1820s to 1914 · Haitianspan

Haiti was already poor by Caribbean standards in the 1820s

Geggus's main complaint is that nobody has explained when or why the country became poor.

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1820 · Diasporayear only

A third of those who landed in 1809 are still in New Orleans

Marriage registers and the federal census arrive at roughly the same figure.

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1820 to the 1890s · Diasporaspan

A society formed to remove black Americans manages fifteen thousand people

Eighty eight settlers landed in 1820, 1,420 within the decade, and the plan never scaled.

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1820 · Haitianyear only

Boyer's army arrives to find the king has already killed himself

Sixteen years of division end when a crumbling kingdom collapses from inside.

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1820 · Haitianyear only

A paralysed king shoots himself and the two Haitis become one

Christophe's own troops turned on him after a stroke, and Boyer inherited the whole country.

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15 August 1820 · Haitian

A stroke at Limonade mass begins the collapse of the kingdom

Paralysed but refusing to abdicate, Christophe watches his nobles and his guard change sides.

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8 October 1820 · Haitian

Christophe shoots himself and is buried that night in the Citadelle

The queen and princesses are put aboard a British ship; the heir is killed by rioters the next day.

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21 October 1820 · Haitian

Boyer declares Haiti one country at Gonaives

The kingdom of the north collapses and a single republic reaches from Jeremie to the Cap.

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1821 to 1844 · Haitianspan

Haiti spends twenty-three years as an occupying power next door

Girard counts four Haitian invasions of its neighbour and calls the country an empire, not a victim.

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March 1821 · Diasporamonth known

Greeks rise against Ottoman rule and start looking for foreign backers

The revolt that began in March 1821 sent expatriate agents across Europe hunting for money and recognition.

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April 1821 · Haitianmonth known

Haitian merchants form a trading circle against the foreign houses

Port-au-Prince, then Cap and Cayes, organised to loosen the grip of resident foreigners.

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1821 · Haitianyear only

Boyer suspends state land sales and sends officers to inspect

Conditional concessions replace sales, with productivity as the test of who keeps the land.

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20 August 1821 · Diaspora

Greek exiles in Paris write to Port-au-Prince asking Haiti for help

Four committee members address the president of Haiti as a fellow veteran of a war against empire.

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30 November 1821 · Caribbean

Santo Domingo throws off Spain and raises the flag of Colombia

Nunez de Caceres arrests the Spanish governor and plans to join Bolivar's republic.

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1822 · Caribbeanyear only

Boyer's first act in Santo Domingo is to abolish slavery

He then handed out smallholdings and took on the ranchers and the church.

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1822 to 1827 · Caribbeanspan

A special court tries 368 people for poisoning in six years

The largest poison crisis in this history happened in a colony then at peace.

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1822 · Haitianyear only

The Haitian army of 1822 eats two thirds of the national budget

One hundred thousand regulars and forty thousand national guard in a small country.

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15 January 1822 · Haitian

Boyer tells the Greeks that Haiti is broke and cannot send the guns

Haiti's president offers solidarity and classical flattery in place of the money the committee asked for.

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15 January 1822 · Haitian

Haiti opens relations with Greece before Greece exists as a state

Greek historians count Boyer's reply as the first official contact between the two countries.

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12 February 1822 · Caribbean

Seven thousand Haitian troops occupy Santo Domingo without a shot

The batteries and port fall at once and the conquest of the east is effectively finished.

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February 1822 · Caribbeanmonth known

Dominicans ask to join Haiti and Boyer unifies the island

Unification arrives by popular request, and enslaved Dominicans gain rights under Haitian law.

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1822 · Haitianyear only

Boyer takes the Spanish two thirds and rules the whole island

A generation of peace under a small clique that excluded blacks from office.

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2 September 1822 · Haitian

Boyer has Felix Darfour shot in a cemetery square in three days

A Sudanese journalist petitioned the Chamber on 30 August and was dead by 2 September.

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1823 · Africanyear only

Gezo beats Oyo and stops paying the tribute Dahomey owed for 75 years

He had taken the throne from a king deposed for losing wars, and needed to win them.

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1823 · Africanyear only

Gezo defeats Oyo and ends a century of Dahomian tribute

The wars Dahomey lost were edited out of the history its court recited every day.

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26 February 1823 · Haitian

Monroe tells the Senate that Haiti's colour law blocks recognition

Inginac had invited the first New World republic to recognise the second the previous July.

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1823 · Pre-Revolutionaryyear only

Clarkson waits thirty years to defend the revolution in his own name

Only in an essay arguing for gradual emancipation does British abolition's chief propagandist speak up again.

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1823 to 1904 · Haitianspan

Washington writes itself a right to intervene, then finds a pretext

Dupuy argues the invasion was planned long before Sam was killed, so Haitian instability was an excuse.

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24 December 1823 · Haitian

Boyer promises emigrants land in fee simple in the mountains

Outright ownership of state land went to arrivals from the United States.

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1824 · Diasporayear only

People brought from Florida free themselves on the Yasica

Their owner planned a gradual emancipation over years. They took it at once.

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1824 · Diasporayear only

Boyer pays to recruit black Americans and lets planters ship slaves in

The same president who funded free passage also allowed southern planters nine-year indentures in Haiti.

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1824 · Diasporayear only

Boyer offers land and citizenship to six thousand free New Yorkers

Haiti's president recruited farmers and artisans with free passage and a country without colour prejudice.

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summer 1824 · Diasporaseason

Philadelphia forms a society to send black Americans to Haiti

Richard Allen presided over an emigration office run out of the black church.

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1824 · Diasporayear only

Three ships carry emigrants from New York and Baltimore to Haiti

One Connecticut weekly counted a hundred and twenty people aboard a single vessel.

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1825 · Haitianyear only

Joute Lachenais dines at the right hand of the French envoy

The woman who made Boyer president sat covered in diamonds aboard the frigate La Circee.

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17 April 1825 · Haitian

France bills Haiti 150 million francs for existing

Fourteen warships in the harbor. An indemnity to compensate slaveholders for the loss of the enslaved.

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1825 · Haitianyear only

No power recognises Haiti until France charges for it3 sources

Recognition arrives twenty-one years late and attached to reparations paid to the dispossessed colonists.

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1825 · Haitianyear only

Boyer buys protection from invasion in an agreement with France

Destin's note frames the 1825 arrangement as purchased security rather than tribute.

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1825 · Haitianyear only

The indemnity formula came from Petion, on a Louisiana model

Casimir traces the buy-back idea to the Republic of the South, instituted only under Boyer.

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1825 · Haitianyear only

Boyer paid France to protect the land his class had already taken

Dupuy makes the indemnity a defence of confiscated property, not simply a French extortion.

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1825 to 1862 · Haitianspan

Recognition arrives over thirty-seven years, France first

Britain, the Netherlands and Denmark follow France by a year; Spain waits until 1855.

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1825 · Haitianyear only

The new Latin American republics leave Haiti off the guest list

At the first Pan-American talks Haiti was snubbed to keep Washington comfortable.

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11 July 1825 · Haitian

A senate of Boyer's own choosing ratifies the French indemnity2 sources

Haitian envoys had gone to Brussels and Paris seeking recognition and came home with a bill.

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July 1825 · Haitianmonth known

Mackau brings the price of recognition escorted by five hundred cannon

France sends a messenger, not a negotiator, and Boyer signs away the premise of 1804.

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1826 · Haitianyear only

Boyer writes Vodou into the penal code and leaves it there

Three to six months in prison for making a wanga, enforced whenever a local official cared to.

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1826 to 1994 · Haitianspan

A hundred forest laws and every one of them a punishment

No Haitian statute ever gave a farmer a reason to plant a tree.

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1826 · Caribbeanyear only

Paris shuts the poison court down and the planters protest

The governor disbanded it while predicting the poisonings would climb again at once.

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1826 · Haitianyear only

Married women are placed in law beside minors and the insane

Fourteen years later Boyer reversed it, and a provisional government undid that in three days short of a year.

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1826 · Haitianyear only

Three years of forced labour and no leaving your rural section

The army supervised the work, and the estates belonged to the generals.

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April 1826 · Diasporamonth known

Six thousand African Americans have settled in Haiti

The emigration that Richard Allen and William Watkins argued for runs into the conditions on the ground.

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1 May 1826 · Haitian

Britain sends a consul to Haiti and declines to call it recognition

MacKenzie's own papers say he was never accredited as a diplomatic agent.

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6 May 1826 · Haitian

The Code Rural tries to march the peasantry back onto the plantations

Passed by the lower chamber in April, approved by the Senate on 1 May and signed within the week.

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1826 · Caribbeanyear only

Bolivar tells Bolivia's congress the Haitian republic is legitimate

The liberator who took asylum in Haiti names its presidency as a model of legitimacy.

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the nineteenth century · Haitianspan

Dupuy blames failed proletarianisation for Haiti's stagnation

Unable to force peasants onto sugar estates, the elite lived off rents, trade and imports instead.

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1826 · Haitianyear only

Bolivar leaves Haiti off the guest list at Panama

The republic that armed the liberation of South America is excluded from the congress that organises it.

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1826 · Haitianyear only

Boyer's rural code needs bayonets and is ignored anyway4 sources

The most elaborate instrument of agricultural control in Haitian law fails because the land is already gone.

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1826 · Haitianyear only

A failed labour code is what actually creates the Haitian peasantry

Boyer's last attempt to tie workers to plantations collapsed, and smallholding became the country.

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6 September 1826 · Diaspora

A Bowdoin graduate makes Haiti the subject of his commencement address

John Brown Russwurm speaks on the condition and prospects of Haiti, then founds the first black newspaper.

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24 June 1828 · Diaspora

Four women from Saint Domingue found a teaching order in Baltimore

The Oblate Sisters of Providence existed to teach black children and had to be approved from Rome.

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1829 to 1830 · Caribbeanspan

A porcelain salesman sent to find markets finds slavery instead

Schoelcher's father sends him to Mexico, Florida, Louisiana and Cuba, and the trip redirects his life.

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