Haiti

Historical Background

Like the Dominican Republic, Haiti was not a desolate and barren area free of human activity at the time of arrival by Columbus. The Taíno Indians were a Native American group of nomads from the northern areas of the South American continent who eventually settled many of the Caribbean Islands. The Taíno were a relatively peaceful group of natives, unlike the more aggressive Carib Indians, who were known for their thirst for war and territory. The Taíno were experts at fishing and gathering, and although they were numerous during pre-colonial days, more than 250,000 Taíno had died due to infectious disease and slave labor by the time the explorers had been on the island for two years.

Colonial Times

Exploration and claim to other islands were of a pressing concern to the Europeans, and the Spanish used Hispaniola as a base of operations to execute further Caribbean exploration. During the early and middle parts of the 17th century, French pirates settled the western portion of Hispaniola primarily to serve as a base for looting British and Spanish ships. In an attempt to control pirating in the Caribbean, Spain was forced to recognize the French claim on the western portion of the island. French settlers, assured by new antibuccaneering laws, continued to settle western Hispaniola. Fueled by agricultural profits in coffee and sugar, the French colony of Saint Domingue became one of the richest colonies possessed by the French. By the mid-18th century, Saint Domingue produced 60% of the coffee and 40% of the sugar imported by Britain and France.

Sugar production would push the need for labor and the importation of massive numbers of slaves from Africa and Jamaica, and as was customary with colonies in the Caribbean, the slaves vastly outnumbered the owners. By the dawning of the French Revolution, there were an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 African slaves located on the French portion of Hispaniola alone. The French slave system was particularly cruel and discriminatory, with a variety of [Page 572]restrictive laws passed in Saint Domingue. Most male slaves did not live to childbearing age. At the same time in Europe, France began to undergo revolutionary transformation that recognized people's unalien-able rights, particularly those rights of the poor that were suppressed by the upper classes. As word reached the Caribbean colonies, similarities were drawn between France and Saint Domingue, namely, that a fairly large poor population was controlled by a relatively smaller elite.

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