“Reparation!” boomed Jean-BertrandAristide, Haiti’s firebrand president, to the cheers of the farmers, workersand students in the crowd.
The French ambassador sitting on stage hidhis alarm behind an awkward smile. He knew Aristide well enough to expect barbsat Haiti’s former French colonisers and slave masters. But on that day, April7, 2003, the president suddenly started calling for reparations, a bombshellthat became a hallmark of his presidency — and, diplomats now concede, part ofhis undoing.
“We had to try to defuse it,” the Frenchambassador, Yves Gaudeul, said of Aristide’s call for reparations, calling it an“explosive.”
With his remarks, Aristide tried toexcavate a history that remains all but buried in France. Long after Haitiansthrew off their shackles, beat Napoleon’s forces and won their independence twocenturies ago, France came back with warships and an unheard-of demand: thatHaitians pay astounding amounts of money to their former slave masters, or facewar again.
Haiti became the first and only nation topay reparations to its former masters and their descendants for generations.According to a New York Times analysis of thousands of pages of archivaldocuments, it shipped the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars toFrance, setting off a cycle of perpetual debt that sapped Haiti’s ability tobuild a nation for more than 100 years.
Yet to this day, that history is not taughtin French schools, and many of the country’s most prominent aristocraticfamilies are unaware that their ancestors kept collecting payments from Haiti’spoorest people — long after the end of slavery.
Aristide, Haiti’s first democraticallyelected president after decades of dictatorship, wanted France to do far morethan acknowledge its past. He wanted restitution.
“What beautiful schools, universities andhospitals we will be able to build for our children!” he told the crowd. “Howmuch food we will have in abundance!”
The consequences were immediate, andlasting. In interviews, a dozen French and Haitian political figures recountedhow a worried France worked quickly and doggedly to stifle Aristide’s call forreparations before siding with his opponents and collaborating with the UnitedStates to remove him from power.
France and the United States have long saidthat Aristide’s call for restitution had nothing to do with his ouster, that hehad taken an autocratic turn, lost control of the country, and was spiritedinto exile to prevent Haiti, already heaving with turmoil, from careening intochaos. But France’s ambassador to Haiti at the time, Thierry Burkard, said thatFrance and the United States had effectively orchestrated “a coup” againstAristide, and that his abrupt removal was “probably a bit about” his call forreparations from France, too.
“It made our job easier” to dismiss thereparations claims without Aristide in office, Burkard noted.
The showdown underscores how, two centuriesafter France forced Haitians to pay their former slave masters for the libertythey had already won in battle, the effects continue to ripple through thepolitics of both countries. By calling for restitution, Haiti, a nation bornfrom what historians call the world’s most successful slave rebellion, struckat France’s national identity as a beacon of human rights and threatened toinspire others with historical grievances against France to follow its lead,from the Caribbean to Africa.
“We were very disdainful of Haiti,” Gaudeulrecalled. “What I think we will never forgive Haiti for, deep down, is that itis the country that beat us.”
Even after Aristide’s removal in 2004, thecalls for restitution have continued to reverberate, leading to a stunningconcession more than a decade later by François Hollande, France’s president,who referred to the money Haiti was forced to hand over as “the ransom ofindependence.”
Since then, scholars have increasinglyexplored the history of Haiti’s payments. Just this past December, at aconference on the grounds of the French Finance Ministry, one of the mostprominent French historians on relations between the two countries,Jean-François Brière, called the payments a form of “meta-slavery” thatprevented Haiti from breaking free of France, long after independence.
“All French people are affected” by thenation’s past in Haiti, said Jean-Marc Ayrault, a former French prime minister.Yet, he said, French students don’t learn about it and few officials discussit.
“It’s never taught,” he said. “It’s neverexplained.”
$21,685,135,571.48
Gaudeul, France’s former ambassador toHaiti, wanted to negotiate.
Aristide’s sudden call for restitution wasa political hand grenade, he feared, threatening to embarrass France on theworld stage and rip apart relations between the two countries.
Yet Aristide’s stance was not unreasonable,he recalled thinking.
“He wasn’t wrong to say how much harm ithad done to his country,” Gaudeul said of France’s history in Haiti, “and toask France for compensation in turn.”
The ambassador said he urged the Frenchgovernment to open discussions with Haiti to help defuse the situation, but wasfirmly rejected.
“I didn’t understand how we could be sostupid,” Gaudeul said.
Aristide, a polarising figure who rose tooffice as a champion of the poor, knew his campaign was contentious and hadtimed it for maximal impact: He announced his demand on the 200th anniversaryof the death of Toussaint Louverture, the Haitian revolutionary leader seizedby Napoleon’s forces and carted off to prison in France, where he died withouttrial.
“Why, after 200 years, is Haiti thisimpoverished?” Aristide said recently at his home in a suburb of Haiti’scapital. One of the reasons, he said, was the enormous amount of money Haitihad been forced to hand over to France for generations — a heavy burden oftencalled “the independence debt.”
Aristide uncovered this history only afterhe had already been ousted from office the first time, his aides said, when amilitary coup deposed him in 1991 and forced him into exile in the UnitedStates. He began immersing himself in the growing scholarship on a historythat, even as Haiti’s president, he knew little about.
After the Americans helped restore him topower, he was reelected in 2000 and intensified his research. “He would callmany times, asking for more information,” recalled Dr Francis Saint-Hubert, aHaitian physician who had studied the links between the abysmal state of publichealth in Haiti and the money siphoned off by France.
On the bicentennial, Aristide upped thepolitical ante by declaring the precise amount he said France owed Haiti:$21,685,135,571.48.
French diplomats and some Haitians mockedthe multibillion dollar figure as a misguided publicity stunt by a demagoguetrying to maintain his grip on power. A group of 130 Haitian intellectualsdenounced the restitution campaign as a “desperate attempt” to distractattention from the Aristide government’s “totalitarian drift, incompetence andcorruption.” A French Foreign Ministry spokesperson said France did not need totake “lessons” from Haiti’s leaders.
But a New York Times analysis of thelong-term damage done by sending enormous sums to France shows that Haiti’slosses may have been surprisingly close to Aristide’s figure.
In fact, his estimate may have even beenmodest.
The Times scoured thousands of pages ofarchival government documents to determine how much Haiti sent to France overthe course of generations, not just in official payments to formerslaveholders, but also for a loan to help pay them. We found that Haiti paidFrance a total of $560 million in today’s dollars.
But that only begins to account for theloss. With the help of 15 leading economists from around the world, we modelledwhat might have happened if that money had gone into the Haitian economy,rather than being shipped off to France without getting any goods or servicesin return.
Our estimates found that over time, thepayments to France cost Haiti from $21 billion to $115 billion in lost economicgrowth. Put in perspective, that is anywhere from one to eight times the sizeof Haiti’s entire economy in 2020.
“We were building a path to the truth,”Aristide said, without being told the outcome of the Times’ analysis.
The French Fight Back
Aristide’s calls for reparations grewbolder. Banners, bumper stickers, government ads and graffiti demandingrestitution were plastered around the country.
The government hired Bichot Avocats, aFrench law firm, and Günther Handl, a professor of international law, to draftlegal arguments and find a court where Haiti could press its case, according tohundreds of pages of documents and email exchanges reviewed for the first timeby the Times.
The chances of legal success appeareduncertain. But the legwork seemed less about winning at trial than pressuringFrance.
“As part of this strategy,” Handl wrote ina November 2003 email to Ira Kurzban, an American lawyer who served as counselfor Haiti’s government, “Haiti must convey to France” that there are suitableopportunities “for washing France’s dirty laundry in public.”
France’s views soon shifted from disdain toconcern, former officials said, especially as Aristide invited other formercolonies to join his fight. It sent a new ambassador to Haiti, Burkard, who sawthe restitution campaign as “a trap” that risked opening the floodgates forsimilar demands from former French colonies.
“Algeria can perfectly make claims, as wellas most of our colonies,” recalled Burkard. “There was no end to it. It wouldhave set a precedent that we would have been greatly blamed for.”
France moved swiftly. Soon after Burkardarrived in Haiti, France’s foreign minister launched a commission headed by afamous philosopher, Régis Debray. The commission was publicly tasked withexploring ways to improve French-Haitian relations. But in private, anothermandate was made clear, according to both Burkard and Debray: to shift thediscussion away from reparations.
Burkard, now retired, said Debray was“instructed not to say a word in favour of restitution.”
The commission’s trip to Haiti in December2003 was tense, according to interviews with six of its members and withseveral Haitian officials. The group went to a meeting at the Foreign Ministrywith armed officers, prompting Aristide’s team to protest what it saw asintimidation.
“You have not demonstrated anything seriouson this subject,” Debray said, dismissing the restitution request, according tohandwritten notes taken by a commission member.
Debray said that while he deplored the factthat the history of France’s colonial rule in Haiti had been erased from Frenchmemory, he considered the restitution request “some demagogy for a 7-year-oldchild.”
Saint-Hubert, the Haitian physician, whowas seated at a conference table during the meeting, said Debray argued thatFrance owed a moral debt to Haiti — not a financial one.
“What we paid, it wasn’t in morals,”Saint-Hubert recalled responding. “It was cash. Good solid cash.”
Several members of the French commissiontold the Times that they saw the Haitian president as corrupt, and worried thatany money given to him would be used for personal gain.
Clashes between Aristide’s supporters andopponents had grown violent, and Aristide’s government was accused of crackingdown on dissent. Human rights groups said his police force and “pro-governmentthugs” were attacking opponents and the independent press. US officials accused— and later convicted — some members of his administration of drug trafficking.
In its final report, the commission praisedAristide’s adversaries as a hopeful sign of “a civil opposition” that is “readyto assume its civic rights and duties.” It hinted that Aristide might not lastin office and discussed “a future interim government.” Jacky Dahomay, a Frenchphilosopher and commission member, said he “was in favour of Aristide leaving.”
In mid-December, Debray showed up atAristide’s presidential palace in Port-au-Prince to deliver a warning.
“It smells like trouble for you,” Debraysaid he had told Aristide, advising him to leave office to avoid a fate likeSalvador Allende’s, the Chilean president who died in 1973 as his presidentialpalace was overrun by the military.
Debray said that he had wanted only to helpsave the president’s life, and warned him that the United States planned todepose him. But Burkard said Debray had gone “too far,” and Aristide publiclysaid he had been told to resign.
“The threats were clear and direct: ‘Eitheryou resign, or you can be shot!’ ” Aristide later said of the meeting.
A Flight to Anywhere
The pilots didn’t know where they weregoing. Neither did Aristide. The plane circled for hours, the blinds drawn,while French officials scrambled to find a country willing to take him.
It was Feb. 29, 2004, and Aristide had justbeen removed from power.
Before dawn, Luis Moreno, a senior USdiplomat, had driven through the large gate of the president’s walled compoundand climbed the steps to the front door, accompanied by security officers fromthe State Department.
Moreno had helped Aristide return to Haitiafter the military ousted him a decade earlier. Now, the opposite washappening: Moreno greeted the president — and asked for his resignation letter.
Minutes later, Aristide and his wife weretaken to the airport, where an American-chartered plane flew them into exile.
“How ironic it was that I was one of thefirst people to shake his hand when he returned out of exile,” Moreno recalledsaying to Aristide. “And now I was going to be the last one to say goodbye tohim.”
With the plane in the air, Burkard said,French authorities pleaded with the leaders of three African countries to takeAristide in. All refused. At last, the Central African Republic, a formerFrench colony, agreed. Aristide stayed there about two weeks before being sentinto exile, briefly in Jamaica and then in South Africa, until 2011.
Aristide called it a kidnapping. Secretaryof State Colin Powell called that “absolutely baseless, absurd” and, along withFrance, said the president had left power willingly.
To this day, many French and US officialsmaintain that Aristide resigned to prevent the political crisis upending Haitifrom escalating into civil war. Armed rebels were closing in on Port-au-Prince.France had publicly urged Aristide to step down, while the United States hadstrongly hinted at it.
Moreno said Aristide’s departure “was allat his behest” and that he “wanted to avoid a bloodshed.”
But Aristide’s resignation letter waswritten in Haitian Creole, and debates over the proper translation continue tothis day. Burkard, the former ambassador at the time, said that the letter was“ambiguous,” and that the wording did not exactly point to a resignation.
He also acknowledged, for the first time,that France and the United States had effectively orchestrated “a coup” againstAristide by pressuring him to step down and taking him into exile. Anotherformer French ambassador to Haiti, Philippe Selz, a member of the Frenchcommission to Haiti, said that the decision had been made in advance “toextradite the president, to send him away.”
A few weeks after his removal, GérardLatortue, Haiti’s new Western-backed interim leader, met with President JacquesChirac of France, walked out of the gilded Élysée Palace in Paris and toldreporters that he had dropped the restitution claims. French-Haitian relationsneeded a new start, he said, after being “negatively affected by all theefforts of the former regime to demand restitution of the independence debt.”
A Silenced History
Looking back, Gaudeul, the formerambassador, said France’s combative response to the restitution claims had beenrooted in its reluctance to reckon with a past that challenged its national narrativeas a champion of universal human rights.
“Haiti was really a very bad example” forFrance, he said.
Much of the nation’s history in Haitiremains distorted, downplayed or forgotten, researchers say. Barely any Frenchtextbooks mention that by the late 1780s, Saint-Domingue, the name of Haitiunder colonial rule, absorbed 40% of the entire trans-Atlantic slave trade,they say. Or that Napoleon, when he tried to reinstate French rule over Haitiin 1803, lost more soldiers there than at Waterloo.
A report published in 2020 by France’sFoundation for the Remembrance of Slavery found that only 1 in 10 Frenchprimary and secondary school students learn about Toussaint Louverture and theHaitian revolution.
As for the history of Haiti’s payments toFrance, it is “not included in the French school curriculum at any level,” saidNadia Wainstain, a history teacher who coordinated the foundation’s report.
France’s education ministry said the reportdid not account for some of the instruction on Haiti in French middle schools,but it acknowledged that the ministry had never discussed teaching studentsabout the payments to former slaveholders.
Even the descendants of slaveholders whowere paid say they have been largely left in the dark.
They include members of Napoleon’s family,European royalty and some of France’s most famous aristocratic families. Veryfew of the 31 descendants contacted by the Times said they were aware of thispast.
“I didn’t know about it,” said Louis Baudonde Mony-Pajol, a sixth-generation descendant of Jean-Joseph de Laborde, abanker to King Louis XV who was also one of the biggest slaveholders in Haiti,comparing this history to “a political and social bombshell” threatening toignite a cultural war.
Emmanuel de la Burgade, a descendant ofanother slaveholder, said he had discovered the history only while writing abook about his family. When he told his father about it, he remembered himanswering, “Don’t tell anyone.”
Several Laborde descendants said theydiscovered their family’s past while reading the news in 2015 that ananti-racism group in France announced it would sue Ernest-Antoine Seillière deLaborde, a rich French businessman, for having profited from the slave trade.
“It was scathing news,” said Natalie Balsan,a seventh-generation Laborde descendant. “To know that I was the descendant ofa slave owner was quite a slap in the face.”
In the late 18th century, Jean-Joseph deLaborde shipped nearly 10,000 Africans to Haiti on his slave ships and enslavedas many as 2,000 people on his plantations there, many of whom died. A villagein southwestern Haiti is still named after him.
Laborde lost his plantations during Haiti’sslave uprising and was guillotined by French revolutionaries in Paris in 1794.But two of his children, Alexandre and Nathalie, received compensation totallingabout $1.7 million in today’s dollars — the biggest payout to a single family,according to a database compiled by Oliver Gliech, a German historian.
The lawsuit against his descendant neverhappened, but it ignited a discussion in the family. Cousins started toexchange emails. Seillière de Laborde — a former head of France’s largestbusiness lobby and an heir to the Wendel family, one of France’s richest —consulted several historians to look into the payments to his family.
One historian said the money had mostlikely been squandered by Alexandre, the son, who died broke. Seillière deLaborde did not respond to several interview requests made through his familyand business associates.
Five Laborde descendants, including Balsan,said they did not feel responsible for their ancestor’s actions. But shesupported the restitution claims, saying they were “justified” by the damagesuffered. Baudon de Mony-Pajol, her cousin, disagreed, saying that France didnot have to show repentance and that the calls for restitution were part of a“woke culture” coming from the United States.
Romée de Villeneuve Bargemont, 22, anotherLaborde descendant, said he regretted not having learned this history inschool. A 10-volume family biography lies in a cardboard box in his apartmentin Paris, the history of the compensation payments occupying barely a fewlines.
“France’s long-standing policy on historyhas been more or less to forget,” he said.
A Painful Reckoning
Haiti’s payments to its former slavemasters added up for generations, costing its economy billions of dollars overtime, the Times analysis found, and a little-known public bank called theCaisse des Dépôts et Consignations collected the vast majority of the money.
But after Haiti’s disastrous earthquake in2010, Didier Le Bret, the French ambassador, said the bank reached out to himto help and, at least partly, make amends: It donated about $400,000.
A spokesperson for the bank said the donationwas simply part of its policy to help countries afflicted by humanitariandisaster. But Augustin de Romanet, the bank’s director at the time of thedonation, told the Times that “there were probably some useful things to dotoward Haiti, in view of what had happened in the past.”
The bank’s discreet gesture, however small,spoke to a broader phenomenon: Aristide has been out of power since 2004, buthis fight has forced a slow, often painful, reckoning in France.
In recent years, famous intellectuals havespoken out in favour of restitution, and academics have increasingly exploredthe economic and legal aspects of reparations. Last year, France’s nationalpublic research organization published a database listing compensation paid toFrench slaveholders, including the ones from Haiti.
Myriam Cottias, who oversaw the database,was a member of the French commission that dismissed Aristide’s calls forrestitution two decades ago. But she said that her views had changed, and thatreparations should be discussed.
“The debate, yes, it must be raised,” shesaid.
French authorities have, at times, shownsome willingness to address this past as well. In mid-December, France’sFinance Ministry hosted, for the first time, an international symposium on the economicsof slavery, with conferences focusing specifically on the history of Haiti’spayments to France.
But the public discussion has involved somerhetorical tightrope walking.
In his 2015 speech, Hollande, France’spresident, acknowledged that Haiti’s payments to its former slave masters weresometimes called “the ransom of independence.”
“When I come to Haiti,” he said, “I will,for my part, pay off the debt we have.”
The crowd before him, which includedAfrican heads of state and the Haitian president, instantly stood up inapplause.
“People cried,” recalled Michaëlle Jean,the former secretary-general of the International Organization of laFrancophonie, who attended the speech. “It was immense.”
A few hours later, Hollande’s aides issueda major caveat: Hollande was speaking only of a “moral debt” France owed toHaiti, not a financial one. The French government maintains the same positiontoday. (Hollande declined to comment for this article.)
France’s delicate stance toward Haitireflects a lingering uncertainty, at times a malaise, over the way to addressthe country’s colonial and slave-owning past. In 2016, France’s parliamentsymbolically repealed the 1825 ordinance that required the Haitian payments toformer slaveholders — but stopped short of considering any financialrestitution.
“One cannot, objectively, present theslightest argument that claims we owe nothing to Haiti,” said ChristianeTaubira, a justice minister in Hollande’s government.
Looking back, Aristide said that his restitutioncampaign had at least led to French acknowledgments of its past.
“If I hadn’t asked the question in 2003,probably in 2015 François Hollande wouldn’t have admitted to the debt,” hesaid.
“That was a step,” he said. “It’s notfinished.”
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