1918 · Haitianyear only

The 1918 constitution lets foreigners own Haitian land

A prohibition standing since Dessalines was struck out to make room for American planters.

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1918 · Haitianyear only

Haiti declares war on Germany and its German merchants lose everything

The declaration allowed seizure of German property and internment of German nationals.

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1918 · Haitianyear only

The peasants rise against the corvée and the Gendarmerie cannot hold

Thousands of irregulars took the field in 1918 and the marine brigade had to be committed.

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1918 · Haitianyear only

Forty thousand peasants take up arms against the occupation

The largest armed resistance on Haitian soil since the revolution, and the corvée caused it.

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1918 to 1936 · Haitianspan

Haitians take over the nursing school and enrolment jumps

321 students by 1936, most of them out of working class and poor families.

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1918 · Haitianyear only

French becomes the official language 114 years after independence

Haiti had governed in French since 1804 without ever putting the rule in law.

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1918 · Diasporayear only

A spiritual church opens in New Orleans as a legal shelter

Mother Leafy Anderson found a name the law would leave alone.

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4 January 1918 · Haitian

Fifty-five minutes of trial buy five years of forced labour

The acquitted brother is shot in the back months later while under house arrest.

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1918 · Haitianyear only

A contractor brings a crew of zonbi to the American sugar company

The story turns on a piece of candy, and on who was actually being worked to nothing.

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May 1918 · Haitianmonth known

A country woman says she was driven off land held since 1869

Lifschitz took her case against the government commissioner months before foreign landowning became legal.

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12 June 1918 · Haitian

A constitution nobody could read is ratified 98,225 to 768

One voter told the tellers he believed he was helping to elect a Pope.

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24 June 1918 to 1919 · Haitianspan

Dartiguenave sets Borno on the Americans and loses the treasury

A month with no budget, then an order that no gourde move without a colonel's signature.

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1918 · Haitianyear only

A falsified plebiscite ratifies a constitution written in Washington

Renda places the fraud inside a Progressive programme of gendarmerie, corvee and mission schools.

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1918 · Haitianyear only

A new constitution lets foreigners own Haitian land

Concessions rose to 266,600 acres and the 1928 survey that could have checked them burned.

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3 September 1918 · Haitian

Peralte walks out of the Cap prison taking his guard with him

The escape at ten in the morning opens the war of national liberation.

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3 September to 10 November 1918 · Haitianspan

Charlemagne Péralte walks out of the Cap and raises the North

Convicted over a payroll raid at Hinche, he talked his own guard into going with him.

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1 October 1918 · Haitian

The exemption card is torn up and the word goes round: slavery is back

Williams abolished the corvée on 1 October 1918, long after the peasants stopped believing him.

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15 October 1918 · Haitian

Peralte attacks Hinche again, days after his thirty-third birthday

The second raid on the plateau capital worries the American commander more than it wins.

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30 October 1918 · Diaspora

The Ottoman empire signs its defeat on a ship at Mudros

Two weeks later Allied troops were administering Istanbul and the empire was being divided.

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November 1918 to September 1919 · Haitianspan

Haiti gets its first aircraft, and they are there to hunt Cacos

Thirteen machines landed in March 1919, and by September the marines had fought 131 actions.

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11 November 1918 · Diaspora

The Great War ends after one thousand five hundred and sixty three days

Ten million soldiers dead, twenty million wounded and three hundred billion dollars spent.

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November 1918 · Haitianmonth known

Peralte is killed and the marines turn a corner in the Caco war

The assassination came alongside a new constitution written to suit American aims.

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