I'm not interested in talking about Greg Clark or making comparisons to the West; if need be compare it to other black Caribbean nations, such as Jamaica or Barbados. It's much worse and in terms of social indicators it is also worse than many places in Africa. Why? Here a few hypotheses (NB: I don't endorse all of them):
1. Haiti cut its colonial ties too early, rebelling against the French in the early 19th century and achieving complete independence. Guadaloupe and Martinique are still riding the gravy train and French aid is a huge chunk of their gdps.
2. Haiti was a French colony in the first place and French colonies do less well.
3. Sugar cane gave Haiti some early characteristics of "the resource curse," dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries.
4. Haiti was doing OK until the Duvaliers destroyed civil society, thus putting the country on a path toward destruction. It is a more or less random one-time event which wrecked the place.
5. Hegel was correct that the "voodoo religion," with its intransitive power relations among the gods, was prone to producing political intransitivity as well. (Isn't that a startling insight for a guy who didn't travel the broader world much?)
6. For reasons peculiar to the history of the slave trade, Haitian slaves came from many different parts of Africa and thus Haitian internal culture has long had lower levels of cohesion and cooperation. (The former point about the mix is true, but the cultural point is speculation.)
7. Haiti has higher than average levels of polygamy (but is this cause or effect?)
8. In the early to mid twentieth century, Haiti was poorly situated to attract Chinese and other immigrants, unlike say Jamaica or Trinidad. It is interesting that many of the wealthiest families in Haiti are Lebanese, such as the Naders.
Overall I don't find this set of possible factors very satisfactory. Is it asking too much to wish for an economics profession that is obsessed with such a question?
If you are looking for some cross-sectional variation to ponder, consider the fate of Haitians in Suriname (they make up a big chunk of the population there), Haiti vs. Santiago, Cuba, pre-Castro of course, or why early Haitian migrants to Montreal have done better than later migrants to Miami and Brooklyn.
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Haiti also suffered from a great deal of discrimination in its earlier history. European nations constantly tried to take it over (to end the bad precedent of a successful slave revolt) and to take over the rich sugar.
The US and Europe also refused to trade with Haiti for a long while for similar reasons (though US recognition and trade flip-flopped with administrations).
Sugar also wasn’t quite as easy to grow profitably without slavery, but especially without regular and steady markets to ship to (and hence allow specialization in sugar, since food shipments are relatively guaranteed).
I was also going to say that Haiti was isolated by its revolution. Western nations were very frightened of black slave revolts, and so they minimized interaction with Haiti. The isolation probably caused a lot of economic and cultural problems.
By way of contrast, Noel Maurer on why Barbados turned out pretty well, relatively speaking.
Regarding point 6, I wasn’t aware that the Haitian slave population was measurably different from that of other Caribbean islands. It is interesting that the less cohesive group managed a successful slave revolt.
So, this is kind of embarrassing, but I can’t figure out what point 5 means:
5. Hegel was correct that the “voodoo religion,” with its intransitive power relations among the gods, was prone to producing political intransitivity as well. (Isn’t that a startling insight for a guy who didn’t travel the broader world much?)
What is the meaning of the word “intransitive” in this context?
Funny. I googled the exact title of this blog post no more than an hour ago.
As for why Haitians migrants in Montreal did better than in the US, well, Quebec has better social policies than the US, we speak the same language, and we are not racists against black people as in the US.
What about detrimental US interventions in Haiti? Does not that fact have something to do with Haiti’s struggles?
Going back more than one or two generations isn’t all that instructive for finding causes of their present destitution. Nations just as poor have turned themselves around in mere decades.
As per Hazlitt in The Conquest of Poverty, it is most likely a problem of too little fixed capital. This obviously stems from a lack of property rights. That, in turn, can be seen as a consequence of:
- poor education
- poor health/malnutrition
Starving people obviously don’t care if food belongs to someone else. Survival instincts supersede the social conscience. And even if there are educational resources provided, gathering food/clean water is of greater importance.
So what’s the solution? Giving food and medicine obviously helps in the immediate term. But it does nothing to improve the nation’s long term prospects. And it may even disincentivize locals from accumulating the necessary capital goods to produce their own. Giving capital goods doesn’t help much either, because villagers don’t have the wherewithal to maintain them (or protect them from scavengers).
The Darwinian side of me suggests that crisis must deepen before society unites itself enough to provide a legal framework conducive to private property rights. I wish there were easier answers.
Jared Diamond has a good discussion of this in Collapse. His theory is that it’s because they cut down all their trees and destroyed their environment. He compares Haiti to the Dominican Republic, just on the other side of the same island. He says that Haitian loggers regularly cross over into DR to do illegal logging.
There’s a fascinating chapter (11) in Jared Diamond’s book “Collapse” which compares Haiti and the Dominican Republic, specifically the way in which each country has utilized it’s natural resources in the past, mainly forests, and the impact that has had on its current economic situation. A few relevant points taken from the book:
- 28% of the Dominican Republic is covered by forest. Only 1% of Haiti has trees.
- Deforestation in Haiti has resulted in loss of timber (for both building and for cooking), soil erosion, loss of soil fertility, sediment loads in rivers (resulting in poor drinking water quality), loss of watershed protection and decreased rainfall.
- Haiti is the poorest country in the New World, and one of the poorest outside of Africa
- Dominican Republic is also poor, but per-capita income there is 5 times that of Haiti. Population density and growth rate are lower than in Haiti.
Diamond looks at colonial background of both countries, and many of the issues you discuss above Tyler. The “Natural Experiments” book linked above by tomharvey looks really interesting, as it is also edited by Diamond. Perhaps there’s more detail there.
from my time on both sides of Hispaniola, I can safely say that I have never seen a more racist place in my life. The prevailing Dominican view of the Haitians is appalling. I can only fear the strife that will be caused in the DR by the upcoming Haitian influx.
At least in biological systems, polygamy tends to follow unequal distribution of resources, not lead it. I doubt it’s a relevant factor in Haiti’s economic state.
via Rachel Maddow’s Facebook page: Evangelist Pat Robertson says Haiti is cursed because of a deal it made
with the devil to get freedom from the French (at the six-minute mark).
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2010/January/Powerful-Quake-Hits-Impoverished-Haiti/
“True story!” he says.
Your first 5 points are correct in its assessment. A week ago, my family (we are Haitian btw) went to a friend’s house for dinner and of course, the issue of Haiti came about. We basically came up with the exact same hypotheses as you did. However, you need to also include the whole issue of caste system which is prevalent in most Caribbean and Latin states and the problem of colorism which is intertwined with the former. The more the economic power stays in the hand of the light skinned population, which is a minority, the greater the inequality will deepened. Believe me, Tyler, I have pondered on the question of Haiti’s poverty for a long time and still haven’t found the answer
I’d like to 2nd the powerful argument in Collapse. The general argument is that civilizations who cut down all their trees in environments where regrowth is slow tend to collapse. It can even explain the movement of the center of western civilization from Iraq to Greece to Italy… and then up to Europe where rainfall was plentiful enough to survive the mistake of deforestation.
The Diamond thesis is available at this site: http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=4776
And you can use Google Maps to see the comparison.
Pat Robertson thinks it’s because the Haitians sold themselves to the devil:
http://bit.ly/5UMGws.
Just a quick laugh. Notice he doesn’t cite his source for the “true story.”
So Haiti’s poverty seem to be entirely blamed on evil westerners. At some point doesn’t a failed society have to take some responsibility for itself?
This is a joke. Many nations have been treated much worse than Haiti by war, fate, and other nations — and yet have risen to provide a decent standard of living to their people.
Haiti is Haiti primarily due to poor choices by Haitians.
I don’t have a deep knowledge of the place, but at least this item from the Wikipedia page is striking:
“In July 1825, the king of France Charles X sent a fleet of fourteen vessels and troops to reconquer the island. To maintain independence, President Boyer agreed to a treaty by which France recognized the independence of the country in exchange for a payment of 150 million francs (the sum was reduced in 1838 to 90 million francs) – an indemnity for profits lost from the slave trade.”
also, one can count how many foreign interventions/attempts to invade and coups the country had, besides the Duvaliers.
also, i find your number 1 argument repulsive. The fact that Guadaloupe and Martinique survive on Frech aid is not an argument for colonialism – but rather a sad consequnce that they did not manage to develop by themselves and still depend on France for their survival.
I’m sure the Tonton Macoute helped with development.
Haiti was not just any sugar-producing slave island. It was the biggest sugar producing slave island. As a result, Haiti had a least three different strikes against it from the beginning:
1. Haiti had the largest and wealthiest free-black/mulatto population among the islands.
2. Independence came about as part of a three-way struggle (White/French vs. free-black/mulatto vs. slave).
3. It depended on sugar production over the last 199 years (199 years in which northern hemsiphere countries have subsidized local production of sugar and pseudo-substitutes for sugar).
Number one and number two are obviously connected. When the slave uprising first began, free-blacks and mulattos joined the colonials is opposing it. They only switched sides when Napoleon’s forces stopped differentiating between free-blacks and slaves. Their swich turned the tide of the war and brought independence, but the former slave population never trusted the mulatto and free-black elite and this division undermined governance for decades (if not longer).
As for subsidies, just look at what happened to commodity prices in the first great age of globalization (1870 to 1914). In that period, many Latin American countries saw commodity prices increase (cotton, hides, tobacco) or at least stay steady (rice, coffee, cocoa). But sugar prices dropped in half in those years as many European countries and the United States saw the need to create a sugar beet industry. So Haiti lost out on their first chance to join the developing economies of the region. And they haven’t been given another shot. In fact, I think that sugar-beets and corn syrup protection was one of the main factors that helped kill Doha. Sugar has just been the worst ticket in the world-commodity lottery.
So why is Haiti poor? Partly its their fault, and partly its the fault of the rich world.
GDP per capita of ex British colonies is higher than catholic spanish , portuguese ex colonies.
Trinidad ( $23600). An spanish colony until 1795. It was part of Venezuela (GDP per capita $12,800 )
Barbados $18,977-Mexico: $14,932
Honduras 1842- Belize: $4310( one beside the other)
Brazil $10551-Antigua $ $14,929
But Jamaica$5,335. A socialist government by a pro castrist politician in the 70s
And the Neth. Antilles $17,837
Judy Cross the Dominican Republic was invaded by US Marines at least twice and its situation is not as drastic as Haiti’s.
I think that James Davies presents very important points about the use of natural resources and the protection of said resources. The French set a precedent of destruction on a side of the island that was already more prone to desert type environment. Land usable for agriculture as a percentage of total land mass was much smaller than the Dominican side. Unfortunately sugar cane fields destroyed Haiti’s limited forests and later investments in cattle ranching continued the assault. There is a reason why Haiti was one of the largest sugar producers in the world given that every inch available was planted without regard to the effects on the environment by French authorities.
In the 1980s while living in the Dominican Republic I remember President Balaguer instituting two programs that I believe saved the country from a similar fate. He forbade the cutting down of ANY TREE in any place by anyone without approval from local authorities. I remember that the Department of Natural Resources was headed by military colonels who were extremely inflexible and feared by city people and peasant alike. When fumigating their crops people actually feared a nearby tree accidentally being killed and the authorities assuming they had done it on purpose.
A second measure he took was the subsidizing of propane gas and the government actually gave away millions of small stoves and tanks to citizens of rural areas so that they would stop chopping down trees in order to cook their meals.
These simple steps as well as continuous reforestation projects in the DR have had significant effects on the environment. It seems that when France finally left Haiti the damage to their environment was either irreversible or the attitude of the people and the government was indifferent to the problem.
I think it is also important to note that Haiti’s ratio of slave to free man was about 20 to 1 whereas other countries had more balanced populations and more mixing among them. I would not be surprised if most of the educated people in the country (as slaves received no education) simply picked up and left after the country gained independence, causing a massive brain drain.
“and we are not racists against black people as in the US.”
It’s really cute that you believe both of these things on a broad scale.
It’s also good to see that Maddow continues to be on top of the really important facets of this disaster, as always.
My take on conservative objections to Avatar is that those objections primarily revolve around the blatant anti-American/American military caricatures, and the director’s own admissions about same.
“perhaps Canada could be a good choice given the common language, relative proximity (compared to France) and the very large number of haïtians living in Canada.”
The mythology Canadians have constructed for themselves is sometimes astonishing. Yes, Canada is surely free of a racist, plundering past – and present. Very different from bad old America.
Moving past that neverending conceit and on to the issue, to me the question is not “why is Haiti so poor” but, in the context of its history, “why wouldn’t it be?”
“Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it,” he said on Christian Broadcasting Network’s “The 700 Club.” “They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it’s a deal.”
Robertson said that “ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other” and he contrasted Haiti with its neighbor, the Dominican Republic.
This must be true if Pat said it.
Not that it’s the main cause, or even one of the biggest, but I’m sure it hasn’t helped much that Haiti is routinely blasted to smithereens by tropical storms. I think it was just last year, or the year before, that Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike all hammered Haiti in a single month.
Especially problematic when combined with Haiti’s deforestation problems.
IIRC Haiti’s problems long pre-date US interventions and certainly the swine killing.
The money to France, the dependence on a plantation economy, the isolation of Haiti by other powers afraid of slave revolts couldn’t have helped Haiti. But what about the language issue?
In how many other nations is the language of the masses so different from the language of political power? In many places the common dialect is different than the official language, but in general common people can understand the official language well enough to be able to figure out legal matters (well apart from the legalese, etc.) and so forth.
But what good would property rights, rule of law and the like (which seem necessary to a successful society) be in Haiti when most people can’t even understand the language of the government: French and Creole are hardly even dialects of the same language.
This is an interesting explanation (from Ben Smith at Politico):
The Rev. Pat Robertson, on his CBN broadcast today, offered his own explanation of the earthquake in Haiti:
“Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it,” he said. “They were under the heel of the French … and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French.’
“True story. And the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal,’” Robertson said. “Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after another.
Attempting to understand why a nation does poorly is as
frustrating as following the demise of a disfunctional child;
Generally speaking, he human condition is far too complex to
analyze to a logical conclusion. I suspect though, that If one
positive element doesn’t exist, a surplus of another will cancel
it out and In the balance of innumerable factors (work ethic,
tolerance, justice, natural resources, etc.) it’s simply a matter
of a maintaining a positive balance.
While racism in Canada wasn’t as rampant or extreme as in the US, you are either ignorant or brainwashed to think that Canada is/was not racist. Ever heard of the Chinese head tax, Indian residential schools, Japanese internment camps during WWII, Ukrainian internment camps during WWI, and “voluntary” segregation?. I guess you also missed that whole Bouchard-Taylor commission on “reasonable accommodation” that took place in your province way back all those years ago, in 2007. Here’s a refresher: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2007/10/24/qc-herouxville1024.html
The original Haitian immigrants that settled in Montreal were relatively few in number. They came at a time when Quebec separatism was peaking and when the vast majority of immigrants to Quebec chose English as their first official language. Haitians were a novelty because they settled in working class French neighborhoods like Little Burgundy and learned French rather than English and, like the Algerians in France, took up jobs that Quebecers didn’t want to do. Successive immigrants from Haiti have fared significantly less well than previous entrants. Once they began to form significant percentages of the population in the North Montreal and Ahuntsic neighborhoods, and as crime and street gang activity in those neighborhoods rose, all that Canadian gentility flew out the window.
The fact that Guadaloupe and Martinique survive on Frech aid is not an argument for colonialism – but rather a sad consequnce that they did not manage to develop by themselves and still depend on France for their survival.
They could survive and develop by themselves but why would they want that? They are very well developed and given that they are way overpopulated … why would one want to lower living standard to himself just to be independent?
Over 30 coups in two hundred years has a bit to do with it. Haiti’s pretty much been a corrupt violent kleptocracy of one form or another since the slave revolt, and it shows.
I second/third the curiosity regarding “intransitivity.” Speaking mathematically, a rock-paper-scissors setup is an example of an intransitive relationship, but it is not the only kind. Another kind could be like: Ann is Bob’s wife and tells him what to do, Bob is Charlie’s boss and tells him what to do, but Ann has no clout over Charlie. I am not sure if one or both of these conceptions is what Tyler means, or something other than the mathematical notion.
I’m involved with an orphanage in Haiti. Deforestation in Haiti is just terrible. Want to see just how stark it is? Go to the link pasted below, and notice the obvious difference in green between Haiti (left) and the Dominican Republic. (right)
This difference is easy to see even when you zoom out for many miles.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=haiti&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=35.547176,60.820313&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Haiti&ll=19.442556,-71.676435&spn=0.041358,0.059395&t=h&z=14
Do we want to get into the concept that the average IQ in Haiti is 72 or is that beyond the pale and just too impolite? Every other reason seems represented.
Vanderleun, the contributions on this thread have only begun to scratch the surface of the myriad causal factors behind Haiti’s relative political, social, and economic instability; cf., tori on land reform, dadanarchist on agricultural modes, etc. I’d suggest you reread some of them before declaring “ever other reason” represented — which I take to mean exhausted.
And you know, call it political correctness if you like, but I do find your racial reductionism beyond the pale.
However, I’m sure there other forums available for you to “get into the concept that the average IQ in Haiti is 72.” (By the way, that’s not actually a concept.)
Deforestation can’t be a satisfactory explanation by itself. The question “why deforestation occurred?” must be asked.
Was it was because property rights were poor so it was a useful source of income. Did it happened even though property rights were good? Was it initiated by the state?
Notice that laws against cutting down trees aren’t present in developed countries. As far as I know, in Britain there were none even when it was a developing country in the 19th and 18th centuries.
Ah, yes the handful of Marines excuse. Poor guys, running all over the island, rounding up all the textbooks, mechanics tools, farm tractors and dumping them offshore. Those lethernecks did the same thing to Japan and look at that dump too.
I’d be inclined towards #3, with political economy effects that are still being felt. Wealthy elites that can live well off a country’s resources have zero interest in any institutions – schools, roads, the rule of law – that would foster the development of the country outside their narrow resource sector. I remember in the early 90s, when the US imposed sanctions on Haiti to get rid of a brutal military govt (strongly supported by Jesse Helms btw), observers pointed out that the Haitian elites were quite happy with the sanctions because they could get an even bigger take from smuggling than they normally did from dominating Haiti’s external trade – a classic case of govt-created rents fostering corruption, & with parallels in Saddam’s Iraq. Now consider how something like that situation has prevailed throughout Haiti’s history.
More data about the plunder of Haiti, it’s resources and it’s people by France and the USA.
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/restitution4haiti/
http://www.nathanielturner.com/haitimakescaseforreparations.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0720-31.htm
Being forced to spend as much as 80 percent of its gdp servicing high-interest rate debt for most of its history as an independent nation?
“How could you leave out the fact that Haiti was occupied by the US Marines from 1915-1934?”
In the late 1960′s I was in Naval ROTC. I recall the Marine Option instructor saying, “The Marine Corps made Haiti what it is today.” I don’t know that the statement is true, but it made me cringe even then.
Haiti has had an unfortunate history of outsiders continually interfering. From the beginning, as a slave state, where it was cheaper to import new slaves and let babies die rather than grow up, to the US and European horror at a successful slave revolt, there has been both a refusal to trade and ongoing interference, including occupation and exploitation.
Posted by: f at Jan 13, 2010 2:35:52 PM
Posted by: Mike at Jan 13, 2010 2:38:19 PM
Are two enlightned readers.
Haiti has too many people for the resources available. “Collapse” by Jared Diamond clearly explains why.
Diamond also addresses potential collapse of present day Australia and actual collapse of ancient societies such as found on Easter Island.
His prior book “Guns, Germs, and Steel” is worth reading if you want to understand why Western Europe became the dominant economic and political force over the last 1000 years.
Sustained ~10% economic growth is achievable (for third world countries, anyway) if the nation creates a suitable environment. See ref. China.
That works out to 16 years of growth for Haiti to reach where DR is now, or 22 years to catch it.
Next month marks the 24th anniversary of the overthrow of the Duvaliers.
In other words, Haiti could be where the Dominican Republic is now, even disregarding everything that happened prior to ’86.
Jared Diamond in his book “Collapse” argues that environmental problems go a long way to explain the failure of Haiti when compared to the relative success of the Dominican Republic, both of which occupy the same island, Hispaniola. As I recall the soil is much worse on the eastern side of Hispaniola. An extraordinary book well worth reading.
Interesting that so many of the comments either blame the U.S. (hey, isn’t everything our fault somehow?) or give credence to Jared Diamond’s silly tree argument. To hear Diamond tell it, pretty much all the world’s problems can be linked to cutting down trees, which leads one to wonder how on earth the almost completely denuded eastern U.S. of the 19th Century ever survived until now.
It would, indeed, be interesting to have a competent economic analysis detail the exact causes of Haiti’s failures. It would probably conclude that like so many other dysfunctional societies, Haiti suffers from a dysfunctional culture enabled by well-intentioned but misguided foreign aid. Like so many African countries, the degree of ignorance, superstition, corruption, and filth in Haiti is difficult to fathom, yet foreign aid keeps the overlord class in power and allows the common people to stay alive just long enough to produce the next generation.
In a place where civil society is all but non-existent, this is what you end up with. Just look at Palestine.
Haiti is a good example of what government patronage can do to a country. The person who wrote about the lack of private property rights there also had a good point.
Also, Haiti has been a constant focus of do-gooder redistributionist experiments for almost a hundred years. In the last half-century, most of these have been overseen by the corrupt, kleptocratic UN. If you wonder about the fruit of socialism, look no further than Haiti.
Hang on…is Haiti still paying an indemnity to the French? Can we get confirmation on that? Because if it is, then it would seem the major problem is that Haiti never really stopped being a colony.
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