Let's take a step back and go back to 1804. Haiti defeats the French at the Battle of Vertières, gains its independence, and becomes the first enslaved country to win its freedom. It doesn't last, of course. Almost immediately, France gets angry and does what it can to destroy this new country. - ThreadSky

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baronsaturday.bsky.social • 35 days ago

Let's take a step back and go back to 1804. Haiti defeats the French at the Battle of Vertières, gains its independence, and becomes the first enslaved country to win its freedom. It doesn't last, of course. Almost immediately, France gets angry and does what it can to destroy this new country.

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baronsaturday.bsky.social•35 days ago

2 decades later, France arrives with battleships and demands to be paid back for the money they lost. Money lost, mind you, from not being able to do slavery and keep its boot on our necks. It's absurd. Faced with no choice, however, Haiti complies and enters into a vicious cycle of debt.

baronsaturday.bsky.social•35 days ago

The debt was actually so ridiculous that France knew we wouldn't be able to pay it back. This was their punishment to us.

So where does Citibank feature in this story?

baronsaturday.bsky.social•35 days ago

By 1914, Haiti was in such economic turmoil that the USA decided to take advantage. National Citybank, now Citigroup, gets into the USA's ear and gets them to do something ridiculous: march 8 US Marines into the national bank and get them to walk out with half a million dollars in gold.

baronsaturday.bsky.social•35 days ago

It took mere days for the gold to land in Wall Street banks.

baronsaturday.bsky.social•35 days ago

The next year, the USA comes in and occupies Haiti and subjects the people to horrible and abusive actions for the next 19 years. We learn in school that the start of the invasion was the murder of Vilbrun Guillaume Sam in the French embassy by the people, but that's not the whole story.

baronsaturday.bsky.social•35 days ago

The USA believed that only they, as a force for good, could come in and help Haiti from the situation it was in. If not them, then Europe would. This was their backyard, so they'd handle it.

At least, that's what they claimed.

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