European Exploration Destroyed Haiti

According to the letter Christopher Columbus sent to Santangel, Letter of Columbus to Luis de Santangel, dated 15 February 1493, Columbus found people who were “very beautiful appearance and are not black as in Guinea but have long flowing hair.” He even noted that the men were not “monstrous”. Columbus noted that he named the island of Española which is present day Republica Dominicana – Haiti. The indigenous name was Hayti. He writes that he totally disregards the indigenous name for the islands he “discovered”; instead Columbus renamed the islands he miss took for the India in honor of Spain and Christianity. The island of Española was sighted on 5 December. In 1492 the population Columbus found on the islands was roughly at the height of their culture with about 8,000,000. The indigenous people were the Taino people which translated stood for "the good people" in their language.

In Columbus’ letter he noted the Taino “have no iron or steel or weapons, nor are they that way inclined, not because they are not well built and of fine bearing, but because they are amazingly timid.” The people living on the island were happy, calm and non-violent until the Europeans arrived. Columbus went on to say, “The truth is that, once they (Taino) gain confidence and lose this fear, they are so lacking in guile and so generous with what they have that no-one would believe it unless they saw it. They never refuse to give whatever they have, whenever they are asked...” So the “conquers” took advantage of a bighearted outgoing population, knowingly for their own greed and self-satisfaction. You can’t conquer something that’s given freely. Columbus went on to write, “I gave them thousands of pretty things I carried with me so that they would be well disposed and, moreover, would become Christians...” How can war-like people invade a friendly country and declare themselves Christians? The King and Queen of Spain released some prisoners early to accompany Columbus on the voyage. Men with criminal intent enough to be in prison were released on an unknowing population.

The Taino lived on Española for thousands of years. Other indigenous people live on islands claimed by Columbus like the Lokono, Lucayan, Carib, Ciboney, Arawak, but most islands were primarily inhabited by people who called themselves Taino. Today we’d be hard pressed to find any of these people – alive. The people were decimated by oppression, slavery and disease shared by the Europeans by the 18^th century. The Spaniards who first arrived in the island of Española in 1492 did not bring women. They took Taíno women for their wives, which resulted in mixed children. The results were racial and cultural mixing. This was the beginning of the demographic basis for the present composition of the population of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

It’s unfortunate that Columbus’ journal and the letter to the King and Queen of Spain were lost. It is lucky that letters he wrote to Luis de Santángel and others survived so we have a picture of his experiences in his own words. Columbus named the island San Salvador, although he remarked in his journal that the people living there referred to it as Guanahani. He changes the name of Hayti to Española, and so on. He tried to erase the people, culture and traditions.

Ethnohistorians at the University of Puerto Rico, affirm that the certified Spanish historical record addresses the disappearance of the Taínos. Undoubtedly there are no full blood Taíno people alive today, but research points to a large mestizo population. Frank Moya Pons, a Dominican historian acknowledged that Spanish colonists intermarried with Taíno women resulting in the mestizo descendants, who intermarried with Africans. Española developed a tri-racial Creole culture. The 1514 census records disclose that 40% of Spanish men in the Dominican Republic had Taíno wives.

By 1513 there were seventeen towns on Española in which the life of Old Spain was reproduced in outward appearance, though reflecting the colors of savage milieu. Enslaved indigenous people worked in the gold mines. Cotton and sugar-cane were cultivated by African slaves. The Spaniards soon established themselves permanently on Española, building the city of Santo Domingo, from where they ruled their colonies in the New World. By 1548 however, the indigenous people were devastated and the reserves of gold in the colony were declining.

The partition of the island into Haiti and the Dominican Republic is a perfect illustration of how colonialism and the plantation system shaped the geography, demography and psychology of the New World. The first French settlers came to Española and established a settlement on the island of Tortuga ( Ile de la Tortue) on the northwest coast of present day Haiti. These French settlers traded with the Spaniards on the mainland. In 1605 the Spanish governor of Española encouraged the Spanish inhabitants of the western part of the island to move to the eastern portion, in order to end the trade with the French. Different to what the Spaniard governor expected, over the next fifty years the French pirates settled in western Española establishing the spontaneous French colony of St. Domingue, a French translation of Santo Domingo. These French settlers entered into a harsh fight with the Spaniards for more land. The struggle shaping up in ways that eventually led to perpetual friction, including the Haitian-Dominican conflict of today.

France created the French West Indian Company in 1664 to indicate their intention of forever colonizing St. Domingue. During that era, Spain was in decline as a world power and could barely withstand the attacks from English, Dutch and French on its colonies in the Caribbean. With the treaty of Ryswick in 1697, Spain deserted the western part of Española to the French. The French legalized the colony of St Domingue. The two rival colonies, Santo Domingo under the Spanish and St. Domingue under the French, followed different paths that would greatly effect their future.

In Spanish Santo Domingo the colonists did not develop sugar plantations. Because the Spanish were not as wealthy as their French counterparts, they were less concerned with sugar market pressures. These landowners did not import African slaves in large numbers. They were not motivated by the goal of supplying sugar to the European market like the French were. This strategy enabled the domestic labor force to follow subsistence agriculture as well as sugar cultivation. So by 1790, when St. Domingue (French) was in the middle of a population explosion, Santo Domingo (Spanish) population was 125,000 White landowners, 25,000 mulattos, and about 60,000 African slaves. Racial intermarriage between the Spaniards and the Africans created mulattos who are today the majority. Obviously, on Santo Domingo, the Black population was a minority. The French rapidly developed St. Domingue into the most productive colony. By the 18th century, St. Domingue’s manufacture of sugar exceeded that of all the English colonies. This expansion in production made St. Domingue economically significant to France. The colonists on St. Domingue forecast a growing world market for sugar, so they attempted to capitalize on their profits by importing enormous numbers of African slaves. In 1790, the Black population surpassed the Whites and a new demographic group was created - the mulattos. St. Domingue during that period had more than 500,000 Black slaves, compared to 30,000 Whites and 27,000 freemen, this last group of people containing both Black and mulatto individuals. During the Haiti Revolution, many Whites fled or were killed. This was the demographic basis for the present composition of the population of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

In 1795 Spain ceded the eastern part of the island to France under the Treaty of Basle. Toussaint L’Ouverture was fighting for the French, helping to unify the island under French rule. That same year he declared that the island was "one and indivisible". In 1801, after taking control of St. Domingue (French) in the Haitian Revolution, Toussaint invaded Santo Domingo (Spanish) to transform his words into action. In 1802 battle with the armed forces of Napoleon for the independence of Haiti, Toussaint withdrew his soldiers from Santo Domingo. After the capture of Toussaint by the French General Leclerc, Toussaint’s successor Dessalines continued the revolution, defeating the French, and creating the country of Haiti.

The Haitians helped Spanish colonists who had returned to Santo Domingo to expel the French in 1808. Under the Spanish the colony plunged into economic decline. This period convinced the Dominicans to seek independence along the same lines as Simon Bolivar’s Latin American state. Jose Nunez de Caceres announced the colony’s independence under the name of Spanish Haiti, and sought to gain admission to the State of Gran Colombia created by Simon Bolivar on November 30, 1821. The army of the Haitian president, Jean Pierre Boyer, invaded the new nation, unifying the island, before the Dominican request could be authorized. From 1822 to 1844, the Dominican Republic and Haiti were united. In 1844, the Dominicans took advantage of the fall of President Boyer of Haiti, and regained their independence. The Haitians repeatedly tried to invade the Dominican Republic, the last endeavor ended in 1855. A boundary contract was finally signed between the two nations in 1936, establishing the ultimate border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The final outcome of the European effort for power in the Caribbean was the partition of the island into two countries.