Haiti

From Turtledove

Haiti is a nation on the island of Hispaniola in the Carribean Sea. The majority of its population is black. A former French coloy, Haiti is unique in that it was the first country in Latin America to gain independence, the first post-colonial independent black-led nation in the world, and the only nation whose independence was gained as part of a successful slave rebellion.

[edit] Haiti in Southern Victory

Haiti was a traditional US ally in the Entente-dominated Caribbean. It signed a mutual defense pact with President Thomas Brackett Reed in the late nineteenth century after the Confederate States, a nation created in part to preserve slavery, appeared to be prearing to invade Haiti.

During the Great War, Haiti was overrun by Confederate and British forces and its government was exiled to Philadelphia. From Philadelphia, the government aligned itself with the Central Powers and was among the first governments to extend diplomatic recognition to the Republic of Quebec.

The government was restored to power in Haiti after the Great War. In 1936, a Haitian runner won a bronze medal in the 1936 Olympic Games in Richmond, much to the disappointment of Confederate President Jake Featherston, who had attempted to bar black athletes from participating in the games.

In 1941, in the early days of the Second Great War, Entente forces took the United States' main Caribbean base, Bermuda, leading to Haiti's invasion by the Confederate States shortly afterwards.

The Confederate States ran a death camp south of Port-au-Prince, where first political prisoners were murdered, then intellectuals, and then all black inhabitants of Haiti that fell afoul of the Confederates, before its liberation in 1944 by the United States. The Confederate soldiers quickly surrendered to the U.S. rather than face the wrath of the Haitian population.

Despite its substantial black population, most Confederate blacks were content to remain where they were prior to the arrival of the Freedom Party, deeming the repression of the C.S. government preferable to the instability and violence that plagued Haiti.

[edit] Haiti in Worldwar

Haiti was an American ally in World War II and the subsequent war against the Race's Conquest Fleet. Before the Peace of Cairo, President Cordell Hull put Haiti under his country's protection, and US Secretary of State George Marshall insisted that Atvar respect Haitian sovereignty. Haiti became one of the few Latin American nations to maintain sovereignty rather than be colonized by the Race.