the 1900s to the 1930s · Africanspan

Ugandan cotton farmers learn politics from their landlords

Rents set by absentee chiefs and a marketing system that shut growers out of their own crop.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

the 1900s to the 1930s · Africanspan

Sculptors mock the district officer and newspapers print the argument

Villages worked around illiteracy by gathering while one reader went through the paper aloud.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

the 1900s to the 1960s · Africanspan

African history had one address in America and it was Howard

William Leo Hansberry taught a subject the rest of the academy had decided was not one.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

The early twentieth century to the 1950s · Africanspan

Africa is invented twice, once in Europe and once by Africans

The word covered a continent whose people then had to claim it as a political fact.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

21 April 1900 to 1946 · Haitianspan

Estime's road runs from the Christian Brothers to the palace

A mathematics teacher who crossed a president, lost his job, and came back as a deputy in 1930.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1900 · Haitianyear only

A schoolteacher from Verrettes enters the Chamber for the Artibonite

Dumarsais Estime came out of a rural district with no money and no connections in the capital.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

July 1900 · Diasporamonth known

A Haitian sits at the first Pan-African Congress in London

Benito Sylvain was in the room when the delegates named the colour line as the century's question.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1901 · Haitianyear only

Creole in print is limited to folktales and children's fables

Georges Sylvain put La Fontaine into Creole verse, and that was most of what the language carried.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1901 · Haitianyear only

A squadron is assigned to be in the right waters at the right moment

Marines had already landed eight times before the century turned, always to protect lives and property.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1902 to 1908 · Haitianspan

Critics say mulatto politicians run the black nationalist's government

A president from the northern officer tradition still had to govern through the customs houses and the banks.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

May 1902 · Haitianmonth known

A succession meeting ends in gunfire and the Haitian president flees

Twelve years of peace closed with an assembly broken up before it could vote.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1 April 1902 · Haitian

Vincent totals up the republic's failures in a single article

A bilan is a balance sheet, and the columns in this one did not meet.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

May to 6 September 1902 · Haitianspan

Admiral Killick blows up his own flagship at Gonaives

A German gunboat corners La Crete-a-Pierrot, and the admiral sends his crew ashore before lighting the fuse.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1902 · Haitianyear only

A Haitian captain dies imitating a scene the archives cannot confirm

Facing a German warship in 1902, the Crete-a-Pierrot's commander wraps himself in the flag and goes down.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1902 · Haitianyear only

A trade journal wishes a soap manager well in the next revolution

Political instability was openly discussed abroad as a business opportunity.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1902 · Haitianyear only

The poet who took Vodou for his subject was born to the elite

Carl Brouard spent his life arguing against the class that produced him.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1902 · Haitianyear only

A writer calls colour the governing spirit of the new regime

Pierre Frederique said it plainly in 1902, in Haiti, for Haitian readers.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

October 1902 to 1904 · Haitianspan

The last leaf of Christophe's tree governs by printing press

Nord Alexis borrows from no foreigner, expels the Syrian merchants, and fixes on the coming centenary.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

15 November 1902 · Haitian

A Port-au-Prince paper prints the song the streets were singing

Most of what the Haitian majority said about its rulers survives only where a clerk wrote it down.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

17 December 1902 · Haitian

A grandson of Christophe claims the presidency

Nord Alexis takes power with American warships offshore and a bloodline running back to the kingdom of the north.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

21 December 1902 · Haitian

An eighty year old general from the North takes the presidency

Nord Alexis was born at Cap-Haitien while Christophe's kingdom still stood, and his father served it.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1903 to 1905 · Haitianspan

Anti-Syrian panic drives out the shopkeepers of Port-au-Prince

A ban on foreign land ownership written into every constitution ended in the expulsion of a community.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1903 · Haitianyear only

A marble plaque goes onto the empress's vault before the centenary

Forty five years after her death, a committee prepared her grave for the celebrations of 1904.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1903 · Haitianyear only

An elite writer invents the flag story and the anthem

Mocombe calls the Catherine Flon episode a myth written by Justin Lherisson, later taken as fact.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1903 · Caribbeanyear only

Guantanamo becomes American and the Mole stays on the list

Haiti's deep water harbour keeps its place in American naval planning because the Cuban base disappoints.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1903 · Haitianyear only

Leger tells American readers the cannibal stories are made up

Haiti's minister in Washington answers the foreign press in its own leading review.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1903 · Haitianyear only

Haitian shoemakers form a union before the state notices

The Syndicat des Cordonniers Haitiens organises in 1903, when there is no labour ministry to register it.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1903 · Haitianyear only

Haiti writes an anthem in time for its hundredth birthday

The Dessalinienne joins the flag and the Taino name in the country's stock of official symbols.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1 January 1904 to 1907 · Haitianspan

Volleys in Port-au-Prince while the centenary bands play

Nord Alexis marks a hundred years of independence with executions, curfews and a New York detective agency.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1 January 1904 · Haitian

Haiti turns one hundred and Washington appoints itself policeman

The centennial at Gonaives is kept amid civil strife in the same year the Roosevelt Corollary is announced.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

29 January 1904 · Diaspora

A government clerk proposes shipping nine million Americans to Nigeria

Robert Stein wanted Britain to crown a Tuskegee graduate and rename the colony Hopeland.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1904 · Haitianyear only

Jeanty's centennial war march becomes an anthem against occupation

A piece composed for a hundredth anniversary acquires a use nobody planned.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1904 · Caribbeanyear only

Roosevelt says God gave America the duty of minding the Caribbean

The president describes intervention in small neighbouring states as an obligation rather than a choice.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1904 · Haitianyear only

A customs house falls while Haiti fetes its centenary

Roosevelt warns about chronic wrongdoing, and one physician at the Cap says Haiti should be in mourning.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1905 to 1907 · Africanspan

Maji Maji ends with 26,000 killed and 50,000 starved

Water said to stop German bullets carried a revolt across German East Africa until the burning caught up.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1905 to 1941 · Haitianspan

Sylvain-Bouchereau says the occupation made Haitian feminism

Ten when the marines came, she wrote the first history of Haitian women and dated the movement from the landing.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1905 · Haitianyear only

The Syrian and Lebanese colony reaches fifteen thousand people

Arrivals from the 1880s built a retail network and a press campaign was built against them.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1905 · Diasporayear only

Japan beats Russia and colonised people take notice

An Asian power defeats a European empire in the field, and the racial case for empire loses its footing.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1905 · Haitianyear only

An American minister proposes an American bank for Haiti

W. F. Powell's suggestion in 1905 ends with a New York bank holding Haiti's financial policy.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

July 1905 · Haitianmonth known

A French law review takes up the Syrian question in Haiti

Poujol sets out the legal machinery used against Syrian merchants at the demand of Haitian traders.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

20 September 1905 · Haitian

Oswald Durand tours Haitian poetry in a Port-au-Prince review

The poet who put Creole into print surveys the literature of the country for its own readers.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

5 December 1905 · Haitian

A marriage request letter leaves the second section of Dame Marie

Decorated paper, a red silk handkerchief and the oldest man in the family carrying it up the path.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1906 · Datasetyear only

Haiti has 594 public schools, and seven years later 465

Private schools fell from 82 to 53 over the same stretch, and literacy sat under ten percent.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

January 1906 · Diasporamonth known

L'Etoile Africaine carries Pan-Africanism to Haitian readers

A Port-au-Prince paper prints the new movement's arguments in January 1906.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1906 · Diasporayear only

Benito Sylvain founds a society under two black heads of state

Haiti and Ethiopia jointly shelter a body aimed at colour prejudice, the only two such patrons available.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1906 · Haitianyear only

An introduction hints that the lwa deserve a hearing

Antoine Innocent prefaces Mimola in 1906 and the elite argument about Vodou begins to shift.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1906 · Haitianyear only

Mimola puts peasant life into a Haitian novel

Innocent's ethnographic detail contradicted what the elite told itself about the countryside.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

20 October 1906 · Haitian

A tribute to Dessalines runs in a Port-au-Prince review

Dorsainvil tells readers of 1906 that honouring the founder is a present political duty.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1907 to 1957 · Haitianspan

Machiavelli in the pocket, Bawon Samdi in the wardrobe

The black suit, the homburg and the thick glasses were read by every peasant as the dress of the grave.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1907 to 1971 · Haitianspan

Papa Doc serves his full term and dies in his own bed

The Heinls' verdict: he understood his people better than they understood themselves, and he sold them out.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1907 to 1908 · Haitianspan

An American minister rides the country and reports what he sees

Furniss found peasants who wanted only their land, and officers who conscripted them into revolutions.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

January 1907 · Caribbeanmonth known

An earthquake and the fire behind it take two thirds of Kingston

Survivors greeted each other in the street by asking whether the other was alive.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

5 January 1907 · Haitian

Janvier says the ancestors wanted a European state

Notre Republique argues Haiti's founders meant to build on the model of the civilisations that enslaved them.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

14 April 1907 · Haitian

Duvalier tells Haiti that he and the flag are the same thing

The epigraph of the new presidency claims identity with the emblem Dessalines made in 1803.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

April 1907 · Haitianmonth known

Francois Duvalier is born to a justice of the peace

Port-au-Prince, April 1907: a schoolmaster's son who will qualify as a doctor and rule for fourteen years.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

5 May 1907 · Haitian

Vaval calls for an aristocracy of the intelligent

A democracy needs an elite chosen by knowledge and moral excellence, says a Port-au-Prince essayist.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

4 June 1907 · Haitian

Roumain writes Masters of the Dew and dies before it appears

Born in 1907 to a president's grandson, he founded a party, went into exile, and left one famous novel.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

4 June 1907 · Haitian

Le Matin weighs the Latin conception of work

The capital's daily opens an argument about which civilisation Haitians should copy at the workbench.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

5 June 1907 · Haitian

The next day Le Matin takes up the Anglo-Saxon method

Haitian writers recommend American practicality in the decade before American troops arrive.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1 July 1907 · Haitian

Race and education share a headline in Le Matin

The paper asks whether teaching methods should follow racial identity, in a country building its schools.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1907 · Haitianyear only

Jacques Roumain is educated in four countries and comes home

A wealthy family sent him to Europe; he returned in 1927 into the campaign against the occupation.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1907 · Haitianyear only

Louis Diaquoi is born at Gonaives and founds the Griots

A radical journalist with a short life gives the ethnological movement its first organised group.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

27 July 1907 · Haitian

A Port-au-Prince daily prints a reading list on labour

Le Matin points its readers at the international workers' movement in July 1907.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

17 October 1907 · Haitian

Le Nouvelliste studies the psychology of the Haitian people

An objective account of national character is offered as a precondition for governing well.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

7 December 1907 · Haitian

Dorsainvil wants schooling matched to the mind of the pupil

A series in Le Matin argues Haitian education should fit the population it is teaching.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

Early 1908 · Haitianyear only

Firmin lands at Gonaives with fifty six men and the rising fails

Jean Jumeau was captured and shot, and Nord Alexis answered with summary executions.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

January to 16 March 1908 · Haitianspan

A fake earthquake, a failed landing, and the poets shot at the cemetery

Nord Alexis wanted a second term. By 16 March 1908 the capital was counting its dead.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

8 January 1908 · Haitian

Dorsainvil blames the elite for having no solidarity

Des idees collectives argues Haiti is held back by a governing class that will not act together.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

4 December 1908 · Diaspora

An exile sails home from Kingston to claim the presidency of Haiti

Two days later the president he meant to replace landed at the same dock.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

4 March 1908 · Haitian

Le Matin tells its readers the republic is splitting again

The paper named the fracture in March 1908. Ten days later the police were taking men from their beds.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

21 March 1908 · Haitian

Nord Alexis is called guardian of the nation five days after the killings

Le Trait d'Union asked the country to rally to a president whose police had just filled the cemetery.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

28 April 1908 · Haitian

Positivism reaches Le Matin and young men ask for a science of society

An article of April 1908 wanted social change handled by method instead of by generals.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

4 May 1908 · Haitian

Stenio Vincent tells Haiti that revolutions are the disease

In May 1908 he asked for order. Twenty-two years later he was president under an occupation.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

2 June 1908 · Haitian

Le Matin measures the distance between the capital and the countryside

A June 1908 series on social evolution named the gap every Haitian government has to cross.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1908 · Haitianyear only

Stenio Vincent counts how much of Haiti belongs to foreigners

Syrian, German and American merchants hold the commerce of a country that celebrates its independence.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1908 to 1911 · Haitianspan

The Caribbean becomes an American sea and Haiti lies across the canal route

Cuba occupied twice, Puerto Rico a possession, the Canal Zone American, customs houses under negotiation.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

July to 2 December 1908 · Haitianspan

Fire, unpaid soldiers, and an old president carried onto a French cruiser

Nord Alexis dismissed the one general who could reach the capital and lost the country in five weeks.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

2 December 1908 · Haitian

The twentieth president removed by force since independence

Antoine Simon took the palace by arms in 1908 and lost it the same way in 1911.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

December 1908 to 1911 · Haitianspan

Antoine Simon walks into Port-au-Prince with a goat

A chef de section from Les Cayes becomes president, and the Senate votes 117 to nothing.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

December 1908 to 1911 · Haitianspan

An illiterate peasant general takes the palace and the elite mocks his Creole

A Senate ringed by soldiers gave Antoine Simon 117 votes and no opposition at all.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

23 December 1908 · Haitian

Medite cives asks Haitians to look at what they have just done

Three weeks after Antoine Simon took the palace, L'Action printed a call to stop and think.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

4 March 1909 · Haitian

Dorsainvil tells the Haitian elite that it lives off the state

A March 1909 article in Le Nouvelliste blamed the educated class for waiting on government jobs.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

9 March 1909 · Haitian

A Haitian foreign minister watches French influence give way to New York

Edmond Heraux wrote to the French minister Carteron in March 1909 about who would hold the money.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

15 May 1909 · Haitian

L'Artibonite calls Petion weak and gives Christophe the credit

In 1909 a provincial paper reopened the argument Haiti had been having since 1820.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1909 to 1911 · Haitianspan

American banks take half of Haiti's national bank and beat the Europeans

France had the clergy and the coffee, Germany had the railway, and Washington took the customs.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page