There were no longer official slaves, but Toussaint, Dessalines, Christophe and Boyer all tried to re-introduce the plantation system, but failed to get the former slaves to return to the plantations. Rather, the newly freed Haitians retreated to subsistence farming and small-plot coffee exporting. This weak internal economy enforced the underdevelopment. The primary problem was the lack of any integrated economy, that is, producing raw materials or agricultural products which fed into manufacturing, which, in turn, returned goods to the local market. Instead Haiti had small local food markets, raw coffee exports, and relied on the importation of all manufactured goods and many foodstuffs.
Because of this import-centered economy, the international community earned more profits from Haiti than Haitians, even the rich ones. It marketed expensive manufactured goods in Haiti, and added the lucrative processing to Haitian coffee and other export crops. The Haitian power elite retreated to the outside of the economy and jockeyed for governmental power in order to expropriate whatever profits they could from the mechanisms of the state (taxation, import/export levies) and the graft that came with government offices, especially the