Question that occurred to me as I attended a seminar about Haiti

[UndertheOcean]

The West tends to judge countries by how well they emulate the western mode of governance, commerce , habits and social relations.

So , concentrating on this sole metric , different cultures historically reacted differently to western interference.

When Japan was forced out of its isolation . That spurred them into emulating the west and moving surprisingly swiftly from the medieval feudal island they were to a capitalist powerhouse .... Even after their devastation after World War II they bounced back as the second (?) largest economy in the world.

Haiti is somewhat similar , like Japan , it lacks natural resources . The confrontation with the west through slavery , that ended with freedom through revolution ... while positive , the country just went almost no where after that , and is now the poorest country in the western Hemisphere.

Sub-Saharan Africa is much the same, despite the resources available there.


Those are the facts ..... But what bugs me is WHY ? why do different cultures react differently to outside pressures and interference ?


This is a serious question , but when I asked the prof. who gave the talk , he just dismissed it , or didn't seem to be curious about the reasons for this.

[rfranklin]

1. It's a tough question and some of the possible answers...

could be politically incorrect. (And I am not implying that I have any answers.)

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

2. Guess: Because they're different?

-----why do different cultures react differently with outside pressures and interference?




:shrug:

[Fumesucker]

3. Japan had a long history and a well developed culture before Admiral Perry ..

Also Japanese were never slaves to another culture, the term "Kamikaze" means "divine wind" referring to the wind which sunk a Mongol invasion fleet in 1281 CE.

The island of Hispaniola was essentially depopulated after Columbus, From an estimated initial population of 250,000 in 1492, the Arawaks had dropped to 14,000 by 1517. In 1501, the colony began to import African slaves, believing them more capable of performing physical labor. Now the island is almost entirely descended from former African slaves.

Hispaniola has been almost continuously interfered with internally by other nations, in the last two centuries chiefly the United States but also by European nations, this is not true of Japan.

The terrain of the two islands could hardly be more different. Hispaniola is 29,000 square miles all of which is tropical or subtropical while Japan is 145,000 square miles and temperate.

[UndertheOcean]

4. thanks for the explanation ...

The question now is , what does Haiti need to do to catch up with the western world , and another question : Do they have too ?

[ljm2002]

5. After WWII, which Japan lost...

...we helped them rebuild. This, after they had initiated the war with us by their actions at Pearl Harbor.

After the Haitian rebels won independence, they were forced to pay billions in "reparations" to France, which by all rights should have flowed in the other direction. They were largely shunned by Europe and the U.S.

So it can hardly be laid at the feet of the Haitians, as though their "reaction" to being colonized was in some way "different" and caused the different outcome.

The different outcomes between Japan and Haiti were engineered at the outset.

[UndertheOcean]

6. Why ? Out of pure malice , or due to some materialistic pressure ?

Or is it that those under French colonial rule generally faired worse than those under English/American rule ? is that a far off guess ?


Why did the US help Japan rebuild ?

[ljm2002]

7. Sorry, can't answer the "why" of it all...

...apart from the fact that the post-WWII policy was quite enlightened, considering what the war had wrought on all its participants.

The shunning of Haiti, on the other hand -- I guess imperial powers stick together. I can understand France wanting money, and I'm sure Haiti felt they had no choice but to agree to the terms. But why the other countries including the US felt it necessary to go along and treat the Haitians like dirt (to the point where some even now some of them eat so-called "dirt cookies" - which are essentially fat and dirt - to stave off starvation) - no idea. I've heard some speculation that as we were still a slave-owning country at the time, we felt it was a threat to our "way of life".

Like many of us, I got a crash course in Haiti's history when the earthquake struck. It would be a very interesting thing to study up on, I think. They are the only known case of a successful slave uprising. They have paid dearly for that success.

[proteus_lives]

8. Don't personalize nations.

Nation-states don't don't do things out of "malice" They do things for profit, benefit. If Haiti had something valuable then we would told France to screw-off. But the government was always unstable and pre-Civil War Southern influence made difficult to trade with a black-led nation.

"Why did the US help Japan rebuild ?"

Because we needed them on our flank against the Soviets. (Especially after China fell.)

[BeFree]

9. Haiti has been screwed over

There is plenty of land there but since (I've read) that some of it has gold on it, the people are kept from moving onto and living there. They might find the gold and become rich?

The elites wanted an uneducated populace and that's what has transpired.