Since 1804, Haiti has been a sovereign nation — on paper. But outside actors have long used the country for their own gain. Starting after Haiti won independence from French colonial rule, the small Caribbean nation was hit with a massive indemnity — or restitution — as a condition of its hard fought independence.

That huge fine started the long and complicated path that brings Haiti to its current crisis, marked by surging gang violence. Haiti is unfortunately no stranger to political and economic crisis, so how can the country best move forward in a sustainable way?

Malick Ghachem, a professor of history at Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a special interest in Haiti, says any plan must include Haitian sovereignty at the forefront. He spoke with Marketplace’s Sabri Ben-Achour about the history that’s led to Haiti’s current upheaval, as well as potential solutions for the future.

Sabri Ben-Achour: Things are pretty bad in Haiti — unfortunately not for the first time. But is there something about this current crisis that you feel sets it apart from others?

Malick Ghachem: I think this is the first time since 1986 where Haiti is at a real turning point in terms of its political development. The state is almost quite literally breaking down and disappearing before our eyes. Currently, [there are] no elected officials at all in office, the police are on the retreat, there is no military for all practical purposes. Haiti is now facing the prospect of living without any traces of a recognizable state for the first time in a long time.

Ben-Achour: Do you view this as a primarily political crisis in origin or is it economic, as well?

Ghachem: I think it’s both. And above all, it’s historical. It’s a crisis that goes way back to Haiti’s colonial period. And I will point in particular to the early 18th century. It’s both a crisis of security and a monetary/financial crisis. What happened in the early 18th century was really the sort of the first organized gangs in the form of fugitive slave patrols, who were designed to terrorize the people of Haiti in the name of controlling their labor. It was a kind of publicly-funded private gang system. And it was the first of these sort of these gang systems that have lorded over Haitians at different periods of the nation’s history.

Ben-Achour: We hear a lot today about these so-called gangs that are inflicting chaos in and around Port-au-Prince. Do you draw a line from these colonial gang entities to the current ones?

Ghachem: It’s not a direct line, but there is certainly a connection. There is certainly a long-term crisis in terms of how foreign powers have allowed different forces within and outside Haiti to essentially govern the Haitian people in a way that denies them sovereignty. So what happened during the colonial slave period is that France imposed a kind of fugitive slave patrol over the Haitian people. After their independence, France continued to try to control the fate of Haiti in the form of a massive financial indemnity that was imposed in 1825 that today would amount to about $21 billion in current monetary terms. And in order to pay off that massive debt, Haiti essentially outsourced its financial sovereignty to the French.

A Haitian bank was created in 1880 that was owned by a French bank and was designed to essentially funnel payments back to France, in repayment of this indemnity, which was imposed as a condition of France recognizing the independence of Haiti after its revolution. And that is an extraordinary and, I think, unique situation in terms of decolonization. One of the consequences of that experience was that the United States occupied Haiti in 1914, 1915 for 20 years, in part of the behest of American banks and companies who were concerned about how to ensure continued flow of money from Haiti to the United States. So there is a direct connection between this slave experience that I was talking about earlier and the crisis of monetary sovereignty and security that we see unfolding even today in the country.

Ben-Achour: So you have a country that is born into debt. Foreign debt guides how foreign powers enter and occupy this country. What imprint has that left on the political system that we see today?

Ghachem: It’s made it very difficult for the Haitian state to develop as a state that serves the needs of its people, because for a very long period of time, the Haitian state that began developing in the 19th century and into the 20th century was designed primarily to sort of funnel wealth — the very limited wealth that Haitians had access to — to funnel that outside of the country, and in particular in repayment of this massive financial indemnity. I think the challenge today for foreign powers that are looking to help Haiti is to consider ways that actually support Haitian sovereignty as opposed to undermine it.

Ben-Achour: So if the sort of Haitian political economy has arisen basically as a way of a method or system of extraction, how do you change that today? What does that look like?

Ghachem: I think the challenge for outside powers that are looking to help Haiti is to think about strategies that, again, do not actually undermine Haitian sovereignty, but promote it. And I think one area that can be considered has to do with the international monetary system. One way in which we can try to promote Haitian sovereignty over its money and economy is by thinking of ways to strengthen the Haitian bank and the Haitian currency, so that the Haitian people have a money that has purchasing power — meaningful purchasing power for them — that is not vulnerable to swings in the value of the dollar, that is not vulnerable to the Federal Reserve’s inflation targeting strategies. All of these things will require some sacrifice on the part of the United States and other countries, but it seems to me that without that sacrifice, there’s no way to exit this kind of zero-sum game we’ve been in for a very long period of time, in which foreign powers take steps to advance their own interests at the expense of the Haitian people.

Ben-Achour: If no one is in charge in Haiti now to orchestrate that sort of package of solutions, what has to happen for that to change?

Ghachem: Well, this is where some observers are seeing a silver lining in what is clearly a desperate and tragic situation. The almost total collapse of the Haitian state right now does give Haitians an opportunity to rebuild something in its place that better serves their needs without foreign intervention. And that’s going to take some time. That’s going to be a very difficult process. But if it’s given a chance to succeed, it will allow Haitians to put in place — starting with a new round of democratic elections — a state that actually responds to their needs and that is not vulnerable to these outside interventions that in some subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways actually reflect decision making by the United States, by France, by Canada, as we’ve seen over a very long period. So there’s no easy answers here. There is no panacea to this. There’s a lot of things that Haitians themselves are going to have to figure out. And I think part of the challenge for the international community is simply allowing Haitians to figure those things out for themselves. And I think that’s what many Haitians crave, even in this very scary time.