as eduardo galeano on a recent liberal, the black slaves of haiti defeated napoleon bonaparte's lorries army and europe never forgave the haitians. so this was sort of the first time that we saw race defining public policy towards haiti, right after the country's first proclaimed independence. this was an error that was clearly defined by racism, and we saw haiti not only did it emerge victorious from this revolutionary war and defeated the strongest army in the world, it was never treated as an equal independent country during that time. it was seen as a threat to security of all the nations that were still practicing slavery. and so even though it was a free nation, throughout the 19th century a.d. was treated as this threat, and was required to pay france reparations of 150 million francs. these were for the property that france and french people had lost during the revolution. in other words, the haitians themselves. so this put haiti into a very subservient position in the economy of hemisphere at the time. and also haiti was unable to trade freely and very with other countries tha