Jean Price-Mars (15 October 1876 – 1 March 1969) was a Haitian medical doctor, teacher, politician, diplomat, writer, and ethnographer.

[1] Price-Mars served as secretary of the Haitian legation in Washington, D.C. (1909) and as chargé d'affaires in Paris (1915–1917), during the initial years of the United States occupation of Haiti.

He deplored the elite's abandonment of the tradition that had emphasized the nation's achieving independence from French colonialism, but he took pride in the conduct of the poor.

He noticed that the elite were composed almost exclusively of people of mixed ancestry, descended from former free persons of color, who embraced their "whiteness".

He understood that their power base in the state system relied heavily on the taxation of crops, especially of coffee, the chief export, grown by the peasants who had come to the country's defense when the elites had abandoned it to protect their own interests.