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 According to
Countryaah,
the island of Haiti - or Quisqueya as the original
Arawak and Taíno people called it - is today
divided between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. When
Columbus "discovered" the island in 1492, it was populated
by several Arawak people who disappeared completely within a
few decades. The Spaniards carried out a colonization of the
island, and as part of this, an evangelization was carried
out, as was the order of the Dominican, and it was they who
gave the island its new name, Santo Domingo. French and
other European nationalities were also attracted to the
island's sugar production and European colonial powers began
to contend for the island. In 1697, Spain surrendered the
western part of the island to France with the so-called
Ryswick Treaty.
When France gained control of the territory, it began to
exploit it financially. On average, around 20,000 African
slaves were imported into the country annually, and the mix
between Africans and Europeans increased rapidly. In a short
time, sugar became the most important export product from
the area, and during the 18th century Haiti became France's
most important colony in America.
Wealth basically arose from the work of slaves. By 1789,
the number of Negro slaves in the colony had reached
480,000, the number of mulattoes and "colored" was 60,000,
while the whites who owned the land and wealth of the
country amounted to just under 20,000. Haiti was also
affected by the revolution in France. Former slave Toussaint
L'Ouverture organized an independence movement, leading a
revolutionary war against the colonial power (1791-1803) for
12 years, ending with the proclamation of the world's first
black republic.
The struggle for independence in Haiti went through
several stages. In the first stage, both the great
landlords, the slaves, the traders and the poor whites -
called petits blancs - declared themselves
solidarity with the revolutionary movement that had
developed in France, set up a local national assembly and
demanded the abolition of the country's colonial status. In
the second stage, the free mulattoes began to support the
revolutionary development in France, believing that they
would thus be equated with the local white population. But
they were wrong. In 1790 the white plantation owners
severely beat down on the freed slaves and mulattoes. The
following year, therefore, they were forced to ally
themselves with two groups of rebellious slaves - the
so-called marroons or quilombos.
It was L'Ouverture that gave the old marroon
movement a strategic perspective as he formulated the phrase
"general freedom for all" and brought together the divided
groups into a unified disciplined army. He deftly exploited
the contradictions of the French colonial system, and on
February 4, 1794, caused the French National Assembly to
ratify a decree abolishing slavery in Santo Domingo and
appointing him general. Following Napoleon Bonaparte's coup
d'état - the 18th Brumaire - France's new dictator sent a
colossal military expeditionary force to the island to
recapture the colony and reinstate slavery. L'Ouverture
responded by calling for general popular uprising, but was
captured, deported and died in France in 1803.
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