ABSTRACT
The assassination of Dessalines precipitated a political struggle between the two main factions of the bourgeoisie grouped around Christophe and Brigade Petion to determine who would control the state. Petion encouraged the creation of a middle class of landowners and a peasantry by breaking up, conceding, and selling the unproductive large estates. By the second half of the nineteenth century, the class structure of Haiti commenced with the privileged and propertied bourgeoisie, which included both mulattoes and blacks. The bourgeoisie consisted of a dominant and a subordinate stratum. The merchant bourgeoisie imported the manufactured goods and other products from the metropolitan economies and resold them nationally. The merchant bourgeoisie, through the intermediary speculators, represented the link between the producers, the national economy, and the world market. The subordination and exploitation of the peasantry by the state and merchant bourgeoisie took various forms. The merchant bourgeoisie comprised the wealthy wholesale and retail urban merchants, money lenders, and bankers.
