1890s to 1903 · Haitianspan

Syrian and Lebanese arrivals take over Haiti's trading houses

Six thousand immigrants by 1903, holding the major firms and the transport and communication systems.

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1890s to 1946 · Haitianspan

A woman inherits her mother's spirits and later hires a priestess

Mariline fed her lwa at home for decades before a temple took the work over.

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October 1890 · Diasporamonth known

Mississippi weighs deporting its black population and picks the poll tax

The Jackson Clarion floated the Congo and the constitutional convention chose paperwork.

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1891 · Caribbeanyear only

Jamaica holds an exhibition and starts its tourist industry

Haiti had tried the same thing ten years earlier and got nothing back for it.

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25 January 1891 · Haitian

An admiral anchors off the capital and summons the minister aboard

Gherardi never came ashore. He hailed Frederick Douglass out to the ship.

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1891 · Haitianyear only

Haiti refuses the American demand for a deep-water port

Firmin, who had already answered Gobineau in print, helps turn down a naval base at the Mole.

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1892 to 1900 · Africanspan

France conquers Dahomey and deposes its last king in 1900

The palace at Abomey became a museum, and the rituals kept running inside it.

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1892 to 1930 · Diasporaspan

Ellis Island takes in four million Italians in three decades

By the census of 1930 one American in ten was foreign born and another fifth had a foreign parent.

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4 November 1892 · African

The women soldiers of Dahomey fight their last battle at Cana

Their end is dated precisely and their beginning is argued over by a century of writers.

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1893 to 1904 · Haitianspan

Haiti sings a poem by Oswald Durand as its national anthem

Quand nos Aieux brisèrent leurs entraves served eleven years before La Dessalinienne replaced it.

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1893 · Caribbeanyear only

A village riot produces the report that names the peasantry as a class of owners

The petitioners themselves used a different word: we, the small landowners.

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2 January 1893 · Diaspora

Douglass dedicates Haiti's pavilion on an independence day

The first foreign pavilion finished at the fair opens with a speech on the only self-made black republic.

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1 May to 30 October 1893 · Diasporaspan

The Haitian pavilion becomes the base for black protest

Wells and Douglass hand out their pamphlet on why the colored American is absent from the fair.

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1893 · Africanyear only

Four hundred years after the first baptism, the Kongo gets a New Testament it can read

Holman Bentley worked on it for years with a young man named Nlemvo.

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1894 to 1929 · Diasporaspan

Ordinary laws are turned against the healers of New Orleans

Mail fraud, medical licensing and fortune telling statutes did the work that no anti-Vodou law could.

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31 December 1894 · Haitian

An illiterate peasant woman appoints and dismisses Haitian ministers

She asked the public works minister for money, was refused, and had him removed the same season.

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1896 · Haitianyear only

The bishop of Cap-Haitien declares a pitiless war on the country's own priests

He called the practice a tumour and its priests an army of brigands.

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24 March 1896 · Haitian

A president's hat falls off, and he rides to Jacmel anyway and dies

The most famous omen in Haitian song is an event with a date.

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18 May 1896 · Diaspora

Separate but equal is announced on Haitian flag day2 sources

The case was brought by a New Orleans committee of Haitian descent.

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29 May 1896 · Haitian

Port-au-Prince police are ordered to hand Vodou dancers to the courts

A circular to district commanders turned a religious campaign into routine policing.

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26 July 1896 · Haitian

Civic instruction enters the Haitian school programme

A decree under the minister P. M. Appolon put the subject on the official curriculum.

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1898 · Haitianyear only

A Russian-born American soap maker arrives in Haiti

Harris Lifschitz would spend two decades each in Russia and Haiti and only eight years in the United States.

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September 1899 · Caribbeanmonth known

Hesketh Bell spends six years trying to import a new planter class into Dominica

Lime export values rose fourfold while the word peasant left the official record.

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