Haiti’s Past and How It Affects Reconstruction After the 2010 Earthquake

Haiti Research Paper

One of the most frequent misconceptions that students have about history is that the events of the past, and the actions of individuals in the past, have no connection to the world of today, nor any impact upon it.  The belief is that history has no effect on the modern world because of the distance in time (and space), between historical events and the present day, because of the distance between the lives of the historical actors and the student’s own, and between past events and the contemporary, present-day world.

On the fourth anniversary of the devastating January 2010 earthquake there were still 150,000 people in Haiti living in tents that had not yet been re-housed.[1] The purpose of this Research Paper is to emphasize the fact that events from Haiti's history, from the time of the Revolution onwards, have had a major impact upon Haitian life into the present day, and were a contributory factor in why the 2010 earthquake had such a devastating impact upon the country and its subsequent efforts to rebuild.

When researching your paper, you must investigate the following three areas:

1)      The 1825 settlement between Haiti and France, and the ways in which it hindered and stunted Haiti’s future development;

2)      The relationship between the US and Haiti, and the causes and consequences of the American occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934;

3)      The Duvalier dictatorships of 1957-1986.

Once you have given an overview of each historical event, you should then show how each one contributed to the problems Haiti faced when rebuilding after the 2010 earthquake.

These reasons are not self-evident, and you MUST show direct links between cause and consequences, between the historical event and the present-day problem(s) they caused. Failure to address any of the three areas will lead to the loss of one third of your grade.

Your paper should not be a ‘data dump’ of all you can find about Haitian history after independence, but a focused research paper that looks to answer the question of how Haiti’s past has affected it in the present.

Structure:

• Page 1: cover sheet with your name and your paper’s creative title
• Pages 2-5: your research paper, which should consist of four full pages of text
• Page 6: your bibliography of sources
• Overlong papers will be penalized (half a page over the 4 page limit will lose you 0.5 off your final grade; one full page over will lose you 1.0 off your grade etc).

Format:

• Your paper should use a minimum of four (4) sources, which must be books or academic journal articles. You can use academic journal articles you have accessed online via the MSU library system (see the 'Research Help' links from MSU libraries: http://www.lib.msu.edu/research/ ).You can also use books found in electronic form (e.g. Google books, or from MSU libraries). You cannot use articles from newspapers, news magazines, or online news websites for this assignment - anyone doing so will receive a 0.0 grade on the assignment.
• Examples of academic journals include: the William and Mary Quarterly, Caribbean Studies, the Journal of Haitian Studies, and Latin American Studies.
• For online sources, you must provide author, title, and publication details for e-books, and article title, journal title, volume, page numbers, and stable URLs for online journal articles, and not just copy the URL from your browser. If you access academic journal articles or e-books using your MSU account via the MSU library, then only you can access the URL shown in your browser, and anyone else clicking on that link, or attempting to copy and paste it, will get a pop-up box asking for YOUR Net-ID and password in order to access the article. Thus, you need to provide full publication details for e-books and journal articles accessed online. Failure to include proper citations WILL be penalized!
• WIKIPEDIA is not a permissible source! Anyone giving Wikipedia as a source will be docked a full grade point off their grade for the assignment.
• You may provide your citations in whatever format you are most comfortable and familiar with, be it footnotes, endnotes, or in-text citations.
• Type your paper in Times New Roman, 12-point font, double-spaced, with one inch margins. Insert page numbers bottom right.
• Papers must be submitted in Microsoft Word format ('.doc' or '.docx' file format).

Due Date:

Your paper is due in the Haiti Research Assignment Drop-Box on D2L before 10:00pm on Thursday July 2nd. Late papers submitted after the 10:00pm deadline (based upon the submission time recorded on D2L) will lose 0.5 off their final grade for each day they are late (starting on the 8th), as noted on pages 3-4 of the Syllabus. Any paper submitted in an incorrect (i.e. non-Word) format will also incur the same late penalty noted above until such time as a correctly formatted paper is submitted.

Note:

While the Haiti Research Paper takes the place of a Unit 3 Paper, the Final Exam covers all of Unit 3 so you DO need to watch/listen to the Unit 3 lectures/documentaries/films.