Time:
5:00pm EST
Sponsor:
French Embassy Center of Excellence at Brown University in collaboration with Centers of Excellence at Louisiana State University and Yale University
Location:
John Carter Brown Library
Please join us for “1825 - 2025: France, Haiti and the Question of Indebtedness” presented by Marlene Daut, Chelsea Stieber and Bertie Mandelblatt on Wednesday, December 3 at 5pm at the John Carter Brown Library, 94 George St. Please use the Caspersen Entrance!
2025 marks the bicentennial of King Charles X’s 1825 Royal Ordinance demanding that Haiti pay 150 million gold francs to former French colonists and slaveholders in exchange for recognition of its independence, declared on January 1, 1804. As is well known, this punitive indemnity was made even more damaging by the massive loans Haiti had to take out from French banks to settle its so-called “debt,” effectively burdening the nation with a “double debt” which some observers on both sides of the Atlantic now refer to as the “ransom-debt” of independence. Despite a reduction by more than half in 1838, it took many decades to pay off the 112 million francs in indemnity, loans, and interests (i.e., the equivalent of nearly 560 million in today’s dollars). A recent New York Times investigation shows that Haiti ultimately paid the equivalent of between 22 billion and 110 billion US dollars. Although former French president François Hollande declared that reparations for Haiti were a non-starter, economist Thomas Piketty has recently made a compelling case that France owes “at least” 28 billion dollars to Haiti as reparations for France’s role in this crime against humanity. Profoundly shaping Haiti’s economic future, the indemnity of 1825 thus paved the way for two centuries of foreign interference and direct intervention in the country’s social and political life. Today, as we witness the unfolding of another U.N.-backed mission to restore “law and order” in Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas, this ruinous indemnity continues to condition the Haitian people’s experience of sovereignty and self-determination, both at home and in the diaspora.
https://events.brown.edu/event/322659-1825-2025-france-haiti-and-the-question-of