128
France urged to repay billions of dollars to Haiti for independence ‘ransom’
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024
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This was a debt incurred 200 years ago that was paid off 80 years ago. Whatever the arguments for or against, I don't think that it's worth digging up now. There isn't a country in the world that doesn't have some sort of historical disputes.
The debt was incurred because Haiti was a French slave plantation and the Haitians freed themselves in revolt.
The debt was basically for the loss of human property i.e. slaves and the profits derrived from their slave labor.
First the French enslaved and brutalized them, and then crippled their country with debt because they had the nerve to free themselves.
So no, it's not just another historical dispute not worth rectifying.
Conquering countries, then extracting wealth from the population -- usually farmers -- was pretty much what empires were in the business of doing. Haiti and France aren't unique in that regard. And that goes way, way back. Estonia was controlled by the Russian Empire, but Estonia isn't arguing for reparations today (though they would like Russia to stop trying to re-conquer countries today).
The world is very unlikely to go back and try to choose some fixed point in time and say "we lock all property rights at this point in time, and try to reassess today based on where they were at that point in time". I'm all for aiming to avoid some of the problems of the past coming up again today, but that's taken care of -- France isn't trying to create a new French Empire 2.0 as things were in 1820. I don't think that trying to re-zero based on some point in time is likely a great idea.