Our Land, Their Rule

While Hispaniola was under French rule, the French grew wealthy due to the increase in exports from Hispaniola. France wanted to maintain this positive effect so they developed more plantations that caused a decline of the island’s ecology (C). They imported more African slaves to help speed up the labor force done by the Hispaniola people. The Hispaniola people and Africans had to endure long workdays. Often, they died from injuries, infection, and tropical diseases. Frequently, they would suffer from malnutrition and starvation due to food shortage, drought, and natural disasters (G).  They cleared forests for more sugar plantations which caused massive erosion, and streams dried up which created decline in the production of goods. Despite their country’s decline, the Haitian people could not do anything but to help the French and watch the decline. 

 

Their colonial experience influenced the Haitians tremendously. Although they ended up accomplishing their independence, there are many remainders of the French left in Haiti’s life. First, there are two main religion in Haiti. There was a great population of Africans as slaves in Hispaniola who created their religion of Vodou. Vodou is a syncretic religion that incorporates west African belief systems (C). Besides the Vodou religion, there was also Roman Catholicism brought by the Europeans. Secondly, Haiti is a bilingual country with French and Creole (H). The majority of people speak Creole, and there are bilingual elites in the Haitian society. Their languages are closely related to the politics of Haiti. Most of the monolingual majority could not participate in government and politics. There was a great different of power and advantage to being bilingual elites, and French speaking upper class people controlled the society. Due to the frequent use of French, the cultures were centered around French speaking people. For example, speaking French would be the polite language to use in a formal occasion. The Creole language was considered less valuable even by the Haitians after independence (H). Even after their independence, Haiti continued their plantation that Spanish have established. However, when Spanish and French left there were no products for Haiti to export which led to the start of economic decline. The Haitian people have been under the force of other countries. After the battles with them, they tried to regain their plantation land but failed, and Haitian economy declined continuously (G). Small portions of plantations was not enough to produce enough profit to the workers. Today Haiti is a nation of nine million people 80 percent of whom are living on the thin edge of survival (G). Due to low wages, Haiti has a low standard in education, low life expectancy, deficient sanitary system (I). Colonial experience left detrimental changes to Haiti before and after independence.