Saint-Domingue () was a French colony in the western portion of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, in the area of modern-day Haiti, from 1659 to 1803. The name derives from the Spanish main city on the island, Santo Domingo, which came to refer specifically to the Spanish-held Captaincy General of Santo Domingo, now the Dominican Republic. The borders between the two were fluid and changed over time until they were finally solidified in the Dominican War of Independence in 1844.
The French had established themselves on the western portion of the islands of Hispaniola and Tortuga thanks to the Devastations of Osorio. In the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697, Spain formally recognized French control of Tortuga Island and the western third of the island of Hispaniola. In 1791, Africans who were forced into bondage and some Creoles took part in a Vodou ceremony at Bois Caïman and planned the Haitian Revolution. The rebellion later allied with Republican French forces following the abolition of slavery in the colony in 1793, although this alienated the island's white population that benefited from free labor. France controlled the entirety of Hispaniola from 1795 to 1802, when a renewed rebellion began. The last French troops withdrew from the western portion of the island in late 1803, and the colony later declared its independence as Haiti, derived from the Taíno name for the island, the following year.
Overview
Spain controlled the entire island of Hispaniola from the 1490s until the 17th century, when French pirates began establishing bases on the western side of the island. The official name was La Española, meaning "The Spanish (Island)". It was also called Santo Domingo, after Saint Dominic.
History
The division of Hispaniola
thumb|left|upright= 1|Map of the French colony of Saint-Domingue, in 1777. To the east, is the [[Captaincy General of Santo Domingo (territory of Spain). The border that divides the Island on the map, is the border agreed between France and Spain in the Treaty of Aranjuez of 1777.
At first, the entire island of Hispaniola belonged to Spain, but the French managed to seize the western part of the island thanks to the Devastations of Osorio (1605–1606).]]
When Christopher Columbus took possession of the island in 1492, he named it Insula Hispana, meaning "the Spanish island" in Latin. As Spain conquered new regions on the mainland of the Americas (Spanish Main), its interest in Hispaniola waned, and the colony's population grew slowly. By the early 17th century, the island and its smaller neighbors, notably Tortuga, had become regular stopping points for Caribbean pirates. In 1606, the king of Spain ordered all inhabitants of Hispaniola to move close to Santo Domingo, to avoid interaction with pirates. Rather than securing the island, however, this resulted in French, English and Dutch pirates establishing bases on the now-abandoned north and west coasts of the island.
French buccaneers established a settlement on the island of Tortuga in 1625 before going to Grande Terre (the mainland). At first they survived by pirating ships, eating wild cattle and hogs, and selling hides to traders of all nations. Although the Spanish destroyed the buccaneers' settlements several times, on each occasion they returned, drawn by the abundance of natural resources: hardwood trees, wild hogs and cattle, and fresh water. The settlement on Tortuga was officially established in 1659 under the commission of King Louis XIV.
In 1665, French colonization of the islands of Hispaniola and Tortuga entailed slavery-based plantation agricultural activity such as growing coffee and cattle farming. It was officially recognized by King Louis XIV. Spain tacitly recognized the French presence in the western third of the island in the 1697 Treaty of Ryswick; the Spanish deliberately omitted direct reference to the island from the treaty, but they were never able to reclaim this territory from the French.
The economy of Saint-Domingue became focused on slave-based agricultural plantations. Saint-Domingue's Black population quickly increased. They followed the example of neighboring Caribbean colonies in coercive treatment of the slaves. More cattle and slave agricultural holdings, coffee plantations and spice plantations were implemented, as well as fishing, cultivation of cocoa, coconuts, and snuff. Saint-Domingue quickly came to overshadow the previous colony in both wealth and population. Nicknamed the "Pearl of the Antilles," Saint-Domingue became the richest and most prosperous French colony in the West Indies, cementing its status as an important port in the Americas for goods and products flowing to and from France and Europe. Thus, the income and the taxes from slave-based sugar production became a major source of the French budget.
Among the first buccaneers was Bertrand d'Ogeron (1613–1676), who played a big part in the settlement of Saint-Domingue. He encouraged the planting of tobacco, which turned a population of buccaneers and freebooters, who had not acquiesced to royal authority until 1660, into a sedentary population. D'Ogeron also attracted many colonists from Martinique and Guadeloupe, including Jean Roy, Jean Hebert and his family, and Guillaume Barre and his family, who were driven out by the land pressure which was generated by the extension of the sugar plantations in those colonies. But in 1670, shortly after Cap-Français (later Cap-Haïtien) had been established, the crisis of tobacco intervened and a great number of places were abandoned. The rows of freebooting grew bigger; plundering raids, like those of Vera Cruz in 1683 or of Campêche in 1686, became increasingly numerous, and Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Marquis de Seignelay, elder son of Jean Baptist Colbert and at the time Minister of the Navy, brought back some order by taking a great number of measures, including the creation of plantations of indigo and of cane sugar. The first sugar windmill was built in 1685.
On 22 July 1795, Spain ceded to France the remaining Spanish part of the island of Hispaniola, Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic),
in the second Treaty of Basel, ending the War of the Pyrenees. The people of the eastern part of Saint-Domingue (French Santo Domingo) were opposed to the arrangements and hostile toward the French. The islanders revolted against their new masters and a state of anarchy ensued, leading to more French troops being brought in.
Until the mid-18th century, there were efforts made by the French Crown to found a stable French-European population in the colony, a difficult task because there were few European women there. From the 17th century to the mid-18th century, the Crown attempted to remedy this by sending women from France to Saint-Domingue and Martinique to marry the settlers. However, these women were rumoured to be former prostitutes from La Salpêtrière and the settlers complained about the system in 1713, stating that the women sent were not suitable, a complaint that was repeated in 1743.
Saint-Domingue colony
Plantation economy
left|thumb|upright=0.8|A Creole servant boy and his mother
thumb|Drawing of a slave sale aboard the [[Marie Séraphique in the waters off Cap‑Français, 1773]]
Prior to the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), the economy of Saint-Domingue gradually expanded, with sugar and, later, coffee becoming important export crops. After the war, which disrupted maritime commerce, the colony underwent rapid expansion. In 1767, it exported 72 million pounds of raw sugar and 51 million pounds of refined sugar, one million pounds of indigo, and two million pounds of cotton. Saint-Domingue became known as the "Pearl of the Antilles" – one of the richest colonies in the world in the 18th-century French empire. It was the greatest jewel in imperial France's mercantile crown. By the 1780s, Saint-Domingue produced about 40 percent of all the sugar and 60 percent of all the coffee consumed in Europe. By 1789, Saint Domingue was made up of about 8,000 plantations ..., producing one-half of all the sugar and coffee that was consumed in Europe and the Americas. This single colony, roughly the size of Hawaii or Belgium, produced more sugar and coffee than all of the British West Indies colonies combined, generating enormous revenue for the French government and enhancing its power.
left|thumb|upright=0.7|[[Jean-Baptiste Belley, an affranchi who became a rich planter, elected member of the Estates General for Saint-Domingue, and later Deputy of the French National Convention]]
right|thumb|upright=0.7|A Creole girl with her nanny
Between 1681 and 1791 the labor for these plantations was provided by an estimated 790,000 or 860,000 slaves, accounting in 1783–1791 for a third of the entire Atlantic slave trade. In addition, some Native Americans were enslaved in Louisiana and sent to Saint-Domingue, particularly in the wake of the Natchez revolt. Between 1764 and 1771, the average annual importation of African slaves varied between 10,000 and 15,000; by 1786 it was about 28,000, and from 1787 onward, the colony received more than 30,000 slaves a year.
The inability to maintain slave numbers without constant resupply from Africa meant that at all times, a majority of slaves in the colony were African-born, as specific conditions of slavery and exposure to tropical diseases such as yellow fever prevented the population from experiencing growth through natural increase. Slave traders ventured along the Atlantic coast of Africa, buying slaves for plantation labor; most of the slaves they bought were war-captives and enslaved by an opposing African ethnic group. The slaves that they purchased came from hundreds of different tribes; their languages often were mutually incomprehensible, and they learned Creole French to communicate.
The slave population around 1789 totaled to 406,000 (according to Jacques Pierre Brissot) or 465,000, while there were 28,000 to 32,000 affranchis (ex-slaves) and Creole of color population who numbered about 28,000 or 32,000. Race was initially tied to culture and class, and some "white" Creoles had non-white ancestry.
To regularize slavery, in 1685 Louis XIV had enacted the Code Noir, which accorded certain rights to slaves and responsibilities to the master, who was obliged to feed, clothe and provide for the general well-being of his slaves.
The Code Noir also conferred affranchis (ex-slaves) full citizenship and gave complete civil equality with other French subjects. nor did it limit the amount of property a free person could give to affranchis. Creoles of color and affranchis used the colonial courts to protect their property and sue whites in the colony.
Work in the fields was often difficult, and life expectancy was low. Some owners deep in debt concluded that it was more economically profitable to work their slaves to death and import replacements than to provide their slaves with adequate food, clothing and medical care. Some 5–10 percent of slaves died every year, from disease and overworking, and even more when epidemics of disease swept through the colony. In fact, deaths were outpacing births. The population of the colony only remained constant due to the constant influx of enslaved people. A majority of slaves only lived for a few years after their arrival.
thumb|[[Portrait of the Comte de Vaudreuil (Drouais)|Portrait of the Comte de Vaudreuil by François-Hubert Drouais, 1758. Vaudreuil, the son of the colony's French governor, points to Saint-Domingue on a map.]]
<p> Many people in the colony were outraged by the death of many slaves and the brutality occurring. They proposed reforms that would help the population growth including allowing pregnant women and mothers more time off. </p>
A large portion of the enslaved work force worked in harvesting and processing sugar. The conditions made harvesting much more difficult. Slaves were met with 'razor-sharp' stalks; insects and snakes were also hiding within the fields. Work days during harvest typically lasted from 5 am to sunset. Stronger slaves would do difficult field work, while children and older slaves would do easier tasks, such as trimming canes. It is worth noting, however, that the processing of cane sugar was mostly completed by women. The processing of sugar in sugar mills was also dangerous, and it was not uncommon for slaves to lose arms.
African culture remained strong among slaves to the end of French rule. The folk religion of Vodou commingled Catholic liturgy and ritual with the beliefs and practices of the Vodun religion of Guinea, Congo and Dahomey. Creoles were hesitant to consider Vodou an authentic religion, perceiving it instead as superstition, and they promulgated laws against Vodou practices, effectively forcing it underground. This outlet allowed the slaves in Saint-Domingue to escape the society that saw them as property and not human.
Marronnage
right|thumb|upright=1.2|Maroons preparing to ambush a convoy
Thousands of slaves escaped into the mountains of Saint-Domingue, forming communities of maroons and raiding isolated plantations. The most famous was Mackandal, a one-armed slave, originally from the Guinea region of Africa, who escaped in 1751. A Vodou Houngan (priest), he united many of the different maroon bands. For the next six years, he staged successful raids while evading capture by the French. He and his followers reputedly killed more than 6,000 people. He preached a radical vision of killing the white population of Saint-Domingue. In 1758, after a failed plot to poison the drinking water of the planters, he was captured and burned alive at the public square in Cap-Français.