“The ransom of independence”, this fascinating documentary on Haiti debt to not be missed on France 2 | EUROtoday

On May 13, 2025

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MWell, what occurs with Haiti and this debt story, relationship from 1825, to be reimbursed to France? Why does everybody (or nearly) discuss it nowadays? It is time to essentially have a look at it.

This can also be what Emmanuel Macron understood on April 17, 200 years to the day after the signing by Charles X of an order obliging the First Black Republic (1804), wanting to acquire official recognition on the Nations live performance, to pay the sum of 150,000 francs Gold in order that the colonists (30,000 white house owners), having enriched on the again of a free workforce, are compensated to have their treasure. We then known as Haiti the pearl of the Antilles, because it was so filled with sugar, espresso, indigo, cotton and tobacco …

“The winner is forced to pay a ransom”

Here is Haiti right now: a inhabitants threatened with genocide perpetrated by omnipotent gangs within the face of incapable governance (gangs designated on May 2 by the United States as “foreign terrorist organizations”), which sow the island an unnamed chaos. This untenable scenario has an origin. Debt.

That which President Aristide, on the daybreak of the bicentenary of Haitian independence, and for demagogic functions, wakened in 2003, requesting the return to Haiti by France of greater than $ 21 billion, sum validated by subsequent investigations, together with that of New York Timesimmediately resurface a topic that has remained fully taboo!

Here is now The ransom of independencethe completely outstanding documentary signed Wandrille Lanos and broadcast this Tuesday night at 11 pm on France 2. He explains in depth the ins and outs of the historical past so specific of this land, found by Columbus in 1492, first known as Hispaniola, which grew to become Saint Domingue then Haiti, resuming its authentic identify after the slaves revolted and conquered their freedom: “Live free”.

To the purpose that in 1793, France got here to proclaim normal freedom: the previous slaves gained. “It’s enormous,” insists the historian Frantz Voltaire, founding father of the Haitian documentation heart (Cidihca), exhibiting what this unprecedented scenario causes a change to millennial and race relationships. What this movie exhibits is that Haiti makes the unthinkable arrive and, as the author Yanick Lahens will emphasize, will retain her pioneering function in what is going to change into a adverse mannequin of North-South relations, between indebted international locations and their worldwide donors … till right now.

With the assistance of a good looking iconography and pictures of Haiti which by no means dig the depressing vein, Wandrille Lanos scrolls the phrases of probably the most competent worldwide stakeholders, filmed on a blue background, of probably the most skilled to the younger era, represented by the educational Mathilde Ackermann. Jean-Marie Théodat, geographer and professor on the Sorbonne, recollects that for the primary time “the winner is forced to pay a ransom to the defeated”.

An thrilling and full story

Several voices of the inspiration of reminiscence for slavery in flip shed this long-term episode, together with former Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, who directs it, and by his facet his deputy director Pierre-Yves Bocquet, who offers behind the scenes of the masterful Bourde of President Hollande-whose speeches he wrote-leaving his leaf and improvising as typically, igniting in Guadeloupe that of its debt, leaving the listeners dumbfounded!

All these interventions make up an thrilling and full story. We can hear the historian Gusti-Klara Gaillard, professor on the State University of Haiti (École normale supérieure, who has simply been appointed to co-register the specified fee by President Macron and who doesn’t mince phrases): “Haiti is forced to pay to access official independence, France has managed to take revenge. »»

You have to see this film. To understand that Haiti in the 18th^e century is a horn of abundance. His windfall is such that slaves should not lower the yield, their treatment by the colonists exceeds everything in cruelty, life expectancy is then 37 years. It is precisely this particularly unbearable fate that leads the “brown negroes” to the revolt. Their victory is unbearable: what? Have slaves managed to conquer their freedom?

Napoleon Bonaparte does not understand this in this way, but he will be beaten by the army of General Dessalines in Verières on November 18, 1803. The revolution guided by Toussaint Louverture is completed. For a long time, the history textbooks, underlines the historian Jean-François Brière (State University of New York-Albany), were careful not to deal with this episode which was the first waterloo of the emperor. France is humiliated. He must recover and honor, and goods.

The trap of a double debt

The spiral in which Haiti sinks to fulfill the debt is frightening and obeying, analyzes in particular Frantz Voltaire, any “concept of growth”, since its payment short until the middle of the XX^e century. “And the story breaks Haiti on every event: as a result of the settlers embrace their slaves as monetisable property within the accounts at a loss (the filmed paperwork are chilly within the again), as a result of the empty bins of the State power the nation to borrow from French banks, as a result of when commerce resumes, the rights are much less for France …Read too Céleur Jean Herard or the artwork of portray Haiti

Here is the entice of a double debt whose younger nation will now not be capable to escape. It is nearly tough to consider, however the archives are there. And behind the picture of a folks suffering from a curse which nonetheless continues to fascinate, as its literature and their tradition are admired all through the world, it’s a query of taking a break to grasp.

To uncover

The kangaroo of the day

Answer

That the trial just isn’t made to search for a superb purpose to have gotten there. That we have a look at the story. To make your opinion, having the ability to reply “the” query posed by this obligatory movie: the best way to restore the story when Haiti by no means stops paying the worth of his freedom?

“Haiti, the ransom of independence”, on France 2 this Tuesday, May 13 at 11 pm, then in replay.

https://www.lepoint.fr/culture/la-rancon-de-l-independance-ce-documentaire-passionnant-sur-la-dette-d-haiti-a-ne-pas-manquer-sur-france-2–13-05-2025-2589521_3.php