October 1902 to 1904 · Haitianspan
The last leaf of Christophe's tree governs by printing press
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Firmin sailed for exile at Saint Thomas on 17 October 1902, and Nord Alexis entered Port-au-Prince on 14 December. Three days later the army acclaimed him and the assembly agreed without a dissenting voice. He was past eighty, born in 1820 while Henry Christophe still ruled the north, and his wife was Christophe's niece and the daughter of President Pierrot. He could read, disliked intellectuals, distrusted foreigners on principle, and reduced politics to three words: independence, the fatherland, the ancestors. Four months in, he dissolved the Chamber of Deputies with rifle volleys. Afraid of the debt collectors who arrive with warships, he refused foreign loans and ran the treasury on printed paper. Retail trade had been passing into the hands of Syrian and Lebanese immigrants since the 1880s, so in 1903 crowds led by soldiers looted their shops, and by April 1905 every Syrian business was ordered shut and the owners put on boats. What preoccupied him most was the hundredth anniversary of independence, then two years off.
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