Forced Settlement and Colonial Occupation under French Rule

Abstract Chapter 7 examines the historical and factors that undermined Haiti’s long-term development relative to other forced settlement colonies in the Global South. Haiti’s persistent underdevelopment is contrasted with the French Antilles colonies (i.e., Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Réunion), which implemented significant liberal reforms following the establishment of republican government in France. Consequently, emancipated Afro-descendants in the Antilles colonies also benefited from the expansion of citizenship rights and parliamentary representation in the Third French Republic after 1870. The expansion of citizenship rights and parliamentary representation in the French Antilles is contrasted with the extractive and repressive legal-administrative institutions that controlled indigenous Arab Muslims in Algeria, and indigenous African ethnicities in Senegal, Gabon, Madagascar, and the Comoros Islands. These diverse examples of French colonial occupation highlight the negative developmental legacies of extractive legal-administrative institutions that undermined the legal rights and political agency of indigenous colonial subjects under French rule.