Microblog Memes

Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Toussaint Louverture had the same core failing as Viscout de Blanchelande and Léger-Félicité Sonthonax: they could only see Haiti through the lens of Saint-Domingue. Hispaniola was, to all of these men, a place where coffee and sugar grew. lost to them was its pre-colonial history as a self sustaining island of life beloved by the indigenous Taino people. Dessalines and Louverture were probably right that they would have to grow sugar and coffee to sell to the rest of the world in order to arm themselves strongly enough to enforce their peace with the colonial powers that had forcefully made them grow sugar and coffee. but the small farmers who rejected this notion entirely and cut down trees high in the hills to make their own farms to self sustain were probably onto something as well: Hispaniola needed to be something other than what the colonial powers saw it as. the lack of coordination between the under-imaginitive, these independent farmers, and indigenous populations who had maintained the fragile ecosystem of Hispaniola for millennia is how you get to the Haiti of today, one with frequent issues with mudslides and low quality soil.