Bellegarde combines a compressed national history with a firsthand account of what the American occupation did to Haiti's institutions. The opening chapters run from the destruction of colonial Saint-Domingue through independence in 1804 and the long succession of nineteenth-century rulers -- Dessalines, Christophe, Petion, Boyer -- taking in the indemnity owed to France and the brief union with the Spanish east.

The heart of the book is 1915 and after. Bellegarde reconstructs the ratification of the Haitian-American convention, reproducing the speech of the deputy from Gonaives who tore off his rosette and resigned rather than sign, and sets out what the treaty actually conceded: a receiver general and a financial adviser named on Washington's designation, customs revenue pledged in a fixed order, a gendarmerie left as the republic's only armed force.

As minister of public instruction from 1918 to 1921 he testifies personally, listing the teacher-training schools Haitian law authorised and American financial officers refused to fund.