Abolition as a Critical Juncture: Revolutions, Liberal Reforms, and the Divergent Legacies of French Forced Settlement in Haiti and the Antilles colonies

Olukunle Owolabi, Villanova University

Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas, and existing studies often emphasize the historical legacies of plantation slavery and ‘forced settlement’ colonization as factors that have hindered the country’s long-term development and postcolonial democratization. Haiti was the only country in the Americas to gain independence following a successful slave revolt against white planter control and French colonial domination (1791-1804), yet the country remains impoverished and underdeveloped relative to other postcolonial societies with similar levels of plantation slavery during the eighteenth century. Previous studies have explored comparisons between Haiti and the neighboring Dominican Republic (Diamond 2005; Harrison 2006; Jaramillo & Sancak 2009), but my research traces the divergent developmental pathways of Haiti and the French Antilles (i.e. Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Réunion) following the abolition of slavery. My research demonstrates that the Antilles colonies were able to promote more inclusive social, economic, and political outcomes relative to Haiti because they benefited from liberal institutional reforms that followed the triumph of Republicanism in France at the end of the nineteenth century. These reforms extended citizenship rights that expanded the political agency of emancipated Afro-descendants in the French Antilles colonies. Because Haiti gained independence several decades before the triumph of Republican democracy in France, its political sovereignty and long-term development as the world’s oldest black Republic was consistently threatened by French and U.S. neo-colonial hostility that persisted into the twentieth century. My research suggests that the timing of the abolition of slavery—relative to the triumph of liberal political institutions in the Atlantic world—had profound and lasting consequences for emancipated Afro-descendants in colonial and postcolonial societies.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 196. Postcolonial Development: Legacies and Strategies