6 Takeaways About Haiti’s Reparations to France
海地如何沦为法国和美国的“金矿”和“提款机”

A failed state. An aid trap. A land seemingly cursed by nature and human nature alike.

一个瘫痪的国家。一个援助陷阱。一片似乎被自然和人性所诅咒的土地。

When the world looks at Haiti, one of the poorest nations on the planet, sympathy for its endless suffering is often overshadowed by scolding and sermonizing about corruption and mismanagement.

当世界注视海地这个地球上最贫穷的国家之一时，听到的往往是对那里的腐败和管理不善的指责和说教，对其无尽苦难的同情往往被淹没其中。

Some know how Haitians overthrew their notoriously brutal French slave masters and declared independence in 1804 — the modern world’s first nation born of a slave revolt.

有人知道，海地人在1804年推翻了以残酷著称的法国奴隶主并宣布独立——海地是现代世界上第一个诞生于奴隶起义的国家。

But few know the story of what happened two decades later, when French warships returned to a people who had paid for their freedom with blood, issuing an ultimatum: Pay again, in staggering amounts of cold hard cash, or prepare for war.

但几乎没有人知道20年后发生了什么，当时法国军舰再次来到用鲜血换来自由的人民面前，发出最后通牒：要么再次支付数额惊人的现金，要么就准备开战吧。

For generations, the descendants of enslaved people paid the descendants of their former slave masters, with money that could have been used to build schools, roads, clinics or a vibrant economy.

几代人以来，被奴役者的后代向昔日奴隶主的后代付钱，这些钱本可以用来修建学校、道路和诊所，或者用来振兴经济。

For years, as New York Times journalists have chronicled Haiti’s travails, a question has hovered: What if? What if the nation had not been looted by outside powers, foreign banks and its own leaders almost since birth? How much more money might it have had to build a nation?

多年来，当《纽约时报》的记者们记录海地的苦难时，一个问题一直萦绕不去：如果……？如果这个国家没有从一出生就遭外部势力、外国银行和本国领导人掠夺，那会怎么样？它能再得到多少钱来建设国家？

For more than a year, a team of Times correspondents scoured long-forgotten documents languishing in archives and libraries on three continents to answer that question, to put a number on what it cost Haitians to be free. Here are the takeaways from a series of stories appearing this week.

在一年多时间里，时报的记者团队在遍及三大洲的档案馆和图书馆里搜寻被遗忘已久的文件，以寻找这个问题的答案，算清海地人民自由的代价到底价值几何。以下就是本周发布的系列报道的要点。

The Double Debt That Started It All

双重债务是一切根源

When a French warship bristling with cannons sailed into the port of the Haitian capital in 1825, an emissary from King Charles X came ashore and delivered an astonishing demand: France wanted reparations from the people it had enslaved.

1825年，一艘布满大炮的法国军舰驶入海地首都的港口，国王查理十世的一名使者登岸，提出了一个非分要求：法国希望从它曾经奴役过的人民那里得到赔偿。

Ordinarily, the defeated are the ones who pay reparations, not the victors. Just a decade earlier, France had been forced to pay them to its European neighbors after the failed military campaigns of Napoleon — the very emperor whose forces were also defeated by the Haitians. But Haiti was virtually alone in the world, with no powerful allies. It was fearful of being invaded and eager to establish trade with other nations, so it agreed to pay.

支付赔款的通常是战败国，而非战胜国。就在十年前拿破仑的军事行动失败后，法国才被迫向其欧洲邻国支付赔款——而海地人民所击败的也正是拿破仑这位皇帝的军队。但海地在国际上基本孤立无援，没有强大的盟友。它害怕被侵略，急于与其他国家建立贸易关系，因此同意支付赔款。

The demand was for 150 million French francs, to be turned over in five annual payments, far more than Haiti could pay.

法国的赔款要求是1.5亿法郎，每年一付，五年付清，远远超出海地的支付能力。

So France pushed Haiti to take a loan from a group of French banks to start paying. That Sisyphean weight came to be known as the double debt.

于是，法国逼迫海地从法国各银行贷款来还债。这种西西弗斯式的压力在后来被称为双重债务。

The True Cost to Haiti Then — and Today

海地在当时（与今日）付出的真实成本

The Times tracked each payment Haiti made over the course of 64 years. In all, they added up to about $560 million in today’s dollars.

时报统计了海地在64年时间里的每一笔付款。以今天的美元计算，总额约有5.6亿。

But the loss to Haiti cannot just be measured by adding up how much was paid to France and to outside lenders over the years.

但海地的损失却不能仅用多年来支付给法国和外部债权方的金额来衡量。

Every franc shipped across the Atlantic to an overseas bank vault was a franc not circulating among Haiti’s farmers, laborers and merchants, or not being invested in bridges, schools or factories — the sort of expenditures that help nations become nations, that enable them to prosper.

横跨大西洋运到海外银行金库的每一法郎都不曾在海地的农民、劳工和商人中间流通，也没有被用于建设桥梁、学校、工厂——而国家正是要靠这样的开支才能成为国家，让它们繁荣起来。

After reviewing thousands of pages of archival documents, some centuries old, and consulting with 15 of the world’s leading economists, our correspondents calculated that the payments to France cost Haiti from $21 billion to $115 billion in lost economic growth over time. That is as much as eight times the size of Haiti’s entire economy in 2020.

在查阅了数千页的档案文件——其中一些历史已有数百年——并咨询了15位世界顶级经济学家之后，我们的记者计算出，随着时间推移，海地给法国的赔款导致了210亿至1150亿美元的经济增长损失。这相当于2020年海地经济总量的八倍。

“Neocolonialism through debt,” is how Thomas Piketty, one of the economists we spoke with, put it. “This drain has totally disrupted the process of state building,” he said.

“这是债务催生的新殖民主义，”我们采访到的经济学家之一托马斯·皮凯蒂说。“这种资产流失完全扰乱了国家建设的进程。”

And that was only the beginning. The double debt helped push Haiti into a cycle of debts that hobbled the country for more than 100 years.

而这仅仅是个开始。双重债务将海地推入了一个债务循环，让这个国家陷入了长达100多年的困境。

The French Bank That Struck Gold

掘到金矿的法国银行

The French government sapped Haiti with its demand for reparations, but in later years the French approached Haiti with a different tactic: the outstretched hand of a business partner.

法国政府的赔款要求削弱了海地国力，但在后来的几年里，法国用了一种不同的策略来对付海地：一名商业伙伴的掠夺之手。

After half a century of crushing payments tied to the double debt, Haitians celebrated the news that at last the country would have its own national bank, the sort of institution that in Europe had financed railroads and factories.

在经历半个世纪双重债务的赔偿重压后，海地人终于有了自己的国家银行，也就是欧洲那种为铁路和工厂提供资金的机构。

But the National Bank of Haiti was Haitian in name only. It was a creation of Crédit Industriel et Commercial, a Paris-based bank commonly known as C.I.C., and its investors. They controlled Haiti’s national bank from Paris and took a commission on nearly every transaction the Haitian government made. Original records uncovered by The Times show that Crédit Industriel and its investors siphoned tens of millions of dollars out of Haiti, while saddling the country with still more loans.

但海地国家银行仅在名义上属于海地。它是由总部位于巴黎的法国工商信贷银行（简称CIC）及其投资者创立的。他们在巴黎控制了海地的国家银行，从海地政府的几乎每一笔交易中抽取佣金。时报披露的原始记录显示，法国工商信贷银行及其投资者从海地吸走了数千万美元，还让海地背上了更多贷款负担。

It did not take long after the initial celebrations for Haitians to realize that something was wrong.

最初的庆祝还没过去多久，海地人民就意识到了不对劲。

“Isn’t it funny,” one Haitian economist wrote, “that a bank that claims to come to the rescue of a depleted public treasury begins not by depositing money but by withdrawing everything of value?”

“一家声称要拯救公共财政枯竭的银行，并没有开始储蓄资金，而是把有价值的东西都取出来，”一位海地经济学家写道，“这不是很可笑吗？”

The U.S. Treated Haiti Like a Cash Register

美国视海地为提款机

When the American military invaded Haiti in the summer of 1915, the official explanation was that Haiti was too poor and too unstable to be left to its own devices. Secretary of State Robert Lansing made little effort to mask his contempt for the “African race,” casting the occupation as a civilizing mission intended to end “anarchy, savagery and oppression.”

1915年夏天，当美军入侵海地，官方的说辞是这里过于贫穷动荡，不能任其自生自灭。国务卿罗伯特·蓝辛毫不掩饰自己对“非洲种族”的蔑视，将对海地的占领描述为一项旨在结束“无政府状态、野蛮和压迫”的教化使命。

But a hint of other motives had come the winter before, when a small team of Marines entered Haiti’s national bank and strolled out with $500,000 in gold. Within days, it was in the vault of a Wall Street bank.

但其他动机的蛛丝马迹在前一年冬天就已露出，当时海军陆战队的一小队成员进入海地国家银行，大摇大摆地拿走了价值50万美元的黄金。几天之内，这些黄金就进入了华尔街一家银行的保险库。

“I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues,” the general who led the U.S. forces in Haiti, said years later, describing himself as a “racketeer for capitalism.”

“我让海地和古巴成了国民城市银行的伙计们创收的好地方，”那位指挥驻海地美军的将军在多年后说道，并自称为“资本主义的勒索人”。

National City Bank was the predecessor of Citigroup, and along with other powers on Wall Street, it pushed Washington to seize control of Haiti and its finances, according to decades of diplomatic correspondence, financial reports and archival records reviewed by The Times.

根据时报查阅的数十年间的外交信函、财务报告和档案记录，作为花旗银行的前身，国民城市银行与华尔街的其他势力一道推动美国控制了海地及其财政。

For decades to come, the United States was the dominant power in Haiti, dissolving parliament at gunpoint, killing thousands and shipping a big portion of Haiti’s earnings to bankers in New York while the farmers who helped generate the profits often lived near starvation.

在此后几十年里，美国一直是海地的主导力量，武力威胁其解散议会，杀害了成千上万民众，并将海地很大一部分收入转移到了纽约银行家的手中，而参与创造这些利润的农民却往往难以果腹。

Some historians cite tangible gains for Haiti during the U.S. occupation, like hospitals, 800 miles of roads and a more efficient civil service. But they also point to the American use of forced labor, with soldiers tying up workers in ropes, making Haitians build roads for no pay and shooting those who tried to flee.

一些历史学家列举了美国占领期间海地取得的切实发展，比如建设了医院、总长约1300公里的铁路和更高效的行政服务。但他们也指出，美国使用强迫劳动，士兵用绳子将劳工绑住，让海地人无偿修路，还射杀试图逃跑的人。

For a decade, a quarter of Haiti’s total revenue went to paying debts controlled by National City Bank and its affiliate, according to nearly two dozen annual reports prepared by American officials and reviewed by The Times.

时报查阅了美国官员编撰的二十余份年度报告，其中显示，在十年时间里，海地总收入的四分之一都被用于偿还国民城市银行及其附属机构的债务。

At times, the American officers who controlled Haiti’s finances spent more of its money paying their own salaries and expenses than on public health for the entire country of about two million people.

控制海地财政的美国官员支付给自己的工资和开销，有时甚至比这个200万人口国家的公共卫生支出还要高。

The Scourge Within: Corruption

内部祸害：腐败

“They were betrayed by their own brothers, and then by foreign powers.”

“他们先是被自己的手足背叛，然后又被外国势力背叛。”

Those are the words of Georges Michel, a Haitian historian who, like many Haiti experts, says the country’s troubles cannot be explained without acknowledging the deeply embedded culture of corruption.

此言出自海地历史学家乔治·米歇尔。与许多海地专家一样，米歇尔认为，如果不承认腐败文化的根深蒂固，就无从解释海地所处的困境。

The 19th-century Haitian official who engineered a sweetheart deal for a bank in France — and then retired there?

那位在19世纪与法国一家银行达成私下协议，然后在法国退休的海地官员？

“That’s not the first case of a Haitian official selling the interest of his country for personal gains,” Mr. Michel said. “I would say it’s almost a rule.”

“他可不是头一个为了个人利益出卖国家的海地官员，”米歇尔说。“在我看来，这几乎是常态了。”

Haiti’s leaders have historically ransacked the country for their own gain. Elected legislators have spoken openly on the radio about accepting bribes and oligarchs sit atop lucrative monopolies, paying few taxes. Transparency International ranks it among the most corrupt nations in the world.

从古至今，海地的领导人都在为个人利益大肆搜刮。当选议员在广播上公开谈论收受贿赂，寡头们坐拥利润丰厚的垄断集团，却缴纳很少的税。透明国际组织将海地列为世界上最腐败的国家之一。

It is a problem of long standing.

这已是沉疴宿疾。

In an 1875 loan, the French bankers took a 40 percent cut off the top. Most of the rest went to paying other debts, while the remainder lined the pockets of corrupt Haitian officials who, historians say, enriched themselves at the expense of their country’s future.

在1875年的一笔贷款中，法国银行家们抽走了40%的大头。剩下的大部分都用于偿还其他债务，而余下款项就进了腐败海地官员的口袋，历史学家都说，这些人贪图荣华富贵，牺牲了国家的未来。

Nearly a century later, when a bookish doctor named François Duvalier was elected president, the country’s prospects looked good. For the first time in more than 130 years, Haiti was unburdened by crippling international debt.

近一个世纪后，书生气十足的医生弗朗索瓦·杜瓦利埃当选总统，国家前景一片光明。130多年来，海地第一次得以摆脱沉重的国际债务负担。

That was in 1957.

那是在1957年。

For the next 28 years, Duvalier and his son shared a dictatorship notorious for corruption and brutality. Professionals fled the country. A desperate country became still more desperate, and the Duvaliers looted hundreds of millions of dollars.

那之后的28年间，杜瓦利埃与其子联手进行了因腐败和残暴而臭名昭著的独裁统治。专业人士纷纷逃离海地。这个绝望的国家变得更加绝望，杜瓦利埃家族掠夺了数亿美元资产。

Haiti was perhaps poorer than ever.

海地可能比以往任何时候都更加贫困。

The History the French Don’t Teach

法国教科书上没有的历史

The double debt has largely faded into history. Generations of French profited richly from the financial exploits of their forebears, but that is rarely taught in classrooms. The Times spoke to more than 30 descendants of families that received payments under Haiti’s double debt. Most said they had never heard of it. “This is part of my family history I never knew,” said one sixth-generation descendant of Napoleon’s first wife.

双重债务基本已成为历史。一代代法国人从他们祖先的经济剥削中大发其财，但课堂上很少教授这些事。时报采访了30多位靠海地的双重债务而接受了赔款的家族后裔。大多数人都说，他们从未听说过此事。“我从来都不知道这段家族历史，”拿破仑首任妻子的第六代后裔说。

That is no accident. France has worked hard to bury this part of its past, or at least play it down.

这绝非偶然。法国一直在努力埋葬——或至少在淡化——这段历史。

Even in Haiti, the full story was long unknown. Then in 2003, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide stunned Haitians by denouncing the debt imposed by France and demanding reparations.

即便是在海地，历史的全貌也长期不为人知。到了2003年，让-贝特朗·阿里斯蒂德总统对法国强加的债务进行谴责并要求赔偿，令不少海地人大吃一惊。

France moved quickly to try to discredit him. Talk of reparations was alarming to a nation with other former colonies still suffering the legacy of exploitation. The French ambassador to Haiti at the time recalls the reparations demand as “explosive.”

法国迅速采取行动，试图抹黑他的声誉。对于这个还有其他前殖民地仍深受其殖民遗产剥削的国家而言，谈论赔偿是值得警惕的。当年的法国驻海地大使回忆称，海地的赔偿要求是“爆炸性的”。

“We had to try to defuse it,” he says.

“我们必须设法化解，”他说。

Mr. Aristide even offered a precise figure for what France owed, eliciting mockery. But Haiti’s long-term losses, The Times found, turned out to be surprisingly close to his estimate. He may even have been too conservative.

阿里斯蒂德甚至拿出了法国欠款的准确数字，一度引来嘲讽。但时报发现，海地的长期损失与他的估算惊人地接近。他甚至可能还太过保守。

In 2004, Mr. Aristide found himself being hustled onto a plane in an ouster arranged by the United States and France. The Americans and the French have defended the move by citing the need for stability in Haiti, which was torn by unrest. But with the passage of time, another former ambassador acknowledged that there may have been other factors.

2004年，在美国和法国的谋划下，阿里斯蒂德被罢免并押上一架飞机。美国和法国为此举辩护，称受动乱破坏的海地需要稳定。但随着时间推移，另一位前大使承认，可能还有其他因素在作祟。

The Haitian president’s abrupt removal, he told The Times, was “probably a bit about” his call for reparations, too.

他对时报表示，这位海地总统的突然下台与他的赔偿要求“可能也有点关系”。

来源：好英语网