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Historical data on Haiti’s debt

The New York Times is publishing a historical data set of payments Haiti made to France, collected as part of a project on Haiti’s “double debt.” This debt, which began in 1825, includes the indemnity that France demanded from Haiti to compensate former colonists and the loan that Haiti took out to start paying it. Relying on archival sources, we tabulated how much money Haitians paid to the families of their former colonial overlords and to the French banks and investors who controlled the loan.

A full bibliography for the Haiti project is also available.

Data fields

  • YEAR: Calendar year.
  • DOUBLE-DEBT-DRAWDOWN: The remainder of the debt each year, in French francs, after Haiti paid the indemnity, the principal and interest of the 1825 loan, and late fees on both payments. Values are not adjusted for inflation, and they do not include future interest on the loan or future late fees. The initial value for 1825 equals the indemnity demanded by France (150 million francs) plus the 1825 loan (30 million francs), minus the amount that Haiti paid off with the money it received from the loan (24 million francs).
  • PAYMENTS-DOUBLE-DEBT-FRANCS: The amount Haitians paid for the double debt, in French francs. Haiti paid 24 million francs of the indemnity with money borrowed through the 1825 loan. This is reflected in the payments of that loan, to avoid a double count.
  • PAYMENTS-INDEMNITY: Payments made on the 150-million-franc indemnity, which was later reduced to 90 million francs. Values are in French francs and are not adjusted for inflation.
  • PAYMENTS-PRINCIPAL-INTEREST-1825-LOAN: Payments on the principal and interest of the 1825 loan. Values are in French francs and are not adjusted for inflation.
  • LATE-FEES: France introduced late fees on arrears after 1870. Late fee payments are tabulated here. Values are in French francs and are not adjusted for inflation.
  • CONSUMER-PRICE-INDEX-USD: We obtained 19th-century consumer price index data for U.S. dollars from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
  • EXCHANGE-RATE-USD-TO-FRANC: Data on historical exchange rates is from the historian Victor Bulmer-Thomas. It is reprinted here with permission of the author.
  • HAITI-HISTORICAL-GDP-USD: We obtained broad estimates of historical nominal G.D.P. figures for Haiti from Simon Henochsberg’s thesis, “Public Debt and Slavery: The Case of Haiti (1760-1915),” published in December 2016. They are reprinted here with permission of the author.
  • DOUBLE-DEBT-IN-2021-USD: We converted the total sum of the double debt paid each year to U.S. dollars using historical exchange rates. We then accounted for inflation by adjusting the value to 2021 U.S. dollars using historical consumer price index data. The following formula was used: (Total double debt paid that year / Exchange rate, franc to U.S.D.) * (2021 consumer price index / that year’s consumer price index)

How we calculated the debt

For a full description of how we calculated the debt and estimated its long-term economic impact, see the project bibliography.

History of payments

To pay the indemnity, Haiti borrowed 30 million francs from a consortium of banks, including the Rothschilds, in 1825. The bankers kept six million francs as a commission, leaving Haiti with only 24 million francs to pay the first installment of the indemnity debt.

Still, Haiti was unable to make payments on the double debt from 1827 to 1830. France threatened war.

In 1828, Jacques Laffitte, a French banker, offered to advance funds to pay for part of the principal and interest on the 1825 loan. Mr. Laffitte settled these debt payments after securing a guarantee of payment from the French government, and he made a windfall when Haiti bought some of the bonds back from him at a premium.

Bonds on the 1825 loan, once valued at a thousand francs on the Paris stock exchange, fell to 200 francs in 1833.

For the period 1833-38, we calculated annual figures for the payment of principal on the 1825 loan using the number of bonds that were retired in the six-year period. We calculated the average annual payment on the interest of the 1825 loan for the period 1831-35 using the lump sum reported by the French Parliament in 1835.

A report from French bondholders said that, from 1827 to 1838, bonds were retired at an average value of 550 francs while another report from the French Parliament set 550 francs as the maximum value for the bonds. We used an average value of 500 francs for bonds retired in that period until 1839, when Haiti and France renegotiated the loan payment.

In 1838, after years of negotiations, France and Haiti signed a new treaty that reduced the unpaid remainder of the indemnity debt to 60 million francs plus the 700,000 francs that Haiti still owed from the first installment of the indemnity payment. The treaty introduced a new payment schedule and recognized Haiti’s independence, even before Haiti settled its debt.

The following year, Haiti agreed to pay bondholders of the 1825 loan one million francs every year until the principal was fully paid. The bondholders agreed to forgo the 6 percent interest on the 1825 loan, which had not been paid for a decade. They also reduced the interest rate on the loan to 3 percent.

We estimated annual interest payments for the period 1839-42 at 3 percent of the outstanding bonds on the 1825 loan.

In 1843, Haiti defaulted on the indemnity payment and the principal and interest of the 1825 loan after its president was ousted. In response, the French consul in Port-au-Prince threatened to annex strategic ports.

Haiti paid off part of its indemnity debt in 1844 but stopped servicing its debt for six more years. It resumed paying the indemnity debt in 1851 but continued to default on the 1825 loan’s principal and interest until 1854.

In 1854, Haiti and France signed another treaty on the debt payments. Haiti agreed to pay 800,000 francs every year on the principal and interest of the 1825 loan and to settle unpaid interest from previous years.

Reports held by the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, the French public bank that collected Haiti’s payments, say that Haiti met its financial obligations on the loan from 1855 to 1865. We have thus calculated average annual payments based on the lump sums that were paid over that period.

Haiti partly stopped paying the indemnity debt from 1866 to 1870.

In December 1870, a new agreement between France and Haiti consolidated the indemnity debt with the debt from the 1825 loan. The agreement also introduced late fees on arrears.

In 1878, Haiti’s government made the last payment on the indemnity. Then in 1887, it said that it had paid off the loan — though a final, small amount of interest and late fees was paid the next year. The French government did not agree and argued that Haiti still had to retire 1,124 outstanding bonds on the loan and some interest. Finally, after years of back and forth, in 1893, Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations acknowledged its error and closed the chapter on the double debt.

The double debt was therefore paid off in 1888.

Sources

The following list describes sources we relied on to construct the historical data set. For a full accounting of sources behind the Haiti project, see the project bibliography.

Archival sources

  • Archives of Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, the French public bank that handled Haiti’s payments
  • Archival records held by the Foreign Ministry, in La Courneuve, France, including reports from a French parliamentary commission on Haiti (1835)
  • Archives held in Landes, France: Logs and letters of the captain who carried the emptied coffers of the Haitian Treasury in his ship in 1826
  • Volumes of the États Detaillés des Liquidations held at the French National Overseas Archives in Aix-en-Provence, France.
  • Parliamentary records held at the French National Archives [Projet de Loi Relatif à l'Exécution du Traité Fait Entre la France et le Gouvernement d'Haïti le 12 Février 1838]

Secondary sources