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The Baron de Mackau of France presenting demands to Jean-Pierre Boyer, President of Haiti, in 1825. The Haitian independence debt involves an 1825 agreement between Haiti and France that included France demanding an indemnity of 150 million francs in five annual payments of 30 million to be paid by Haiti in claims over property including Haitian slaves that was lost through the Haitian ...
France had also pursued a policy that prevented Haiti from participating in trade in the Atlantic. [3] This isolation on the international stage made Haiti desperate for economic relief. [5] France, with warships at the ready, sailed to Haiti in 1825 and demanded Haiti to compensate France for its loss of slaves and its slave colony.
On 17 April 1825 an agreement was made between the two nations. France renounced all attempts to re-conquer Haiti and recognized Haiti as an independent nation after Haiti agreed to pay France 150 million gold francs in indemnity to the former colonists within five years.
Haiti’s coerced compensation to France — often called the Independence Debt — exceeded 10 years of government revenue. It included payments for the value of the emancipated Haitians themselves.
To pay for this, he had to float loans in France, putting Haiti into a state of debt. Boyer attempted to enforce production through the Code Rural , enacted in 1826, but peasant freeholders, mostly former revolutionary soldiers, had no intention of returning to the forced labor they fought to escape.
For some, Haiti's presence in France is a political point. A former French colony, Haiti became the first to successfully gain independence through a slave revolt, in 1804.
It stated that France would recognize Haiti as an independent country in return for 150 million francs paid within five years. While this sum was later reduced to 90 million francs (in 1838), it was a crushing economic blow to Haiti. Boyer had to negotiate a loan from France of 30 million francs to pay the first part of the indemnity.
France should repay billions of dollars in reparations to Haiti to cover a debt formerly enslaved people were forced to pay in return for recognising the island's independence, a coalition of ...