The Devil Lives in Haiti: How the World's Richest Colony Became the Poorest Nation in the Americas

This book explores the reversal of the French colony of Saint-Domingue, from the richest plantation colony in the world (roughly 1700-1791) to the poorest country in the Americas (modern-day). A profitable plantation economy based on coffee and sugar was disastrously abandoned by the new Republic of 1805 in favor of peasant agriculture. The resulting isolation from the world market squandered the rich resources that had made white (and non-white) planters the envy of the colonial world.

Where the hand of academic specialists points insistently to Haitian victimhood and powerlessness, Bennett Blunt dares to indicate the roads untraveled, the misguided strategies, and the landscape of missed opportunities through which post-colonial Haiti has arrived at its present state. What academic and media narratives suppress, Blunt exposes with scholarly fidelity to documented evidence. From the unrecognized leverage enjoyed by the Haitian state in the early years of independence, to the unrecognized contributions of American service workers in the era of occupation, to the opportunities rejected by President Aristide in the 1990’s, The Devil Lives in Haiti fills a yawning gap in the historiography of post-colonial Haiti. The oral history testimonies of Haitian citizens should resonate especially with journalists, historians, and students of diplomacy, economics, and environmental studies.

Among the many contributions of The Devil Lives in Haiti to environmental studies is its exploration of the cholera epidemic of 2010. Evidence of United Nations complicity in the epidemic is weighed against the evidence of indigenous sanitary neglect. The unreported achievements of colonial-era engineers in environmental management are at last given proper attention, as is the devastating price of post-colonial land mismanagement. To the student of world economics, this book will offer a satisfying reconstruction of the trans-Atlantic commodity markets through which colonial Haiti rose to the height of Atlantic affluence.