the signatories, who include

American linguist Noam Chomsky, French philosopher Étienne Balibar, and the Euro MPs Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Eva Joly.

Here’s the question, though. To whom would this payment go, and how would it be remitted? Simply erasing the debt is not enough; there is also the long-term damage done to the core fabric of Haitian democratic society that resulted from the isolation of Haiti that occurred over the century following the revolution, not to mention the complete lack of national infrastructure in the country even today (a lack that the American occupation of the first decades of the twentieth century, an occupation that could be read as America’s own imperialism, did not rectify). This is worth a whole lot more thought. Discussion and thought.

But worth considering nevertheless.

{ 1 comment }