1889 1 Gourde

From the 1850s through the 1934 end of the U.S. occupation, Washington repeatedly used local rebellions, sanctions, and gunboat diplomacy to push Haiti toward leasing the deep-water harbour of Môle-Saint-Nicolas as a U.S. naval base. Plans for a 99-year lease had existed inside the U.S. government since the formal recognition of Haiti in 1862. The 1889 civil war was the moment when those plans almost succeeded.

General Florvil Hippolyte had first taken arms in 1888 against the authoritarian rule of President Lysius Salomon, and then again in 1889 against General François Légitime when Légitime seized the presidency and continued Salomon's methods. It is generally accepted in the U.S. and Haitian sources that Hippolyte received American backing - and the diplomatic recognition that mattered for arms shipments - in exchange for a private promise of a 99-year lease on Môle-Saint-Nicolas.

During the rebellion Hippolyte's forces captured the Treasury and used the silver inside to pay troops and supporters. When the silver ran out, his administration counterstamped a small number of copper coins - mostly the unfinished, uniface reverse-only 2-Centimes pattern strikes that happened to be on hand - with a hand-cut B.P. 1G / GL. H punch standing for Bon Pour 1 Gourde / Général Hippolyte ("Good for 1 Gourde / General Hippolyte"), with a verbal promise that holders would be redeemed at the full silver value once the rebellion succeeded. Roughly 100 pieces were issued. The rebellion did succeed - and almost all of them were redeemed and destroyed. Today only about 10 examples are known: 9 on patterns (like this one) and 1 on a regular-issue host coin. KM lists the type as KM-51 and Krause prices it accordingly as a major Caribbean rarity.

What followed is one of the cleaner examples of Hippolyte refusing to pay the bill. Once inaugurated, he was pressed hard for the Môle-Saint-Nicolas lease - so hard that the great American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, then serving as U.S. Minister Resident and Consul General to Haiti, resigned in protest at being made the instrument of the pressure. When diplomacy failed Washington moved to gunboat diplomacy: four ships of the new "White Squadron" were sent into Haitian waters and the U.S. rear-admiral on station formally demanded the lease. Hippolyte refused. By 1892 the squadron had withdrawn empty-handed. The U.S. then sponsored multiple rebellions against Hippolyte throughout the 1890s; after further decades of coup and counter-coup, the United States invaded Haiti in 1915 and occupied the country until 1934.

This is one of perhaps nine known "B.P. 1G / GL. H" counterstamps on the uniface 2-Centimes pattern reverse. The host shows the Haitian palm-tree-and-trophy republican arms with the legend REPUBLIQUE D'HAITI / LIBERTE - EGALITE - FRATERNITE; the back is the smooth, unstruck blank face of the pattern. NGC has graded it MS 62 BN with full original chocolate brown surfaces and a sharp, deeply-impressed counterstamp - a literal artefact of a successful Caribbean revolution and one of the more consequential failed acts of 19th-century American imperial diplomacy.