Annuaire de législation haïtienne: the laws, decrees and arrêtés of 1916

The thirteenth year of the Annuaire, covering 1916 under Philippe Sudre Dartiguenave.

The volume opens with the arrêté of 4 February, published in Le Moniteur of 2 February 1916, granting amnesty to those implicated in an affair at Les Cayes denounced on 1 December 1915. Its considérants are a political programme: the present government, issued from the free suffrage of the Nation's authorised representatives, understood from its first days that its first mission is to end the regime of coups de force, most often provoked by an absence of moderation in those directing power; the circumstances the Nation faces, owing particularly to the uninterrupted insurrections of recent times, impose on the Executive the obligation to exhort all citizens to appeasement, conciliation, union and concord, and to invite them to help in the common work of the country's recovery by itself setting the example of forgetting injuries. It is taken under article 103 of the Constitution and the law of 22 September 1860.

Read those considérants against the fact of the occupation, which began in July 1915 and under which this government held office. What the Haitian legislature and executive continued to enact through the occupation years is the substance of this and the following volumes, and it is the record against which the occupation-era treaties and the 1918 constitution can be placed.