Brief biography of Edmond Paul
Edmond Paul was born in Port-au-Prince on October 8, 1837. His full name was Alexis Frédéric Edmond Paul.21 He grew up in a privileged environment, with a front row seat to the inner workings of the young nation’s government.
His father, Jean Paul (1800-1872), who was born in Léogâne, had had the opportunity to study in Port-au-Prince under general Inginac, the general secretary of presidents Pétion and Boyer.22 Inginac took him under his wing, and he quickly rose up the ranks of public administration, before pivoting to a political career. Jean Paul held many posts throughout his life, including financial administrator of Port-au-Prince, senator, mayor of Port-au-Prince, member of the Constitutional Assembly, Minister of the Interior and of Agriculture, Minister of War and of the Navy, President of the Council of Ministers, and major general (général de division) of the armed forces.23 He made extra income through the mahogany trade.24 Jean Paul’s wife, who was Edmond Paul’s mother, was Charlotte Plésance; her brother, Victorin “Edmond” Plésance, was a teacher at the Lycée National who would later become Minister of Finance.25 Edmond Paul, who was named after this maternal uncle, was the third of Jean and Charlotte’s four children.26 His godfather and cousin, Charles Alerte, would become an influential general.27
In terms of personality, Edmond Paul had a reputation for being rather reserved. Physically, he was extremely tall,29 and in terms of racial categories, he was Black. In terms of social class, he was wealthy30 and educated.
Edmond Paul’s early schooling was entrusted to Sauveur Faubert and Daguessau Lespinasse.31 In 1852, he was sent to France to continue his studies.32 There, he first finished his secondary studies at the collège Rollin, and then studied political science under Michel Chevalier.33
Upon finishing his studies, Edmond Paul came back home in 1860.34 By the following year, he began influencing public opinion. His first major work is Questions politico-économiques, where he lays out a long-term vision for improving Haiti’s education system, which he saw as necessary both for economic growth and for overcoming class divisions in society. Also in 1861, he sent the government a proposal for industrial policy, and then published part of it as an article in the official government newspaper, Le Moniteur.35
This article set off a debate with a proponent of free trade, A. Monfleury. Their exchanges – including two responses from Paul to Monfleury, De l’industrie dans les villes and L’éducation industrielle du peuple, ou la protection due aux industries naissantes, both in 1862 – would become the first major debate about Haiti’s economy that remains on historical record.36 Also in 1862, he published an additional article in Le Moniteur, in favor of the Constitutional prohibition on foreigners owning land in Haiti.
In 1863, Paul published a second volume of Questions politico-économiques, where he again insisted on his ideas about industrialization, and a third volume dedicated to monetary policy. The ideas he had laid out by this point were basically the same ideas he would try to implement for the rest of his life.37 The first way he did this was by opening a soap factory, Manufacture des Savons d’Haïti, with a partner named Delva in 1865.38
His real vocation, though, was politics. Edmond Paul began his political career in 1870, when he co-founded the Liberal Party with Jean-Pierre Boyer Bazelais and became a député (representative in the lower chamber of Parliament) for Port-au-Prince. He held this post until 1875, having been reelected to a second term in 1873.
He and his Liberal party colleagues used their majority to bring state finances under control and enact a major monetary reform, in which they eliminated the government-printed paper money that they blamed for inflation and a runaway exchange rate. While their monetary policy was successful,39 their strict control of government spending40 led to strong opposition, especially during their second term.41
Like many other politicians at the time, including his father,42 Edmond Paul was a freemason.43 He was also a volunteer firefighter.44 Most people knew him as the editor and manager of the Liberal party’s newspaper, Le Civilisateur, published between 1870 and 1874.45 He also collaborated with another newspaper, l’Unité Nationale, in 1870.46
Paul and his colleagues used Le Civilisateur to spread their ideas and publicize their activities; along with Le Moniteur (which was run by his rival A. Monfleury),47 it gives us an important window into the politics as they played out in real time. One notable debate that appeared in Le Civilisateur in 1870 was between Edmond Paul and his Liberal colleague (with whom he would later split), Armand Thoby,48 on the subject of speculative currency trading, or agiotage.49 The newspaper’s press published Edmond Paul’s anti-corruption brochure, Le salut de la société, in the same year.
The Liberals’ political opponent, Michel Domingue, became president in 1874. In May 1875, Domingue accused the Liberal leaders of plotting against him. Two died while resisting arrest;50 others – including Edmond Paul – were expelled from the country.51 Paul, Boyer Bazelais, and other Liberal exiles found refuge in Kingston, Jamaica.52 Divisions within the Liberal party began around this time.53 While in Kingston, in March 1876, Paul published De l’impôt sur les cafés.
In April of the same year, Domingue himself arrived in Kingston as an exile, and Paul went back to Haiti with the rest of his group. In the parliamentary elections held in May of 1876, he became a député again.54 In July, Pierre Théoma Boisrond-Canal (who was on the opposite side of the Liberal split, with Thoby and against Boyer Bazelais and Edmond Paul) became president.
Boisrond-Canal offered both Boyer Bazelais and Paul cabinet posts, but they refused.55 They chose instead to devote themselves to their role as lawmakers. Paul led an investigation into a loan that Domingue had taken out in 1875;56 this investigation won him some new enemies by uncovering a corruption scandal.57
On May 23, 1877, Edmond Paul proposed six laws to the House of Representatives, all of them designed to develop the economy, mainly through industry but also through agriculture.58 The central proposal was to stimulate import substitution industrialization, mainly through temporary protections against foreign competition.59 By August, this bill had been approved by the House of Representatives.60 In the Senate, though, it faced opposition from Thoby, Florvil Hyppolite, and others; the Senate ultimately refused to vote on it.61
Also in 1877, Paul wrote « Patriotisme et conscience » in response to some of his critics, and became a founding co-sponsor and board member of a model secondary school.62 In 1878, he was elected municipal mayor of Port-au-Prince, where he already served on the county council (Conseil d’arrondissement), in addition to being reelected in his role as a representative in the House.63 Paul’s participation in government was growing, but it would soon be interrupted for a second time.
On June 30, 1879, Boyer Bazelais and Edmond Paul led an armed insurrection against Boisrond-Canal’s government, which had allied itself with the National party against Boyer Bazelais’ faction of the Liberal party.64 By July 3, Boisrond-Canal had forcefully subdued the immediate threat.65 Boyer Bazelais and Edmond Paul returned to Jamaica as exiles.66
Boisrond-Canal was unable to control the wider unrest, which had spread to the North;67 he stepped down from power on July 17. After a short transitional government, the National party took over and elected Lysius Salomon as their president.68 From Kingston, in 1880, Paul wrote Haïti au soleil de 1880, where he criticized Salomon’s founding of a national bank with foreign capital. In 1882, still from Jamaica, he wrote La force publique en Haïti, and Les causes de nos malheuers.
In 1883, Paul supported – but did not join – a revolt led by exiles who invaded Miragoâne, including Boyer Bazelais. Salomon suppressed the revolt.69 Shortly after the failed insurrection, Paul wrote « Étude politique. Haïti et les intérêts français ».70 On 18 July 1888, still in Kingston, he wrote Un jugement sur Haïti. Salomon left the presidency later that year.
After a tussle for power, Hyppolite, who was Edmond Paul’s personal friend71 (despite their disagreement in 1877), became president in October 1889. He named Paul’s Liberal colleague, Anténor Firmin, to the cabinet and in November, he granted amnesty to all exiles. It was safe for Edmond Paul to return to Haiti and to politics.
In May 1890, Edmond Paul was elected to the Senate.72 In 1891, he published a report from Boyer Bazelais’ archives regarding monetary policy during the period in the 1870s when they had reformed it. In 1892, he was the rapporteur of a Senate commission that published another report, this time including a history of monetary policy in Haiti since independence, along with his own contribution to the debate in the Senate. In the same year, he wrote a detailed plan for government.
During his time as a senator, illness began affecting Edmond Paul’s ability to work.73 On October 28, 1892,74 he travelled to Kingston,75 and died there of progressive anemia76 on June 18, 1893,77 at age 55. His mortal remains were embalmed and sent to Port-au-Prince for burial.78 Le Moniteur remarked that the large and distinguished crowd at the July 10 funeral, despite the bad weather, was a sign that “Haiti had just lost a truly useful son and one of its most important politicians.”79 Some of his remaining works and notes were published posthumously.80 On February 8, 1897, a monument at his tomb was inaugurated with several speeches in his memory.81
