Relections on Haiti

I give props to the slaves of Haiti for going after their independence and getting it. It’s pretty awesome that such a tiny nation was the site of the only successful slave revolution in the world. But did they really get what they were after? Was freedom all they really wanted or did they want to remain the prosperous, wealthy colony that they were? Our book says that Saint Domingue, what Haiti was formerly called, was widely regarded as the richest colony in the world and produced some 40 percent of the world’s sugar and perhaps half of its coffee. I was honestly shocked when I read that. I’ve been to Haiti and seen firsthand the utter poverty in which many of the Haitians live, especially now. It’s hard for me to picture that tiny nation as ever being hugely prosperous. What were the plantations like in the 1700’s? Did they resemble American plantations or were they more rustic like the Haiti of today?

This family struggles to support itself and feed its children. They press sugar cane to make molasses for exportation. It will be used to make rum in the Dominican Republic and then taxed highly as an import back to Haiti. This is where they live…

and this …

is how they press the cane.

Haitians still produce small amounts of food for their own needs with a little bit left to sell at the local market – like this …

but many, many families cannot afford to feed their children. Some of them do get fed though, thanks to nutrition centers set up near some towns. Many of the centers, like the ones in Pignon, are run by local missionaries and feed hundreds of children each week.

These boys are sharing one serving so they can take leftovers back to their families.

But the nation as a whole is incredibly poor and has been – largely as a result of the slave revolution of 1791.

On another note, I found it interesting that revolutions have caused many nations to essentially flip-flop. The United States, originally colonies of “leftover” Englishmen, became wealthy, industrialized, and stable after its revolution. Many Latin American countries, initially wealthy and sophisticated colonies, became underdeveloped, unstable, and dependent on foreign investment after their revolutions. The same goes for Haiti. It was once a global, economic power and now it’s the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Would they be where they are today if they hadn’t had such a brutal and bitter revolution?

YAY!!! A new topic!

Frankly, I’m getting pretty sick of Strayer and how repetitive he is. It seems like every chapter just rehashes a previous one and I have seriously lost interest. My mind wanders while I read now and forcing myself to pay attention isn’t helping. Rereading paragraphs I’ve let my mind wander on just makes the task of reading even more tedious. But…we’ve finally come to a somewhat new topic – religion and science. This chapter held my attention a little more than the ones from the recent past. Maybe that’s because it made my blood boil within the first paragraph. I get so frustrated when I hear people use the separation of church and state argument. In my studies I’ve always learned that separation of church and state meant that the state (government) didn’t get to dictate how or what people worshiped. They didn’t get to impose their beliefs on the public. That’s one of the things our founding fathers were frustrated with in England – the state church and its authority in political matters. In my opinion, our government is doing the same thing. They deny us the right to express ourselves on public property and force their atheistic/agnostic beliefs on us through our education system. Why is it wrong to teach multiple points of view? The prologue of our book says that many creation stories exist. The Navajo believed the world was created by Holy People who lived underground and were forced to the surface by a flood and created man and women out of ears of corn. The Greeks thought an original Cosmic Egg gave birth to the deities of Earth and Sky who then created earth and its living creatures. Ancient Hebrews believed that God brought order to the chaos and created light and dark, earth, and all living creatures. What makes this last story so scary to our government? Why can we teach other stories of creation and not this one? Why is Christianity the main religion that provokes the separation of church and state argument? It’s frustrating and interesting all the same.

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Chapter 8

Chapter 8 begins with a quotation from the New York Times in 2003. In this quote, the journalist is describing the idea of building a paved highway “from the spot where Europe kisses the tip of this continent into the heart of sub-Saharan Africa.” She (for some reason I assume it’s a she although I don’t really know why) writes as though this a novel idea, as if no one has ever traveled through Europe and into Africa before. Does she know anything of history? Has she never heard of trade and trade routes? Exchange among distant peoples from far-away lands is nothing new. Global economy is not a new idea although many think it is. 1500-500 years ago, long-distance trade played a significant role in shaping whole societies. For many, economic self-sufficiency was diminished as they began producing specialized products for trade. Local religions and cultures were also affected as was the health of many people. Initially, trading by land was expensive. Camel caravans could only carry so much and so they frequently carried whatever would bring them the most profit – luxury products, such as silk, destined for an elite and wealthy market. Transportation costs were much lower on the sea. Ships could carry much larger and heavy loads so they eventually carried goods destined for a mass market like textiles, pepper, timber, rice, sugar, and wheat.

Chapter 9

The idea of China being the next superpower has, quite frankly, freaked out several people that I know. They are unfamiliar with most of China’s history and know more of, as our book says, the weak and dependent country that existed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But we owe a lot to the Chinese (and the nations that influenced them) – agricultural and industrial advances, red light districts, woodblock and movable type printing, printed books, navigational technologies, and gunpowder to name a few. Thankfully, foot binding went out of style during the twentieth century and won’t likely make a comeback for a while.

Of particular interest to me in this chapter was the discussion about China’s relationship with its nomadic northern neighbors. China wasn’t a self-contained nation as is largely thought. Even though they built the Great Wall to keep the nomads out, they relied upon them heavily at times and the tribute system they created didn’t quite work the way they said it did. Created to make non-Chinese authorities acknowledge Chinese superiority and their own subordination, the tribute system frequently found emperors “paying heavily for protection from nomadic incursion.” In other words, the Chinese were paying the nomads off – bribing them for their own security. It made me think…how often do we do this same sort of thing in our lives today and, because of our own arrogance and pride, still think that we’re the ones in control?

Chapter 10

As a Christian I believe that Jesus was both God and man. I have no idea what the beliefs of Nestorianism were, other than what our book tells me, but I’m surprised that European Christians thought them heretics for their belief that Jesus “had two quite distinct natures, one human and one divine.” That sentence makes me wonder who the Europeans and Nestorians thought Jesus was. Perhaps I’ll find out as I read some more…Nope didn’t find out anything more about that. I did have an interesting discussion about it with some friends though. One idea brought up was that the word distinct, meaning not the same or separate, may have caused the issue for the Europeans.

Chapter 10 didn’t really strike me all that much. It basically talked about the spread of Christianity and the unifications and divisions it created over several centuries. I am starting to get a little annoyed with how our book is organized though. I really wish it would stop jumping back and forth in history and just present things in a chronological manner. Perhaps I’m just more of a linear thinker than the author is.