The people had, until about the turn of the century, a life of subsistence which was not one of misery, and, from all that I have read, liked it better than the alternatives which they thought they had. We in the west are profoundly committed to upward mobility and industrialization etc. The Haitian masses were not. Life was much less complicated and less dangerous were they to retreat into the fastness of the mountains and live in subsistence. Certainly the increase of population contributed to it, and the results of the choice toward subsistence living, which downgraded education and modernization, including the modernization of agriculture.
Farmer barely mentions such forces as causative or importantly shaping Haitian history.
It just doesn't wash. This is the view that a particular person has made a tremendous impact on some era of history. But I think this view must be taken seriously in regard to Haiti. I think especially of the governments of Petion-Boyer, which I've described above, that of Faustin I and that of the Duvaliers . There is little claim even in Farmer's book that Petion-Boyer or Faustin I were strongly supported or controlled by foreign powers.