The external debt of Haiti is one of the main factors that has caused the country's persistent poverty. After the Haitians gained independence from French colonial rule in the Haitian Revolution of 1804, the French returned in 1825 and demanded that the newly independent country pay the French government and French slaveholders the modern equivalent of US$21 billion for the "theft" of the slaveowner's "property" and the land that they had turned into profitable sugar and coffee-producing plantations. This independence debt was financed by French banks and the American Citibank, and finally paid off in 1947.