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The two main points of contention are: 1) While "wall street" did want the U.S. to invade Haiti to increase profits, there were other reasons for the U.S. to i

The two main points of contention are: 1) While "wall street" did want the U.S. to invade Haiti to increase profits, there were other reasons for the U.S. to invade as well. Specifically, there was a worry that Germany would invade (Germany was 80% of Haiti's trade). This was during WWI where there were fears about Germany's Latin America business dealings. After the invasion, it appears Citibank (aka "wall street") lost out due to increased competition. 2) Haiti had a number of structural differences that would have prevented it from developing even if France didn't force Haiti to pay for its freedom. One example is that Haiti tore down their plantations and distributed land among individual farmers. These farmers were not economically productive and prevented Haiti from adopting new technology as it became available. The other example is that Haiti had extreme instability even before France demanded payment. Leaders were frequently assassinated and the government even split in two for some time. The author of this post feels the NYT glossed over the facts in order to paint a narrative.

next_xibalba 4y ago
The larger point, to my reading, is how NYT has published ahistorical, ideology first products and presented and pushed them as history. Even in the face of criticism from historians who are experts in the covered subject matter.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  "Criticism from historians" is normal for everything. Historians criticize work that they even revere. The presence of academic criticism is not evidence that the NYT piece is an "ahistorical, ideology first product". In fact, the majority of criticism from the academic community (as mentioned in the article) is the fact that the historians that were consulted on this piece weren't named in the text.
  - hitekker 4y ago
    I think the GP means that the NYT has a recent history of peddling journalistic rags as academic papers, without the approval of the academic experts they've consulted. One of those fact checkers even wrote an article about how they were ignored by the NYT: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-project-new-york-times-mistake-122248 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-proje...
    - UncleMeat 4y ago
      And I'm saying that your portrayal is foolish. From the very article you link > Overall, the 1619 Project is a much-needed corrective to the blindly celebratory histories that once dominated our understanding of the past—histories that wrongly suggested racism and slavery were not a central part of U.S. history. The 1619 Project contained historical errors that the authors should have avoided. But historians working in this area do not consider it to be a "journalistic rag" even as they criticize it. As I mentioned in my post, academic criticism is not evidence that a piece is devoid of merit.
      - somenameforme 4y ago
        You're misrepresenting that article. That article was not some random historian offering an academic criticism. That person was hand-picked by the NYTimes to "fact-check" their article. They undoubtedly chose her because of her ideological background, thinking that she would be okay with revisionary history. She wasn't. So they ignored her.
        UncleMeat 4y ago
        I do not believe that I am misrepresenting the article. The reason I do not believe that is because I am personal friends with an unusual number of historians who work in early US history and the history of race in the US. The quote I pulled from the article very neatly sums up their opinion of the 1619 project. The NYT made fairly basic and preventable factual errors in the 1619 project. They should not have done this. This is not new or interesting or controversial information among relevant historians. What is controversial among relevant historians is the conclusion that therefore the 1619 project is ideological bullshit that shouldn't be seen as anything other than garbage. The author of the article you link was indeed correct - factual errors became a lightning rod for reactionaries to dismiss the work as propaganda. But that's not actually how criticism of historical writing works in the academic community. I suspect that if I spoke with the author of this piece, as I have spoken to many people who I suspect she would call colleagues, she'd be more likely to agree with my presentation than yours. All historical writing is "revisionist history." This term is not actually a slur in the academic community because each historian is almost necessarily writing on a topic that many historians have written on before and their work is in dialogue with the work that came before. Presenting a historical narrative from another perspective or through a different methodological lens is not bad nor does it attack or destroy the work that came before. Braudel has claims that are outright wrong but The Mediterranean is heralded as a triumph. Said has claims that don't hold up today but Orientalism is a critical step forward for the field. Heck, even fucking Foucault is seen as essential writing for historians despite him having all sorts of factual errors in his work. Historical writing should seek to be based in fact. But fucking up (even very badly) is not a reason to declare a work to be propaganda.
- MomoXenosaga 4y ago
  Historians have ideology too. In fact the field of history is not an exact science...
  - epgui 4y ago
    If I accept the premise that "the field of history is not an exact science" (which, to be clear, I do), it does not logically follow that this makes historians particularly ideological. Both may certainly be true (which I believe), but it's not a very good argument.
    - uoaei 4y ago
      I get the feeling your definition of "ideology" is a very specific, politically-motivated one, and not the one that most philosophers and social scientists have concurred is an appropriate default definition over the last 50-70 years. Everyone carries ideology with them. It is the source of subjective interpretations and judgments. And unfortunately for your position, we have more or less come to the consensus that all language and communication is fundamentally subjective: this means that no statements or actions are without ideology.
- darth_avocado 4y ago
  The NYT article was not “ahistorical”, something that the author points out was the facts were mostly correct. The problem here is the narrative that is built based on the facts is not accurate and conclusions weren’t scientifically drawn.
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > The problem here is the narrative that is built based on the facts is not accurate and conclusions weren’t scientifically drawn. Yeah, I think you always have to read things like the NYT with an eye towards their demonstrated institutional biases. I think they can be trusted to get the facts right (even if that fact is "ABC made claim XYZ," when XYZ turns out to have been wrong), and I don't really see a better alternative for getting facts about current events. That said, I don't think journalists at the NYT are the right people to be writing revisionist histories of events that are very much not current. If they want to publish stuff like that, it would better if the hired some actual historians to do these projects (instead of just trying to use them as QC).
- sangnoir 4y ago
  > The larger point, to my reading, is how NYT has published ahistorical, ideology first products and presented and pushed them as history[...] That reads like a misrepresentation of TFA: the author conceded that the historical facts reported by the NYT are accurate, but they disagree with the tone and conclusion. The author's angle is a weird one: author thinks that the article(s) should be read as an academic paper (no reason given), and then lobs criticism at it for not being a good academic paper.
  - mensetmanusman 4y ago
    You can use any series of truths to weave a lie, this has been known since antiquity.
    - sangnoir 4y ago
      "Ahistorical" has a specific meaning, which does not apply here.
- overtonwhy 4y ago
  Oh the larger point is an attempt to discredit the newspaper of record for the USA. Thanks for clarifying that you're trying to spin colonial slavery as a good thing because of "liberal media bias".
  - lp0_on_fire 4y ago
    That "newspaper of record" doesn't need a lot of outside help to discredit itself given the state of it in the last decade and a half.
    - fortuna86 4y ago
      How was Tucker Carlson tonight, did he own the libs to your satisfaction ?
      - lp0_on_fire 4y ago
        I don't have cable and don't watch Tucker, but good attempt at a burn nevertheless.
- coldtea 4y ago
  >NYT has published ahistorical, ideology first products and presented and pushed them as history Well, isn't that the whole business of the NYT since forever, only with "history" usually replaced with "news", and "ideology first" sometimes being "the government says so"?
- watwut 4y ago
  The primary criticism was that historians did not get enough credit.
- cyanydeez 4y ago
  Right! Being wrong is the larger point
- refurb 4y ago
  They are just copying the kinds of clickbait though see all over the internet and highly upvoted on HN. People love it when their biases are confirmed.
  - RC_ITR 4y ago
    Like how an article titled 'The NYT is wrong about Haiti' is upvoted by hundreds of people who (likely) have never been to Haiti? And maybe 1-2 people who had ever heard of the economist who wrote it before?
    - refurb 4y ago
      Pretty much! I pretty much assume everything I read online is a lie unless proven otherwise.
selimthegrim 4y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31471067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31471067 (I clarified here that a cartel of Haitians of German origin controlled the ports which added up to 80% of Haitian trade)
RC_ITR 4y ago
I think the fallacy that the author misses in all this is that problems compound (something I notice that academics often ignore because their narrow focus.) Sure, Haiti was not at the cutting edge of technology but the staggering amount of debt they owed France certainly didn't help them catch up Sure, the US didn't want a German puppet in the Caribbean but it's mostly because the US liked the profit margins of being the sole puppet master To make matters worse, he makes a case for a more nuanced portrait, but then titles the thing The New York Times is Wrong About Haiti In general, I'm surprised this article is getting so much traction here when it combines two much maligned (by HN) rhetorical styles, but I think it's because of some emerging culture war against the NYT.
- DANK_YACHT 4y ago
  You're falling into the same trap the author asserts the NYT has fallen into. You're right, debt to the French didn't help Haiti's situation, but that doesn't mean that the debt to France caused Haiti's situation, which is essentially what the NYT article was implying. I think this resonates not because of an emerging culture war against the NYT, but because the NYT has chosen sides in an existing culture war, namely whether or not the imperialist past of Europe and the U.S. can be reconciled with the modern day world.
  - RC_ITR 4y ago
    I'm struggling to parse your definition of causality here. If I have a pre-existing condition that wouldn't have killed me this year, then I get COVID and die, what caused my death? EDIT: And let's be clear here, the author blithely ignores the problems that slavery causes and acts as though the debt and the slavery are unique concepts.
    - DANK_YACHT 4y ago
      If a society is poorly structured for economic growth AND has debts that hamper economic growth, how do you say that the later caused the lack of economic growth but not the former? In your COVID example, had you not got COVID, you'd still be alive. In terms of Haiti, had they not had French debt, they may still have been in a similar situation economically. You were alive prior to having covid, so we can assume had you not become infected, you'd still be alive. Haiti wasn't economically prospering before the debt, so we can't assume they would have prospered without the debt. That's not to say it's impossible for Haiti to prosper without the debt, but you can't just definitively state that Haiti would prosper as if it were a fact. There isn't enough evidence to say.
trhway 4y ago
wrt. land reform - century and a half later Zimbabwe did pretty much the same with about the same result. The USSR famine of 1932 had while not exactly the same yet similar reasons - destruction of the successful private farmers and transfer of those lands into collective farms.
- shakow 4y ago
  > The USSR famine of 1932 had while not exactly the same yet similar reasons Partly only. The 1932 famine was much more complicated, and a conjunction of what you said, a weak economy a few years after WWI and the civil war, Stalin pushing on exporting massive quantities of grain to pay for industrial imports, bad weather, lack of information due to the fear within the state apparatus of being the shot messenger, and failure in resources allocation.
  - trhway 4y ago
    >Partly only. of course. Though for precision sake: >a weak economy a few years after WWI and the civil war that wasn't really an issue as food production has been pretty much restored during 192x "New Economical Policies" >lack of information due to the fear within the state apparatus of being the shot messenger, and failure in resources allocation. in many senses that was exactly the consequences of the transfer of control from successful private farmers ("kulaks") to collective farms >bad weather one can argue that private farmers would have fared much better through it than collective farms exactly due to management issues you mentioned. As far as i remember agriculture in USSR had always had a lot of production issues and officially blamed "bad weather", and USSR had to import grain. Interesting that after end of USSR, Russia and Ukraine has again (like before 1917 Revolution) become large exporters of grain - as if "bad weather" magically disappeared :)
    - shakow 4y ago
      > that wasn't really an issue as food production has been pretty much restored during 192x "New Economical Policies" Fair point; I meant that many efforts were devoted to the industrialization of the country, depriving the agricultural sectors from those – especially regarding resources allocation in brainpower and machinery. > in many senses that was exactly the consequences of the transfer of control from successful private farmers ("kulaks") to collective farms I disagree; it seems to me it was the consequences of Stalin's purges profiling at the horizon, and noone – especially among the low-rankers of the party hierarchy – wanting to find themselves on the wrong side of a Nagant for announcing a failure to fill the quotas. > as if "bad weather" magically disappeared :) Bad weather is a problem if (i), as you mentioned, the whole incentives for production are screwed up, and (ii) the agricultural infrastructure of the country is miles behind the state of the art. Imperial Russia was still relying mostly on human work for agricultural tasks in the 1910's, and 1930's USSR was miles behind 1950's-1980's USSR w.r.t. agronomical methods & knowledge, equipment, irrigation, mechanization, etc. So if bad weather would only be an inconvenience more recent USSR, it would become a compounding factor for a generalized famine in 1932.
908B64B197 4y ago
> The author of this post feels the NYT glossed over the facts in order to paint a narrative. It also omits the incredible amount of wealth stolen by the Duvalier regime
- akhmatova 4y ago
  Which happened 5-7 decades later. And which was not visited upon Haiti from some higher plane; but rather, was structurally enabled by the events of 1915.
NHQ 4y ago
> The author of this post feels the NYT glossed over the facts in order to paint a narrative. They must be new on planet earth. It is not even about right or wrong. The question is, what does the NYT narrative serve? Is it anti-french? The last time the U.S. had an official anti-French attitude was before the invasion of Iraq. Perhaps they are trying to give the French Globalists something to browbeat against the French Nationalists.
- nemothekid 4y ago
  >The question is, what does the NYT narrative serve? Is it anti-french? It serves the same narrative as a long Reddit comment waxing on and off about the America's imperialism in South America. While it's technically true, I think it just makes the writer feel more intellectual while being morally superior to some powerful status quo. These ideas travel from serious intellectuals, to pop-sci nerds, to reddit comments then ultimately to mainstream. Not to say that they are wrong, I'm just saying I don't think there's some nefarious conspiracy (not to say they don't exist), but this could be just a case of a writer making a name from himself.
ewzimm 4y ago
I think the most important point is that addressing inequality in this way feeds into the lie that exploitation is zero sum and those who benefited from it must now sacrifice to balance the scales. In truth, inequality makes everyone poorer, because we share the same world, and we all suffer when opportunity is hoarded. The richest often live the worst lives trying to maintain their advantages. Consider Putin spending decades obsessing over television news. Addressing inequality isn’t about punishing those who benefitted unfairly, it’s about making the world better for everyone. “But these projects are trying assign greater moral weight by claiming exaggerated economic consequences. But these claims can weaken the morality of the original crime. Take slavery as an example. Many journalists and even some historians claim that American economic prosperity would have been unattainable without slavery. If you truly believe that, and you look at the billions of lives that have been lifted out of poverty thanks to this prosperity, then a callous calculus could conclude that the abuses of slavery were a cost we had to pay. But economists do not believe this claim. In fact, economists believe at best slavery did not provide any growth benefits over free labor and at worst it impeded America's economic development. To me, this is a much stronger moral claim because not only was slavery terrible, it was unnecessary.”
joe_the_user 4y ago
Haiti had a number of structural differences that would have prevented it from developing even if France didn't force Haiti to pay for its freedom. So the robber who says: "If hadn't stolen your paycheck, you would have drunken it all away" is perfectly in their rights.
- wutbrodo 4y ago
  Or, the point is addressed to adults, who are interested in understanding history per se, and assessing the veracity of specific claims (like, "Haiti's underdevelopment is attributable to these reparation demands"). It's not addressed to the simpletons who can't escape childish black-and-white thinking in which reality doesn't exist outside of the ammunition it provides for taking sides. Tldr: it's ludicrous to hear the claim "reparations weren't responsible for Haiti's underdevelopment" and conclude "OH so you think the reparations were good??"
  - joe_the_user 4y ago
    The GP I replied (summarizing the artice): "Haiti had a number of structural differences that would have prevented it from developing even if France didn't force Haiti to pay for its freedom." This is not saying, "reparations weren't responsible for Haiti's underdevelopment". Money paid is economic opportunities lost. France was benefiting from the payments and Haitians were suffering. The argument being made is that this is either insignificant or OK because if France had not done this, Haiti would have been underdeveloped some other way. It's pretty exactly analogous to thief that steals from you on Friday and when confronted on Monday says "I'm not responsible for you being broke, you would have lost the money some other way". That's sort reprehensible even if it's true. Let I repeat even if it's true.
    - defen 4y ago
      It doesn't change the morality of the theft, but it is relevant when determining how the thief should make the victim whole. To use your paycheck analogy - consider these two situations: 1. The thief steals from you on your way to the bank, where you have a history of making on-time loan payments. The theft causes you to default on your loan and lose your car which leads to you losing your job. 2. The thief steals from you on your way to the tavern, where you have a history of drinking your paycheck. Wouldn't you agree that in scenario 1, the thief owes you more compensation than just the money he stole? Imagine if I said "If France hadn't forced Haiti to pay for its freedom, Haiti would have become a world leader in semiconductor manufacturing, like Taiwan". Do you have any evidence against that claim? Can you see why the extent of the damage is relevant for determining how France should make up for it?

next_xibalba 4y ago

The larger point, to my reading, is how NYT has published ahistorical, ideology first products and presented and pushed them as history. Even in the face of criticism from historians who are experts in the covered subject matter.

UncleMeat 4y ago
"Criticism from historians" is normal for everything. Historians criticize work that they even revere. The presence of academic criticism is not evidence that the NYT piece is an "ahistorical, ideology first product". In fact, the majority of criticism from the academic community (as mentioned in the article) is the fact that the historians that were consulted on this piece weren't named in the text.
- hitekker 4y ago
  I think the GP means that the NYT has a recent history of peddling journalistic rags as academic papers, without the approval of the academic experts they've consulted. One of those fact checkers even wrote an article about how they were ignored by the NYT: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-project-new-york-times-mistake-122248 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-proje...
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    And I'm saying that your portrayal is foolish. From the very article you link > Overall, the 1619 Project is a much-needed corrective to the blindly celebratory histories that once dominated our understanding of the past—histories that wrongly suggested racism and slavery were not a central part of U.S. history. The 1619 Project contained historical errors that the authors should have avoided. But historians working in this area do not consider it to be a "journalistic rag" even as they criticize it. As I mentioned in my post, academic criticism is not evidence that a piece is devoid of merit.
    - somenameforme 4y ago
      You're misrepresenting that article. That article was not some random historian offering an academic criticism. That person was hand-picked by the NYTimes to "fact-check" their article. They undoubtedly chose her because of her ideological background, thinking that she would be okay with revisionary history. She wasn't. So they ignored her.
      - UncleMeat 4y ago
        I do not believe that I am misrepresenting the article. The reason I do not believe that is because I am personal friends with an unusual number of historians who work in early US history and the history of race in the US. The quote I pulled from the article very neatly sums up their opinion of the 1619 project. The NYT made fairly basic and preventable factual errors in the 1619 project. They should not have done this. This is not new or interesting or controversial information among relevant historians. What is controversial among relevant historians is the conclusion that therefore the 1619 project is ideological bullshit that shouldn't be seen as anything other than garbage. The author of the article you link was indeed correct - factual errors became a lightning rod for reactionaries to dismiss the work as propaganda. But that's not actually how criticism of historical writing works in the academic community. I suspect that if I spoke with the author of this piece, as I have spoken to many people who I suspect she would call colleagues, she'd be more likely to agree with my presentation than yours. All historical writing is "revisionist history." This term is not actually a slur in the academic community because each historian is almost necessarily writing on a topic that many historians have written on before and their work is in dialogue with the work that came before. Presenting a historical narrative from another perspective or through a different methodological lens is not bad nor does it attack or destroy the work that came before. Braudel has claims that are outright wrong but The Mediterranean is heralded as a triumph. Said has claims that don't hold up today but Orientalism is a critical step forward for the field. Heck, even fucking Foucault is seen as essential writing for historians despite him having all sorts of factual errors in his work. Historical writing should seek to be based in fact. But fucking up (even very badly) is not a reason to declare a work to be propaganda.
MomoXenosaga 4y ago
Historians have ideology too. In fact the field of history is not an exact science...
- epgui 4y ago
  If I accept the premise that "the field of history is not an exact science" (which, to be clear, I do), it does not logically follow that this makes historians particularly ideological. Both may certainly be true (which I believe), but it's not a very good argument.
  - uoaei 4y ago
    I get the feeling your definition of "ideology" is a very specific, politically-motivated one, and not the one that most philosophers and social scientists have concurred is an appropriate default definition over the last 50-70 years. Everyone carries ideology with them. It is the source of subjective interpretations and judgments. And unfortunately for your position, we have more or less come to the consensus that all language and communication is fundamentally subjective: this means that no statements or actions are without ideology.
darth_avocado 4y ago
The NYT article was not “ahistorical”, something that the author points out was the facts were mostly correct. The problem here is the narrative that is built based on the facts is not accurate and conclusions weren’t scientifically drawn.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > The problem here is the narrative that is built based on the facts is not accurate and conclusions weren’t scientifically drawn. Yeah, I think you always have to read things like the NYT with an eye towards their demonstrated institutional biases. I think they can be trusted to get the facts right (even if that fact is "ABC made claim XYZ," when XYZ turns out to have been wrong), and I don't really see a better alternative for getting facts about current events. That said, I don't think journalists at the NYT are the right people to be writing revisionist histories of events that are very much not current. If they want to publish stuff like that, it would better if the hired some actual historians to do these projects (instead of just trying to use them as QC).
sangnoir 4y ago
> The larger point, to my reading, is how NYT has published ahistorical, ideology first products and presented and pushed them as history[...] That reads like a misrepresentation of TFA: the author conceded that the historical facts reported by the NYT are accurate, but they disagree with the tone and conclusion. The author's angle is a weird one: author thinks that the article(s) should be read as an academic paper (no reason given), and then lobs criticism at it for not being a good academic paper.
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  You can use any series of truths to weave a lie, this has been known since antiquity.
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    "Ahistorical" has a specific meaning, which does not apply here.
overtonwhy 4y ago
Oh the larger point is an attempt to discredit the newspaper of record for the USA. Thanks for clarifying that you're trying to spin colonial slavery as a good thing because of "liberal media bias".
- lp0_on_fire 4y ago
  That "newspaper of record" doesn't need a lot of outside help to discredit itself given the state of it in the last decade and a half.
  - fortuna86 4y ago
    How was Tucker Carlson tonight, did he own the libs to your satisfaction ?
    - lp0_on_fire 4y ago
      I don't have cable and don't watch Tucker, but good attempt at a burn nevertheless.
coldtea 4y ago
>NYT has published ahistorical, ideology first products and presented and pushed them as history Well, isn't that the whole business of the NYT since forever, only with "history" usually replaced with "news", and "ideology first" sometimes being "the government says so"?
watwut 4y ago
The primary criticism was that historians did not get enough credit.
cyanydeez 4y ago
Right! Being wrong is the larger point
refurb 4y ago
They are just copying the kinds of clickbait though see all over the internet and highly upvoted on HN. People love it when their biases are confirmed.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  Like how an article titled 'The NYT is wrong about Haiti' is upvoted by hundreds of people who (likely) have never been to Haiti? And maybe 1-2 people who had ever heard of the economist who wrote it before?
  - refurb 4y ago
    Pretty much! I pretty much assume everything I read online is a lie unless proven otherwise.

selimthegrim 4y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31471067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31471067 (I clarified here that a cartel of Haitians of German origin controlled the ports which added up to 80% of Haitian trade)

RC_ITR 4y ago

I think the fallacy that the author misses in all this is that problems compound (something I notice that academics often ignore because their narrow focus.) Sure, Haiti was not at the cutting edge of technology but the staggering amount of debt they owed France certainly didn't help them catch up Sure, the US didn't want a German puppet in the Caribbean but it's mostly because the US liked the profit margins of being the sole puppet master To make matters worse, he makes a case for a more nuanced portrait, but then titles the thing The New York Times is Wrong About Haiti In general, I'm surprised this article is getting so much traction here when it combines two much maligned (by HN) rhetorical styles, but I think it's because of some emerging culture war against the NYT.

DANK_YACHT 4y ago
You're falling into the same trap the author asserts the NYT has fallen into. You're right, debt to the French didn't help Haiti's situation, but that doesn't mean that the debt to France caused Haiti's situation, which is essentially what the NYT article was implying. I think this resonates not because of an emerging culture war against the NYT, but because the NYT has chosen sides in an existing culture war, namely whether or not the imperialist past of Europe and the U.S. can be reconciled with the modern day world.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  I'm struggling to parse your definition of causality here. If I have a pre-existing condition that wouldn't have killed me this year, then I get COVID and die, what caused my death? EDIT: And let's be clear here, the author blithely ignores the problems that slavery causes and acts as though the debt and the slavery are unique concepts.
  - DANK_YACHT 4y ago
    If a society is poorly structured for economic growth AND has debts that hamper economic growth, how do you say that the later caused the lack of economic growth but not the former? In your COVID example, had you not got COVID, you'd still be alive. In terms of Haiti, had they not had French debt, they may still have been in a similar situation economically. You were alive prior to having covid, so we can assume had you not become infected, you'd still be alive. Haiti wasn't economically prospering before the debt, so we can't assume they would have prospered without the debt. That's not to say it's impossible for Haiti to prosper without the debt, but you can't just definitively state that Haiti would prosper as if it were a fact. There isn't enough evidence to say.

trhway 4y ago

wrt. land reform - century and a half later Zimbabwe did pretty much the same with about the same result. The USSR famine of 1932 had while not exactly the same yet similar reasons - destruction of the successful private farmers and transfer of those lands into collective farms.

shakow 4y ago
> The USSR famine of 1932 had while not exactly the same yet similar reasons Partly only. The 1932 famine was much more complicated, and a conjunction of what you said, a weak economy a few years after WWI and the civil war, Stalin pushing on exporting massive quantities of grain to pay for industrial imports, bad weather, lack of information due to the fear within the state apparatus of being the shot messenger, and failure in resources allocation.
- trhway 4y ago
  >Partly only. of course. Though for precision sake: >a weak economy a few years after WWI and the civil war that wasn't really an issue as food production has been pretty much restored during 192x "New Economical Policies" >lack of information due to the fear within the state apparatus of being the shot messenger, and failure in resources allocation. in many senses that was exactly the consequences of the transfer of control from successful private farmers ("kulaks") to collective farms >bad weather one can argue that private farmers would have fared much better through it than collective farms exactly due to management issues you mentioned. As far as i remember agriculture in USSR had always had a lot of production issues and officially blamed "bad weather", and USSR had to import grain. Interesting that after end of USSR, Russia and Ukraine has again (like before 1917 Revolution) become large exporters of grain - as if "bad weather" magically disappeared :)
  - shakow 4y ago
    > that wasn't really an issue as food production has been pretty much restored during 192x "New Economical Policies" Fair point; I meant that many efforts were devoted to the industrialization of the country, depriving the agricultural sectors from those – especially regarding resources allocation in brainpower and machinery. > in many senses that was exactly the consequences of the transfer of control from successful private farmers ("kulaks") to collective farms I disagree; it seems to me it was the consequences of Stalin's purges profiling at the horizon, and noone – especially among the low-rankers of the party hierarchy – wanting to find themselves on the wrong side of a Nagant for announcing a failure to fill the quotas. > as if "bad weather" magically disappeared :) Bad weather is a problem if (i), as you mentioned, the whole incentives for production are screwed up, and (ii) the agricultural infrastructure of the country is miles behind the state of the art. Imperial Russia was still relying mostly on human work for agricultural tasks in the 1910's, and 1930's USSR was miles behind 1950's-1980's USSR w.r.t. agronomical methods & knowledge, equipment, irrigation, mechanization, etc. So if bad weather would only be an inconvenience more recent USSR, it would become a compounding factor for a generalized famine in 1932.

908B64B197 4y ago

> The author of this post feels the NYT glossed over the facts in order to paint a narrative. It also omits the incredible amount of wealth stolen by the Duvalier regime

akhmatova 4y ago
Which happened 5-7 decades later. And which was not visited upon Haiti from some higher plane; but rather, was structurally enabled by the events of 1915.

NHQ 4y ago

> The author of this post feels the NYT glossed over the facts in order to paint a narrative. They must be new on planet earth. It is not even about right or wrong. The question is, what does the NYT narrative serve? Is it anti-french? The last time the U.S. had an official anti-French attitude was before the invasion of Iraq. Perhaps they are trying to give the French Globalists something to browbeat against the French Nationalists.

nemothekid 4y ago
>The question is, what does the NYT narrative serve? Is it anti-french? It serves the same narrative as a long Reddit comment waxing on and off about the America's imperialism in South America. While it's technically true, I think it just makes the writer feel more intellectual while being morally superior to some powerful status quo. These ideas travel from serious intellectuals, to pop-sci nerds, to reddit comments then ultimately to mainstream. Not to say that they are wrong, I'm just saying I don't think there's some nefarious conspiracy (not to say they don't exist), but this could be just a case of a writer making a name from himself.

ewzimm 4y ago

I think the most important point is that addressing inequality in this way feeds into the lie that exploitation is zero sum and those who benefited from it must now sacrifice to balance the scales. In truth, inequality makes everyone poorer, because we share the same world, and we all suffer when opportunity is hoarded. The richest often live the worst lives trying to maintain their advantages. Consider Putin spending decades obsessing over television news. Addressing inequality isn’t about punishing those who benefitted unfairly, it’s about making the world better for everyone. “But these projects are trying assign greater moral weight by claiming exaggerated economic consequences. But these claims can weaken the morality of the original crime. Take slavery as an example. Many journalists and even some historians claim that American economic prosperity would have been unattainable without slavery. If you truly believe that, and you look at the billions of lives that have been lifted out of poverty thanks to this prosperity, then a callous calculus could conclude that the abuses of slavery were a cost we had to pay. But economists do not believe this claim. In fact, economists believe at best slavery did not provide any growth benefits over free labor and at worst it impeded America's economic development. To me, this is a much stronger moral claim because not only was slavery terrible, it was unnecessary.”

joe_the_user 4y ago

Haiti had a number of structural differences that would have prevented it from developing even if France didn't force Haiti to pay for its freedom. So the robber who says: "If hadn't stolen your paycheck, you would have drunken it all away" is perfectly in their rights.

wutbrodo 4y ago
Or, the point is addressed to adults, who are interested in understanding history per se, and assessing the veracity of specific claims (like, "Haiti's underdevelopment is attributable to these reparation demands"). It's not addressed to the simpletons who can't escape childish black-and-white thinking in which reality doesn't exist outside of the ammunition it provides for taking sides. Tldr: it's ludicrous to hear the claim "reparations weren't responsible for Haiti's underdevelopment" and conclude "OH so you think the reparations were good??"
- joe_the_user 4y ago
  The GP I replied (summarizing the artice): "Haiti had a number of structural differences that would have prevented it from developing even if France didn't force Haiti to pay for its freedom." This is not saying, "reparations weren't responsible for Haiti's underdevelopment". Money paid is economic opportunities lost. France was benefiting from the payments and Haitians were suffering. The argument being made is that this is either insignificant or OK because if France had not done this, Haiti would have been underdeveloped some other way. It's pretty exactly analogous to thief that steals from you on Friday and when confronted on Monday says "I'm not responsible for you being broke, you would have lost the money some other way". That's sort reprehensible even if it's true. Let I repeat even if it's true.
  - defen 4y ago
    It doesn't change the morality of the theft, but it is relevant when determining how the thief should make the victim whole. To use your paycheck analogy - consider these two situations: 1. The thief steals from you on your way to the bank, where you have a history of making on-time loan payments. The theft causes you to default on your loan and lose your car which leads to you losing your job. 2. The thief steals from you on your way to the tavern, where you have a history of drinking your paycheck. Wouldn't you agree that in scenario 1, the thief owes you more compensation than just the money he stole? Imagine if I said "If France hadn't forced Haiti to pay for its freedom, Haiti would have become a world leader in semiconductor manufacturing, like Taiwan". Do you have any evidence against that claim? Can you see why the extent of the damage is relevant for determining how France should make up for it?