Haiti helped to double the size of United States

The tragic earthquake in Haiti and the suffering it has caused is heart wrenching. Americans are responding to the calls for help. And there is a good reason that they should.

Haiti or more specifically Haitian slaves were the reason that in 1803 the United States was able to double its size through the Louisiana purchase.

Haiti, which was a French colony since early 1700s, was a cash cow of the French new world. The French brought in African slaves into the country for sugar, tobacco and indigo cultivation and amassed large profits. However the slaves which outnumbered their white masters were brutally treated. Haiti was a poster child of a brutal efficient slave colony. All that changed in 1791, when the slaves inspired by the success of French revolution, launched an armed rebellion against their masters which eventually led to Haitian freedom in 1803.

Around the same time Thomas Jefferson had reached out to French to buy New Orleans, to secure and control the Mississippi trade route through its port. With its profitable new world colony gone and wars with the British imminent, Napolean lost interest in pursing the French colonization agenda in the new world. So when Americas went with a proposal to buy New Orleans, the French in turn suggested that they are interested in selling the entire Lousiana, which comprised of all or part of 14 current U.S. states and two Canadian provinces and doubled the size of the country that time.

The United States finally bought the Louisiana territory from the French for $15M or $213M in current day terms.