and 1804, Black insurgents in the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue overthrew
slavery, broke away from the French empire, and founded the free nation of Haiti, the first polity
led by people of African ancestry in the Western Hemisphere. And yet, international recognition
of Haitian independence did not come for another two decades, and, even then, only through a
punishing French law: the ordinance of April 17, 1825. That ordinance granted French
recognition to Haiti, but with two extraordinarily burdensome conditions. First, Haiti would have
to pay a massive indemnity of 150 million francs to former French plantation owners who
demanded compensation for landed and human “property” lost during the Haitian Revolution.
Second, Haiti was required to adopt a neo-mercantilist tariff called the “half-duty,” which slashed
customs duties on French goods by 50% at the expense of Haitian state revenue. Ratified by the Haitian government under French military threat, the ordinance undermined Haitian sovereignty, battered its economy, and hindered public investment in education and infrastructure. Today, the ordinance remains highly controversial, as activists demand that France pay financial reparations to Haiti.
Historians have long studied the indemnity, but we know very little about the half-duty. My
paper examines not only why the neo-imperialist tariff was established, but, importantly, how it
generated intense political conflict between France and Haiti. Opposition to the half-duty was
surprisingly robust as Haitian state officials and journalists challenged its legitimacy in the name
of Haitian national sovereignty. In fact, the political controversy over of the tariff became so
heated that France eventually abandoned the project altogether. This paper highlights how
Haitians drew on revolutionary ideas of sovereignty to mount an effective opposition to
nineteenth-century French commercial empire.
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