 In 1892 the German government supported suppression of the reform movement of Anténor Firmin, and in 1897, the Germans used gunboat diplomacy to intimidate and then humiliate the Haitian government of President Tirésias Simon Sam (1896–1902) during the Lüders Affair.In the first decades of the 20th century, Haiti experienced great political instability and was heavily in debt to France, Germany and the United States.A series of short lived presidencies came and went