Haitian History: Part 1 of 5
In about a month, I will be traveling to Haiti for a mission trip. So, I thought it would be cool to start a series to explain the history of the country for both the readers of this blog and for myself. This series will be divided up into five parts and will be updated every Friday night. Haiti has an interesting history, so even if you have no reason to care about the country, I would encourage you to keep reading.
Haiti is an example of what happens when a revolution for independence goes horribly wrong. Haiti and America were not all that different in their early years. They both were tired of being exploited by their mother countries and they both fought and won to create independent, democratic countries. They both even had a civil war to abolish slavery later on in their nation�s course. The major difference between the two is that America became a prosperous republic while Haiti fell to corruption and economic failure. America was the model of an independent nation founded by revolution; Haiti was the worst-case scenario. But in the early stages of these two countries lives�, they were not all that different. It would only have taken a few events to turn the tables and make Haiti the prosperous country and leave America as a poor, barely sustainable society. So, before you look down on Haiti as a primitive and lawless society, keep in mind that the United States could have easily fallen off of that same cliff that leads to corruption and poverty.
Prior to 1492, there is no information available about Haiti. We do know that the Taino people inhabited the island with a population that could have ranged from a few hundred thousand to over a million. The island was discovered in 1492 by Christopher Columbus on his first voyage to the New World who named it �Hispaniola.� During that expedition, the Spanish settlement �La Navidad� was established on the island�s northern coast by Columbus and his men. The settlement was later destroyed by the Taino, which led to the creation of the first permanent settlement in the New World, �Isabela,� which was built about 70 miles east of the first settlement.
From then on, Hispaniola or Santo Domingo, as it became better known, was the premier colony of Spain in the New World. It was the starting point for expeditions into North and South America and it provided supplies to the conquistadores. Estates were given to Spaniards who settled in the colony and they were granted the ability to use the natives as free labor. During the majority of the 16th century, Santo Domingo was the center of European exploration into the New World.
As the colony became more and more populated by Spaniards and other Europeans, the Taino people suffered major losses. By the mid-16th century the Taino became virtually extinct as a result of disease and enslavement by the Europeans.
Santo Domingo�s prestige would not be permanent, however. As New Spain was established in what is now Mexico and South America, the original Spanish colony lost its premier status. Piracy and other European nations also threatened the power of Santo Domingo in the late 16th century, and by the 17th century French Huguenots had started to settle in what is now the Northern coastline of Haiti. At the turn of the century, Spain ceded western Hispaniola or modern-day Haiti to the French. The French began calling the area �Haiti� which means mountainous in the native language.
The 18th century was the golden age for the economy of Haiti. With slave labor from Africa available, the French were able to take advantage of the island�s resources. At its peak, Haiti was producing over half of the world�s coffee, 40% of the sugar supply to Britain and France, and raw materials from Haiti made up 40% of the French economy, which was the most powerful in Europe at the time.
This prosperity was built on the backs of the over 700 thousand slaves that now inhabited the island. And years of interaction between white slave owners and slave women resulted in the creation of the mulattoes, which created a subpopulation of people that were above the status of slaves but below the status of the French. Also, escaped slaves that established settlements in the mountains of Haiti became known as �maroons.� They carried out attacks on slave plantations which the French had a difficult time putting down.
Some mulattoes began to serve in the French military in order to put down these rebellions. While they were for slavery, they wanted equal status to that of their French counterparts. This was the birth of the revolution that was soon to come.
That�s all for this week�s edition of Haitian history. Come back next week for the second part of the series.
Sources:
�Political and Economic History of Haiti.� Sjsu.edu. San Jos� State University Department of Economics.
�Hispaniola.� gsp.yale.edu. Yale University Genocide Studies Program. Russell Schimmer. 2017.
�History of Haiti.� Nationsonline.org. One World Nations Online. 2006.
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