On July 8, 1825, under pressure that was intended to be diplomatic but proved to be military and coercive, the government of Haitian President Jean-Pierre Boyer yielded to the demands of King Charles X of France. He imposed an ordinance dated April 17, 1825, stipulating that Haiti was to pay the colossal sum of 150 million gold francs to the French state, "intended to compensate former colonists" who had maintained a colonialist, slave-holding, and racist system for over two centuries, contributing to France's wealth.

Haiti was recovering from a grueling and heroic war of liberation (1791-1801) against this system, achieving in 1804 what historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot (1949-2012) described as "unthinkable" for the time. Since then, Haiti had been kept in economic and political isolation by France with the support of the imperial powers of that era.

Question of 'restitution'

In exchange for the payment of this indemnity, France would recognize the independence of the former colony and end this isolation. This exorbitant sum, representing about 15% of France's budget and three years of that of the young Haitian nation, amounts to an economic and social fraud.

The money for the first installment was due in December 1825, five months after the ordinance's signing. But because the young state was insolvent, a clause not mentioned in the ordinance required that the money for that installment be borrowed from French banks. Historians and economists refer to this as the "double debt."

Haiti found itself caught in the vicious cycle of dependency. Its economy, oriented outward, was subjected to this unjust debt. To honor it, the Haitian peasantry, the nation's beating heart, was exploited for decades, and the large-scale logging of precious wood exacerbated the ecological disaster initiated by the plantation system while only "moderate taxes" were requested on all products coming from France.

Members of the economic and political elites, through mechanisms of corruption, became complicit in this fraud. Through this debt, Haiti holds an emblematic place in world history as it inaugurates what would become North-South relations and the model of neo-colonial governance.

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