Hayti; or, The Black Republic

Abstract

WHATEVER theory may be adopted regarding the fundamental equality or disparity of the human races, a truthful and unbiased account of the present social condition of the Haytians, by a competent observer, must necessarily prove a valuable contribution to the study of psychological anthropology. These conditions are eminently satisfied in the work before us, written as it is by a man personally above suspicion of any unworthy motive, by a statesman who has associated for some five-and-thirty years with every variety of coloured peoples, by a distinguished diplomatist, who, as British Minister and Consul-General, has resided for twelve years in Hayti itself. On the other hand, no more favourable field could be selected for a study of the negro race than this western and smaller division of this large West Indian island, second in size only to Cuba, of which it forms a natural continuation eastwards to Porto Rico. Here the eastern and much larger division, known as Santo Domingo, has been mainly in the hands of a “coloured,” that is, negroid or mulatto people, since the expulsion of the Spaniards and French early in the present century. But in Hayti the pure negro has always been in the ascendant, and his policy has persistently been to get rid of the white and coloured elements. The whites disappeared, either exter minated or driven into exile, during the struggle with Franee; and of the present population, roughly estimated at some 800,000 or 900,000, not more than one-tenth are mulattoes, and all the rest full-blood Africans. The Haytians may, in fact, be regarded as a section of the negro race transplanted bodily to their present domain, where they have had it all their own way since the close of the last century. Whatever differences may exist, are all in their favour; for they here find themselves separated from the old baneful associations, and surrounded on all sides by the civilising influences of more cultured peoples. The physical environment is also more favourable, the climate being on the whole decidedly superior to that of the African sea-board, while the well-watered lowlands are described as amongst the most fertile tracts on the globe. Hayti; or, The Black Republic. By Sir Spenser St. John (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1884.