History is not often thought of as a science, but it can be if it uses the “comparative method.” Jared Diamond, professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, and James A. Robinson, professor of government at Harvard University, employ the method effectively in the new book they have co-edited, Natural Experiments of History (Harvard University Press, 2010). In a timely study comparing Haiti with the Dominican Republic, for example, Diamond demonstrates that although both countries inhabit the same island, Hispaniola, because of geopolitical differences one ended up dirt poor while the other flourished.
Christopher Columbus’s brother Bartolomeo colonized Hispaniola in 1496 for Spain, establishing the capital at Santo Domingo on the eastern side of the island. Two centuries later, during tensions between France and Spain, the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 granted France dominion over the western half of the island. Because France was richer than Spain at this time and slavery was an integral part of its economy, it turned western Hispaniola into a center of slave trade with staggering differences in population: about 500,000 slaves in the western side of the island as compared with only 15,000 to 30,000 slaves in the eastern side.
That difference in population pressures, along with France’s hunger to import more timber from Haiti, magnified the influence of geographic factors. Weather fronts for Hispaniola come from the east and dump rain on the Dominican side of the island, leaving the Haitian side naturally drier and with less fertile soils for agricultural productivity. Haiti’s need for farmland and timber rapidly deforested the already sparse trees on its side of the island, with disastrous consequences: soil erosion, loss of timber for building and of wood for charcoal fuel, heavier sediment loads in rivers and decreased watershed protection that reduced the potential for hydroelectric power. This negative feedback cycle of environmental degradation for Haiti set it up for squalor.
When both the Haitians and Dominicans gained their independence in the 19th century, we see other comparative differences. Haitian slave revolts were violent, and Napoleon’s draconian intervention for restoring order resulted in the Haitians distrusting Europeans and eschewing future trade and investments, imports and exports, immigration and emigration. Haitian slaves had also developed their own Creole language spoken by no one else in the world, which further isolated Haiti from cultural and economic exchanges. Collectively, those barriers meant that Haiti did not benefit from factors that typically build capital, wealth and affluence and that might have led to prosperity under independence. In contrast, Dominican independence was relatively nonviolent; the country shuttled back and forth for decades between independence and control by Spain, which in 1865 decided that it no longer wanted the territory. Throughout this period the Dominicans spoke Spanish, developed exports, traded with European countries, and attracted European investors, as well as a diverse émigré population of Germans, Italians, Lebanese and Austrians, who helped to build a vibrant economy.
Finally, even when both countries succumbed to the power of evil dictators in the mid-20th century, Rafael Trujillo’s control of the Dominican Republic involved considerable economic growth because of his desire to enrich himself personally, but his policies led to a strong export industry and imported scientists and foresters to help preserve the forests for his profiteering timber holdings. Meanwhile Haiti’s dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier did none of this and instead further isolated the Haitians from the rest of the world.
Diamond acknowledges that many other factors are involved in the long history of this island but that the comparative method, he writes, “consists of comparing—preferably quantitatively and aided by statistical analyses—different systems that are similar in many respects but that differ with respect to the factors whose influence one wishes to study.”
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Add CommentA lot of rhetoric that can be boiled down into one phrase.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHaiti is poor because it is socialist, the Dominican Republic is prosperous because it is capitalist.
See, that wasn't hard. I think the reason university brainiacs write books when a sentence will do is because the sentence is so unpalatable to them.
frgough, I think you should re-studied your assumptions about what's capitalism and socialism. Dominicana is "socialist" from a US perspective, and Haiti is anything else except socialist if you consider Cuba (although poor and non democratic, with highest level of educated people and much better health care indicators than many other latin american countries). I will say that Haiti is when the invisible hand of market got concentrated in few powerfull and bad people: everything to me, nothing for you
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's amazing how comparative studies can give a glimpse on history analysis. Reading The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin, it's surprising to find these type of remarks in his book: from slavery in Brazil (when the economy is based on slavery a good chance of cronic empoverish of part of the society), the harhsness of the environment (the deserts of Patagonia, Chile and Peru), to earthquakes (in Chile and Peru), the access to natural resources (mine ore in Chile, something that never developed in the east side of the Andes), and a general likeness of dictators in the population (Argentina) or populists: a chronic disease in all Latin America. For the particular enforcement of economic policies (and social, like abolition of slavery, gender balance, access to education/health care, etc) there is a lot of possibilities around some "center". It would be interesting to be able to do quantitative history to learn more about this. For me the work of Jared Diamond is like Hari Seldom's from Asimov's Foundation! Instead of non-linear equations, statistics models.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article misses the point completely (well...not as much as frgough, but that is quite an exceptional case of point-missing)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne of the fundamental factors leading to Haiti’s current poverty is the historical level of debt imposed on the country, firstly by the French, and then by the US and other international agents.
Due to Haiti’s successful slave revolt, the French were forced to leave the country in 1804, but demanded reparations of the Haitians for loss of earnings totalling 90 million gold francs (the slaves’ refusal to work for free was seen by France as a theft of labour and resources). Faced with the invidious choice between payment or re-colonisation and enslavement, Haiti was thus shackled with a debt that would crush its economy. In 1900, it was spending 80% of its national budget on this debt (now with added interest), and would not make its final payment until 1947, 143 years after winning its ‘freedom’.
Haiti’s debt nightmare was not to end there; the country was struck once again by crushing repayments following the brutal militia-enforced leadership of the Duvaliers, who embezzled foreign aid to the tune of around 80%, (a figure known to Washington). Although much of Haiti’s aid and foreign loans were proved to be arriving directly into the Duvaliers’ Swiss bank accounts, while its people starved on the streets, the US and French governments, the World Bank and the IMF (amongst others) insisted that after the fall of the Duvalier regime, Haitians must repay the loans they barely saw, once again crippling the nation’s economy. Every pound spent on repayment was one not spent on infrastructure, education and development.
An analysis of Haitian poverty which fails even to mention these repayments can only be judged as deeply flawed. Although Jared Diamond is cited as acknowledging the ‘many other factors’ in the history of the island, ignoring such a decisive one would surely discredit any scientific analysis – surely the same standards should be applied to historical study?