Whether we call it a debt, damages, reparations, or an offer to settle a disputed claim, it is long past time for the U.S. to pay up.
meant that American farmers were priced out. In 1850, guano was $76 a pound—a quarter of the price of gold at the time. The situation was so dire that President Millard Fillmore devoted portions of his 1850 State of the Union address to the subject.
To solve the problem, the U.S. resorted to a kind of privatized colonialism. The Guano Islands Act of 1856 authorized American entrepreneurs to search the world and seize unclaimed islands anywhere that guano could be mined. The key implication was that the might of the U.S. Navy would back up Americans’ claims.Perhaps unsurprisingly, administration of the act was—pardon—a shit show.
Such behavior is not surprising. In 1857, the U.S. did not even recognize Haiti as a nation, even though it had become independent a half-century earlier . The fact that Haiti emerged from a slave revolution was offensive and scary to many American politicians, who feared that recognizing Haiti would encourage enslaved people in the U.S. to think of their own revolution.Haiti, for its part, has continued to quietly maintain its claim to Navassa—the constitution of Haiti even says so.
In ordinary life, if someone takes your property and keeps it by threat of force, the law is supposed to provide a remedy—generally the return of the asset and monetary compensation for the opportunity costs of having not had use of the asset. Even if the government takes part of your land for public use, you’re constitutionally entitled to just compensation.
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