A mostly mountainous country with a tropical climate, Haiti's location, history and culture once made it a potential tourist hot spot. Instead, decades of poverty, instability and violence, especially since the 1980s, have all but killed off this prospect and left it as the poorest nation in the Americas.
In 1697, the Spanish ceded the western half of the island to France, who turned their new territory into a major center for the slave trade. In what was to be the only successful slave rebellion, the French were defeated in a 12-year campaign, led by Toussaint L’Ouverture and others, which ended in 1804.

During the rest of the 19th century, Haiti was under the control of a succession of dictators, none of whom had the wherewithal to resolve the conflict between the country’s two main ethnic groups: the mulattos, who held political power, and the blacks. To this day, the huge wealth gap between the impoverished Creole-speaking black majority and the French-speaking mulattos, one per cent of whom own nearly half the country's wealth, remains unaddressed.

Haiti achieved notoriety during the brutal dictatorships of the voodoo physician, Francois 'Papa Doc' Duvalier, and his son, Jean-Claude, known as 'Baby Doc'. With the help of a private militia known as the Tontons Macoutes (the Creole phrase for ‘bogeymen’), political dissent was systematically eradicated and opponents jailed or murdered. Hopes that the election in 1990 of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a former priest, would herald a brighter future were dashed when he was overthrown by the armed forces a short time later.

Although economic sanctions and US-led military intervention forced a return to constitutional government in 1994, Haiti's fortune did not improve, with allegations of electoral irregularities, ongoing torture and brutality. In 2003, a wave of protests against Aristide quickly spread throughout the country plunging Haiti into chaos. By 2004, armed rebels had seized control of many towns and violence spread across the island. In February 2004, Aristide fled the country. An interim government took over and a UN stabilization force was deployed to restore order. But Haiti remains plagued by violent confrontations between rival gangs and political groups. The UN has described the human rights situation as 'catastrophic'.

Geography
Haiti is situated in the Caribbean and comprises the forested mountainous western end of the island of Hispaniola, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Its area includes the Île de la Gonâve, in the Gulf of the same name; among other islands is La Tortue off the north peninsula. Haiti’s coastline is dotted with magnificent beaches, between which stretches lush subtropical vegetation, even covering the slopes which lead down to the shore. Port-au-Prince is a magnificent natural harbor at the end of a deep horseshoe bay.