COLONIAL HISTORY

The Taino CivilizationThe island that now includes Haiti and the Dominican Republic was first inhabited by approximately 400,000 indigenous people like the Arawak Taíno and Ciboney. The Arawak Taíno called this island Quisqueya (Mother of the Earth) and Haiti (Land of Mountains), the latter of which was preserved by Haitian Creole language and made into the island’s official name. 

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, Taino social structures were quite complex. Their spiritual practice was based on zemis, which were spirits or ancestors of natural things and people. They were a primarily agricultural society skilled who practiced slash and burn agriculture to grow staples like cassava, maize, beans, tobacco, and yams (to name a few). While they hunted small animals like birds and lizards for food, their primary food source from the animal kingdoms were fish and shellfish. The Taíno were a hierarchical, patriarchal, and polygamist society where most men had 2 - 3 wives and caciques (chiefs) could have as many as 30, meaning that a cacique’s home could house nearly 100 people from their family. 

The island itself was politically organized into five Caciquats (parts ruled by a cacique), each a tributary kingdom that accepted harvests as a form of payment: 

• Maguá, the central region.
• Jaragua, the west.
• Marién, the northwest.
• Higüey, the east.
• Maguana, the south. 

Little is known about the the indigenous people of pre-Columbian Hispaniola, but most American schoolchildren can tell the grim story of this civilization’s final years...

Christopher Columbus Meeting the Taino Civilization

Let us go back to grade school, where most American schoolchildren were taught to recite the following poem for Columbus Day celebrations:

"In fourteen ninety-two

Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

He had three ships and left from Spain;

He sailed through sunshine, wind, and rain. 

He sailed by night; he sailed by day;

He used the stars to find his way.

A compass also helped him know

How to find the way to go.

Ninety sailors were on board;

Some men worked while others snored.

Then the workers went to sleep;

And others watched the ocean deep.

Day after day they looked for land;

They dreamed of trees and rocks and sand.

October 12 their dream came true,

You never saw a happier crew!

“Indians! Indians!” Columbus cried;

His heart was filled with joyful pride.

But “India” the land was not;

It was the Bahamas, and it was hot.

The Arakawa natives were very nice;

They gave the sailors food and spice.

Columbus sailed on to find some gold

To bring back home, as he’d been told.

He made the trip again and again,

Trading gold to bring to Spain.

The first American? No, not quite.

But Columbus was brave, and he was bright."

While it served as an entertaining way to bring poetry into the 20th century classroom, we have since learned of the many inaccuracies this poem promotes. In 1492, Italian navigator Christopher Columbus DID sail the ocean blue, where he sighted an island he named La Isla Española (later anglicized as Hispaniola). 

His arrival ended the Arawak Taíno, Ciboney, and other indigenous peoples’ lifestyles as they knew it. With him soon came the Spanish, carriers of lethal European diseases whose gluttonous aspirations for gold led to their enslavement of vast numbers of people, both indigenous and West African (or of West African descent). Their arrival devastated the indigenous population, which fell to about 30,000 by 1514 and virtually vanished by the end of the 16th century. 

While the Spanish mostly restricted their settlements to the eastern end of the island, French pirates entrenched themselves on the western end of Hispaniola and eventually founded Port-de-Paix (Port-au-Prince, which would become the Haitian capital). In 1697, the Treaty of Rijswik formally ceded the western third of Hispaniola (Haiti) from Spain to France, who further increased the slave population and began to see rapid returns on what would soon become France’s most prosperous New World colony.

Like many of the French West Indies territories, Haiti’s demographic composition fit the classic profile of a sugar-based colony resting on 3 components: 

1. A slave labor force that remained at the bottom of the socioeconomic spectrum.
2. An intermediate social stratum of mixed-race mulattoes.
3. A dominant group of white Creoles. 

Under French colonial rule, enslaved people produced cash crops like cane sugar, indigo, coffee, tobacco, cotton, ginger, and cassava. 

Political scientist Ronald Suny defines empire as an “unequal hierarchical relationship between a metropole (dominant state) and a periphery (dependent territory beyond that metropole).” The implied connection of empire with inequality coincides with the French treatment of Haitians, who reduced colonized people to stereotypes made to fit a grand design of supposedly benevolent French rule. These cultural constructions of difference (particularly those relating to race and ethnicity, in Haiti’s case) were often used as the ideological rationale for imperial control. With constant turnover rates, a high population of foreign-born enslaved Africans, and a lack of proper outlets for grievances, it should come as little surprise that many plantations in the Caribbean were hotbeds for unrest. 

Haiti’s subsequent decolonization process from the French (an empire known for its interventionist approach to colonialism) created power vacuums as Frenchmen were expelled and elite dictators came to power, giving rise to even greater socio political turmoil.

When tackling the subject of decolonization, we must address misconceptions about the supposed finality of the decolonization process. 

Dependency theory asserts that formal transfers of political power were actually elaborate deceits designed to conceal the persistence of Western economic imperialism. According to Sernau, dependency theory acknowledged that the Western world (or the First World) brought many things to the poor nations (the Third World), but that most of them were negative and destructive. The destruction came with the European colonial empires but did not leave with them, because new institutions—including multinational corporations, foreign aid agencies, and the World Bank and the IMF—continued to practice neocolonialism. Thus, even after achieving independence, poor countries were hopelessly dependent on the rich nations.

This is further evidenced by the fact that the elite typically taking office after independence were often complicit in allowing foreign states and corporate interests to retain their hold over the economic destiny of former colonial territories. Thus, we must call into question the validity of a straightforward periodization of colonial rule and avoid limiting it to the year France officially agreed to recognize Haitian independence (under certain terms and conditions) in 1825. 

It is also important to note that the push for French decolonization was not a sentiment shared by all Haitians, for as with most political movements, there was a broad “left-right split” between political groups who advocated for greater island autonomy and those who supported possible links with France (thinking this relationship would guarantee future prosperity). This difference in opinion was best represented by two of the Haitian Revolution’s most iconic figures, Vincent Ogé and Toussaint L'Ouverture. 

Portrait of Vincent Ogé Ogé, a mixed and wealthy slave-owning free man, sought the status and acceptance enjoyed by white plantation owners. Motivated by news of the French Revolution, he proposed a race-neutral society in St. Domingue that would gradually phase out the slave system, but was promptly rejected due to fears that such color-blindness would disrupt the slave trade and destroy the thriving sugar cane industry. 

In response, Ogé allied himself with Les Amis des Noirs, an anti-slavery group that proposed voting rights for free blacks. When his efforts were again struck down, he returned to Saint Domingue to rally free people of color and eventually lead their organized military attack against the French. Not long after, Ogé was captured, tried, sentenced, tortured, and executed in February 1791. However, his efforts moved so many that he quickly became a martyr in Haiti for the revolutionary cause. 

His revolt had brought French Revolutionary politics to the general public of Saint Domingue, and his execution had ignited a civil war where each group rallied for their own interests. It was those revolting back in 1791 who first invented decolonization, thus setting Haiti on track to becoming the world’s first declared postcolonial state in 1804.

Portrait of Toussaint L’OuvertureVincent Ogé spurred the uprising of several factions. The black rebels, led by General Toussaint L’Ouverture, desired independence from slavery and allied themselves with whoever agreed to make that a reality. 

Though France tried to initially placate L’Ouverture by putting him in charge of expelling British forces in 1798, they quickly placed checks on his power and forced him to resign soon after (just one year before the French Republic fell to Napoleon in 1799). In response, L’Ouverture led an army into the Dominican Republic to free and rally the support of slaves under Spanish control. 

By 1801, he and his rebels had freed the entire island of Hispaniola. L’ouverture succeeded, but began his gradual decline from glory thereafter by supporting labor codes that effectively resulted in the reinstitution of slavery. He essentially undid his biggest accomplishment by reasoning that Saint Domingue would never survive as an independent nation if it was not producing and exporting goods (regardless of the human cost), a position that led to his decline in popularity and eventual exile to France (where he died in prison in 1803). His second in command however, Jean-Jacques Dessalines (the general in chief who succeeded Toussaint Louverture) was able to maintain the support of former slaves. After leading a successful revolution against slavery and the colonial-imperial powers of Spain and France, Dessalines declared the emergence of the new, postcolonial state of Haiti on January 1st, 1804.