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11 Making investor states

Haitian foreign debt and neocolonial economic governance in nineteenth-century France

Abstract

Investment in formal and informal empire is a significant factor in the construction of durable forms of imperial economic governance, and its social and cultural work is an important and understudied aspect of the European imperial experience. This chapter examines the petitioning and negotiating work of Haiti’s French creditors in the nineteenth century to demonstrate how investors in the former colony engaged the French government in claims for official support and how their lobbying and mobilisation enjoined the state to work out the nature of its goals and responsibility in post-colonial economic relations. In practical terms, the Haitian loan helped institutionalise legal and political principles, as well as institutions like bondholder associations, that were foundational to France’s economic imperialism throughout the nineteenth century. More broadly, through decades of letter writing, public meetings, and pamphlet and article publications, Haiti’s creditors engaged themselves and the French public in processes of imagining and argumentation about the value of that imperialism. The amounts of money at stake were small from the French perspective. However, by placing these monetary exchanges in the context of the intense legal, political, and emotional mobilisation they generated, we can revive the complexity of economic decolonisation and retrieve their significant impact on the elaboration of a habitus of imperial extraction.

Abstract

Investment in formal and informal empire is a significant factor in the construction of durable forms of imperial economic governance, and its social and cultural work is an important and understudied aspect of the European imperial experience. This chapter examines the petitioning and negotiating work of Haiti’s French creditors in the nineteenth century to demonstrate how investors in the former colony engaged the French government in claims for official support and how their lobbying and mobilisation enjoined the state to work out the nature of its goals and responsibility in post-colonial economic relations. In practical terms, the Haitian loan helped institutionalise legal and political principles, as well as institutions like bondholder associations, that were foundational to France’s economic imperialism throughout the nineteenth century. More broadly, through decades of letter writing, public meetings, and pamphlet and article publications, Haiti’s creditors engaged themselves and the French public in processes of imagining and argumentation about the value of that imperialism. The amounts of money at stake were small from the French perspective. However, by placing these monetary exchanges in the context of the intense legal, political, and emotional mobilisation they generated, we can revive the complexity of economic decolonisation and retrieve their significant impact on the elaboration of a habitus of imperial extraction.

Chapters in this book

  1. Front Matter i
  2. Contents v
  3. List of figures vii
  4. List of tables x
  5. Notes on contributors xi
  6. Preface xiv
  7. Acknowledgements xix
  8. Introduction 1
  9. Part I: Institutional and fiscal issues
  10. 1 The great gage 19
  11. 2 The cost of thrift 37
  12. 3 Madagascar and French imperial mercantilism 57
  13. 4 The right to sovereign seizure? Taxation, valuation, and the Imperial British East Africa Company 79
  14. 5 Internal inequalities 98
  15. Part II: Taxation and welfare
  16. 6 Taxation, welfare, and inequalities in the Spanish imperial state 121
  17. 7 Political economies of welfare of the Spanish Empire 138
  18. 8 Poverty, health, and imperial wealth in early modern Scotland 157
  19. 9 Compromise and adaptation in colonial taxation 177
  20. 10 Imperial revenue and national welfare 198
  21. Part III: Post-colonial legacies
  22. 11 Making investor states 219
  23. 12 The lure of the welfare state following decolonisation in Kenya 240
  24. 13 From capitation taxes to tax havens 259
  25. 14 Imperial extraction and ‘tax havens’ 280
  26. 15 The Crown Agents and the CDC Group 299
  27. Afterword 319
  28. Index 329
Imperial Inequalities
This chapter is in the book Imperial Inequalities
https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526166159.00022

Chapters in this book

  1. Front Matter i
  2. Contents v
  3. List of figures vii
  4. List of tables x
  5. Notes on contributors xi
  6. Preface xiv
  7. Acknowledgements xix
  8. Introduction 1
  9. Part I: Institutional and fiscal issues
  10. 1 The great gage 19
  11. 2 The cost of thrift 37
  12. 3 Madagascar and French imperial mercantilism 57
  13. 4 The right to sovereign seizure? Taxation, valuation, and the Imperial British East Africa Company 79
  14. 5 Internal inequalities 98
  15. Part II: Taxation and welfare
  16. 6 Taxation, welfare, and inequalities in the Spanish imperial state 121
  17. 7 Political economies of welfare of the Spanish Empire 138
  18. 8 Poverty, health, and imperial wealth in early modern Scotland 157
  19. 9 Compromise and adaptation in colonial taxation 177
  20. 10 Imperial revenue and national welfare 198
  21. Part III: Post-colonial legacies
  22. 11 Making investor states 219
  23. 12 The lure of the welfare state following decolonisation in Kenya 240
  24. 13 From capitation taxes to tax havens 259
  25. 14 Imperial extraction and ‘tax havens’ 280
  26. 15 The Crown Agents and the CDC Group 299
  27. Afterword 319
  28. Index 329
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