Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti, is a country in the Caribbean on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica and south of The Bahamas. It occupies the western side of the island, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Haiti is the third largest country in the Caribbean by area, and with an estimated population of 11.4 million, it is the most populous Caribbean country. The capital and largest city is Port-au-Prince.
Haiti was originally inhabited by Indigenous peoples, known as the Taíno. In 1492, Christopher Columbus established the first European settlement in the Americas, La Navidad, on its northeastern coast. The island was part of the Spanish Empire until 1697, when the western portion was ceded to France and became Saint-Domingue, dominated by sugarcane plantations worked by enslaved Africans. The 1791–1804 Haitian Revolution made Haiti the first sovereign state in the Caribbean, the second republic in the Americas, the first country in the Americas to officially abolish slavery, and the only country in history established by a slave revolt. The independent state began as an empire, later splitting into two nations before reunifying in 1820; a second empire was established under Faustin Soulouque before the return of the republic in 1859. The 19th century also saw political instability, international isolation, a crippling debt to France, and failed invasions of the Dominican Republic, including a costly war. U.S. forces occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934, followed by the dictatorial rule of the Duvalier family (1957–1986). Following a coup d'état in 1991, a U.S.-led multinational force intervened in 1994; a second coup in 2004 was followed by a United Nations intervention. In the 2010s, a catastrophic earthquake and a large-scale cholera outbreak devastated the country.
Historically poor and politically unstable, Haiti has faced severe economic and political crises, gang activity displacing over 1.3 million, and the collapse of its government. The presidency has been vacant since the assassination of Jovenel Moïse in July 2021, while the National Assembly and the judiciary have been rendered inoperative, leaving the country in virtual anarchy with almost nonexistent state control. It is one of the world's least developed countries and is the only country in the Americas classified as such. With no elected officials remaining, Haiti has been described as a failed state.
Haiti is a founding member of the United Nations, Organization of American States, Association of Caribbean States, and the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie. In addition to CARICOM, it is a member of the International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, and Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.
Etymology
Haiti (also earlier Hayti) comes from the Indigenous Taíno language and means "land of high mountains"; it was the Native name for the entire island of Hispaniola. The name was restored by Haitian revolutionary Jean-Jacques Dessalines as the official name of independent Saint-Domingue, as a tribute to the Amerindian predecessors. Another theory on the name Haiti is its origin in African tradition; in Fon language, one of the most spoken by the bossales (Haitians born in Africa), Ayiti-Tomè means: "From nowadays this land is our land."
In French, the ï in Haïti has a diacritical mark, a diaeresis (used to show that the second vowel is pronounced separately, as in the word naïve), while the H is silent. (In English, this rule for the pronunciation is often disregarded, thus the spelling Haiti is used.) There are different anglicizations for its pronunciation such as HIGH-ti, high-EE-ti and haa-EE-ti, which are still in use, but HAY-ti is the most widespread and best-established. In French, Haiti's nickname is La Perle des Antilles ("Pearl of the Antilles") because of both its natural beauty and the amount of wealth it accumulated for the Kingdom of France. In Haitian Creole, it is spelled and pronounced with a y but no H: Ayiti. In the Haitian community the country has multiple nicknames: Ayiti-Toma (as its origin in Ayiti Tomè), Ayiti-Cheri (Ayiti my Darling), Tè-Desalin (Dessalines' Land) or Lakay (Home).
History
Pre-Columbian era
The island of Hispaniola, of which Haiti occupies the western three-eighths, has been inhabited since about 6,000 years ago by Indigenous peoples who are thought to have arrived from Central or northern South America. These Archaic Age people are thought to have been largely hunter-gatherers. During the 1st millennium BC, the Arawakan-speaking ancestors of the Taino people began to migrate into the Caribbean. Unlike the Archaic peoples, they practiced the intensive production of pottery and agriculture. The earliest evidence of the ancestors of the Taino people on Hispaniola is the Ostionoid culture, which dates to around 600 AD.
In Taíno society the largest unit of political organization was led by a cacique, or chief, as the Europeans understood them. At the time of European contact, Hispaniola was divided among five 'caciquedoms': the Magua in the northeast, the Marien in the northwest, the Jaragua in the southwest, the Maguana in the central regions of Cibao, and the Higüey in the southeast.
Taíno cultural artifacts include cave paintings in several locations in the country. These have become national symbols of Haiti and tourist attractions. Modern-day Léogâne, started as a French colonial town in the southwest, is beside the former capital of the caciquedom of Xaraguá.
According to the Puerto Rican historian Cayetano Coll y Toste, the German explorer Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius was the first person to describe the Indigenous peoples of Haiti as "Taini" (Taino). The archaeologist L. Antonio Curet has written that Martius described these peoples as "Taini...perhaps by mistaking the qualifier for an ethnonym".
Colonial era
Spanish rule (1492–1625)
Navigator Christopher Columbus landed in Haiti on 6 December 1492, in an area that he named Môle-Saint-Nicolas, and claimed the island for the Crown of Castile. On 25 December his ship the Santa María ran aground near the present site of Cap-Haïtien. Columbus left 39 men on the island, who founded the settlement of La Navidad. Relations with the native peoples were initially good; however the settlers were later killed by the Taíno.
The sailors carried endemic Eurasian infectious diseases, causing epidemics that killed a large number of native people. The first recorded smallpox epidemic in the Americas erupted on Hispaniola in 1507. Their numbers were further reduced by the harshness of the encomienda system, in which the Spanish forced natives to work in gold mines and plantations. The Spanish passed the Laws of Burgos (1512–1513) which forbade the maltreatment of natives, endorsed their conversion to Catholicism, and gave legal framework to encomiendas. The natives were brought to these sites to work in specific plantations or industries.
As the Spanish re-focused their colonization efforts on the greater riches of mainland Central and South America, Hispaniola became reduced largely to a trading and refueling post. As a result piracy became widespread, encouraged by European powers hostile to Spain such as France (based on Île de la Tortue) and England. The Spanish largely abandoned the western third of the island, focusing their colonization effort on the eastern two-thirds. The western part of the island was thus gradually settled by French buccaneers; among them was Bertrand d'Ogeron, who succeeded in growing tobacco and recruited many French colonial families from Martinique and Guadeloupe. In 1697 France and Spain settled their hostilities on the island by way of the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697, which divided Hispaniola between them.
French rule (1625–1804)
France received the western third and subsequently named it Saint-Domingue, the French equivalent of Santo Domingo, the Spanish colony on Hispaniola. The French set about creating sugar and coffee plantations, worked by vast numbers of those enslaved imported from Africa, and Saint-Domingue grew to become their richest colonial possession, generating 40% of France’s foreign trade and doubling the wealth generation of all of England’s colonies, combined.
The French settlers were outnumbered by enslaved persons by almost 10 to 1. According to the 1788 census, Haiti's population consisted of nearly 25,000 Europeans, 22,000 free coloreds and 700,000 Africans in slavery. In the north of the island, those enslaved were able to retain many ties to African cultures, religion and language; these ties were continually being renewed by newly imported Africans. Some West Africans in slavery held on to their traditional Vodou beliefs by secretly syncretizing it with Catholicism.
The French enacted the Code Noir ("Black Code"), prepared by Jean-Baptiste Colbert and ratified by Louis XIV, which established rules on slave treatment and permissible freedoms. Saint-Domingue has been described as one of the most brutally efficient slave colonies; at the end of the 18th century it was supplying two-thirds of Europe's tropical produce while one-third of newly imported Africans died within a few years. Many enslaved persons died from diseases such as smallpox and typhoid fever. They had low birth rates, and there is evidence that some women aborted fetuses rather than give birth to children within the bonds of slavery. The colony's environment also suffered, as forests were cleared to make way for plantations and the land was overworked so as to extract maximum profit for French plantation owners.
As in its Louisiana colony, the French colonial government allowed some rights to free people of color (gens de couleur), the mixed-race descendants of European male colonists and African enslaved females (and later, mixed-race women). Over time, many were released from slavery, and they established a separate social class. White French Creole fathers frequently sent their mixed-race sons to France for their education. Some men of color were admitted into the military. More of the free people of color lived in the south of the island, near Port-au-Prince, and many intermarried within their community. They frequently worked as artisans and tradesmen and began to own some property, including enslaved persons of their own. The free people of color petitioned the colonial government to expand their rights.
The brutality of slave life led many people in bondage to escape to mountainous regions, where they set up their own autonomous communities and became known as maroons. One maroon leader, François Mackandal, led a rebellion in the 1750s; however, he was later captured and executed by the French.
Haitian Revolution (1791–1804)
Inspired by the French Revolution of 1789 and principles of the rights of man, the French settlers and free people of color pressed for greater political freedom and more civil rights. Tensions between these two groups led to conflict, and a militia of free-coloreds was set up in 1790 by Vincent Ogé, resulting in his capture, torture and execution. Sensing an opportunity, in August 1791 the first slave armies were established in northern Haiti under the leadership of Toussaint Louverture inspired by the Vodou houngan (priest) Boukman, and backed by the Spanish in Santo Domingo – soon a full-blown slave rebellion had broken out across the entire colony.
In 1792 , the French First Republic sent three commissioners with troops to re-establish control. To build an alliance with the gens de couleur and enslaved persons, commissioners Léger-Félicité Sonthonax and Étienne Polverel abolished slavery in the colony. Six months later, the National Convention endorsed abolition and extended it to all the French colonies.
The United States oscillated between supporting or not supporting Louverture and the emerging country of Haiti, depending on who was President of the US. George Washington, who was a slave holder and isolationist, kept the United States neutral, although private US citizens at times provided aid to French planters trying to put down the revolt. John Adams, a vocal opponent of both slavery and Revolutionary France, fully supported the slave revolt by providing diplomatic recognition, financial support, munitions and warships (including the USS Constitution) beginning in 1798. This support ended in 1801 when Thomas Jefferson, another slave-holding president, took office and recalled the US Navy.
With slavery abolished, Louverture pledged allegiance to France, and he fought off the British and Spanish forces who had taken advantage of the situation and had invaded Saint-Domingue. The Spanish were later forced to cede their part of the island to France under the terms of the Peace of Basel in 1795, uniting the island under one government. However, an insurgency against French rule broke out in the east, and in the west there was fighting between Louverture's forces and the free people of color led by André Rigaud in the War of the Knives (1799–1800). The United States' support for the blacks in the war contributed to their victory over the mulattoes. More than 25,000 whites and free blacks left the island as refugees.
After Louverture created a separatist constitution and proclaimed himself governor-general for life, Napoléon Bonaparte in 1802 sent an expedition of 20,000 soldiers and as many sailors under the command of his brother-in-law Charles Leclerc to reassert French control. The French achieved some victories, but within a few months most of their army had died from yellow fever. Ultimately more than 50,000 French troops died in an attempt to retake the colony, including 18 generals. The French managed to capture Louverture, transporting him to France for trial. He was imprisoned at Fort de Joux, where he died in 1803 of exposure and possibly tuberculosis.