Blackwell Reference Online

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The political history of Haiti in the years after independence parallels in many respects similar developments in other newly independent Latin American countries. The fault lines are familiar to any student of nineteenth-century Latin America: military versus commercial elites, rural/small city versus capital, peasant versus capitalist agriculture, conservatives and monarchists versus liberals, and divisions on racial or ethnic lines. The groups divided by these fault lines formed a kaleidoscope of shifting alliances, which resulted in periods of calm, usually under a strong leader, with interludes of violent conflict.Haiti became independent in 1804, at the end of a 13-year war of independence that radically transformed society and killed or drove into exile between one third and one half of the population. At the end of the struggle, Haiti, like the Spanish colonies some years later, found itself with a large, battle-tested, very professional military with little call for its services. Haiti feared reconquest by France, and in fact both Napoleon I and his successor, Louis XVIII, considered sending troops to renew the struggle. For the first ten years of the nation's independence, though, French forces were bottled up in Europe by the British navy. Britain had tried to conquer the island early in the Haitian Revolution, but after its forces were expelled by the Haitian rebels ... log in or subscribe to read full text