Two centuries after having imposed an unfair debt in Haiti, it is time for France to compensate it – Liberation

This Thursday, April 17, it will be 200 years to the day that an unfair order was signed by Charles X. By this document, the King of France imposed in Haiti the payment of a ruinous compensation in exchange for the recognition of his independence.

Today we intervene as American historians at a time when the values ​​listed in our own declaration of independence are threatened. The White House floods constitutional norms and fundamental democratic principles, dismantling decades of antisdiscriminatory measures, illegally expelling immigrants, attacking scientific and university institutions and trying to crush any dispute. Five years ago, the movement Black Lives Matter had highlighted the police brutality suffered by blacks in the United States, arousing a salutary debate, both in the United States and in France, around the question of historical injustices. If these prospects for progress in the United States are now hampered by retrograde forces at work since the coming to power of the new administration, it seems to us that France remains faithful to its humanist traditions. On the occasion of this bicentenary of the wrongs caused to Haiti, it would be just that she finally took the initiative to create a commission responsible for examining the question of compensation and answering calls to the return