HISTORICAL SKETCH.--COLONIAL VICISSITUDES.--1533 TO 1801
Decline of the colony.--English attacks on Santo Domingo
City.--Settlement of Tortuga by freebooters.--French settlements in
western Santo Domingo.--Border wars.--Cession of western coast to
France.--Return of prosperity.--Effect of French revolution.--Negro
uprising in French Santo Domingo.--Rise of Toussaint l'Ouverture.
--Cession of Spanish Santo Domingo to France.--Evacuation by Spain.
Within forty years after its discovery Santo Domingo had passed the
zenith of its glory. The vast and wealthy countries discovered and
conquered on the mainland of America absorbed the attention of
colonists and of the government, and Santo Domingo quickly sank to a
position of economic and political insignificance. So little
importance was given the island by chroniclers during the ensuing two
hundred and fifty years and so few are the records remaining, that not
even the names of all the governors and the periods of their rule can
be accurately determined. The colony barely existed, the monotony of
its life was interrupted only by occasional attacks or menaces of
attacks by pirates or other foes.
Every effort was made to prevent decay. Decrees were issued forbidding
emigration or the recruiting of troops for expeditions of discovery,
but they were evaded. Thus Louis Columbus, the grandson of the
Discoverer and one of the most influential men of the colony, fitted
out an expedition against Veragua. African slaves continued to be
imported to take the place of the exterminated Indians, but as their
importation was expensive the mines were abandoned and the number of
sugar estates declined. For the greater part of the period from 1533
to 1556 the government was in the hands of an energetic man,
Licentiate Alonso de Fuenmayor, Bishop of Santo Domingo and La Vega,
and later first Archbishop of Santo Domingo. He pushed to a conclusion
the work on the cathedral and other religious edifices then building,
repaired the edifices belonging to the state and constructed the walls
and bastions which still surround the city. He was able to ward off
the attacks of corsairs, who multiplied in West Indian waters to such
an extent that in 1561 the Spanish Government forbade vessels to
travel to and from the new world except under convoy.
In 1564 the cities of Santiago de los Caballeros and Concepcion de la
Vega were completely destroyed by an earthquake and the few remaining
inhabitants reestablished the towns at short distances from the
original sites. The entire intercourse of the colony with Spain was
reduced to two or three caravels a year and the revenues sank so low
that the salaries of state officials were paid and continued to be
paid for over two hundred years, from the treasury of Mexico.
The year 1586 was marked by the capture of Santo Domingo City by the
noted English navigator, Sir Francis Drake, during the celebrated
cruise on which he took the strongest towns on the Spanish main. On
the morning of January 11, 1586, the inhabitants of Santo Domingo City
were thrown into consternation at seeing eighteen foreign vessels in
the roadstead, in a line which stretched from Torrecilla Point to the
slaughterhouse. To the joy of the people the fleet set sail for the
west, but their joy was short lived, for the next morning messengers
arrived with the news that the enemy had landed at the mouth of the
Jaina River and was marching on the city. Preparations were made for
defense, but terror gained the upper hand and soon the civil and
religious authorities, the monks and nuns and the entire population
were fleeing in confusion on foot, in carts and in canoes, leaving
their belongings behind. Some one hundred and fifty men remained to
dispute the passage of Lieutenant-General Carliell who appeared at the
head of a thousand men. They were quickly dispersed by the invaders
who entered the gates with little loss and proceeded to the plaza
where they encamped. For twenty-five days Drake held the deserted
city, carrying on negotiations meanwhile for its ransom. When these
flagged he ordered the gradual destruction of the town and every
morning for eleven days a number of buildings were burned and
demolished, a work of some difficulty on account of the solidity of
the houses. Not quite one-third of the city was so destroyed when the
residents paid a ransom of 25,000 ducats, about $30,000, for the
remainder. Drake thereupon embarked, carrying with him the bronze
cannon of the fort and whatever of value he found in the churches and
private houses. He also ordered the hanging of several friars, held by
him as prisoners, in retaliation for the murder of a negro boy whom he
had sent with a flag of truce.
Seventy years later Santo Domingo was again attacked by English
forces, this time with the object of making a permanent landing.
Oliver Cromwell after declaring war against Spain sent a fleet to the
West Indies under the command of Admiral William Penn, having on board
an army of 9000 men. The fleet appeared off Santo Domingo City on May
14, 1655, and a landing was effected in two bodies, the advance guard
under Col. Buller going ashore at the mouth of the Jaina River while
the main body under General Venables disembarked at Najayo, much
further down the coast. Buller met with strong resistance at Fort San
Geronimo and was forced to retire to Venables' intrenchments. The
united English forces made several attempts to march on the capital,
but fell into ambuscades and sustained heavy losses. Despairing of
success, the fleet and army left the island on June 3 and proceeded to
Jamaica, which they captured.
The rovers of the sea and the restrictive trade regulations imposed by
the Spanish government, which limited trade with the new world to the
single port of Seville in Spain, made development of the island's
commerce impossible. The trade restrictions had the effect of
encouraging a brisk contraband traffic with Dutch vessels on the north
coast, to stop which the Spanish government adopted the incredible
expedient of shutting up every port except Santo Domingo City and
ordering the destruction of the north coast towns. Puerto Plata, Monte
Cristi and two villages on the coast of what is now Haiti were thus
destroyed in 1606 and the inhabitants transferred to towns almost in
the center of the island, where they were far removed from temptation
to smuggle. The measure temporarily stopped contraband trade on the
north coast, but destroyed all legitimate trade in that region,
transformed the coast into a desert and furnished an opportunity for
the settlement of the buccaneers in the northwest.
The English, French and Dutch, in resisting Spain's claim to sole
trading rights in the new world, authorized the fitting out of
privateers that often degenerated into pirates. The bays and inlets of
the coast of Santo Domingo became favorite resorts for such ships. The
depot of the corsairs on the island of St. Christopher having been
destroyed by the Spaniards in 1630, a number of refugees sought
shelter on the island of Tortuga, on the northwest coast of Haiti.
Some of them began to cultivate the soil, others took to hunting wild
cattle on the mainland of Haiti, while others indulged in piracy.
Tortuga soon became the busy headquarters of reckless freebooters of
all nations, who here fitted out daring expeditions and returned to
waste their gains in wild carousals. In 1638 the Spanish governor of
Santo Domingo made a descent on the island and destroyed the
settlement, but most of the buccaneers were absent at the time and the
only result of the raid was to cause them to organize under the
captaincy of an Englishman named Willis. French national pride
asserted itself, however, and with the assistance of a French force
from St. Christopher, the English inhabitants of Tortuga, who were in
a minority, were persuaded to leave for Jamaica, and Tortuga
thenceforth continued under French governors.
In 1648 the Spaniards of Santo Domingo made another fruitless attempt
to expel the buccaneers; but in 1653 the Spanish governor, the Count
of Peñalva, collected a force which caught the island unawares and was
strong enough to overawe the inhabitants, who were permitted to leave,
though abandoning all their property. The Spaniards left a garrison
but the persistent Frenchmen returned and drove it out. In 1664 the
French West India Company took possession, established a garrison, and
appointed as governor an energetic man, D'Ogeron, under whom the
country rapidly advanced in prosperity and commerce. With the idea of
encouraging permanent settlement, D'Ogeron had women brought over from
the slums of Paris and portioned out as wives to the rude colonists.
The rapidly increasing population caused settlements to be made on
the Haitian mainland, and the city of Port-de-Paix was founded on a
beautiful bay opposite Tortuga. The city flourished to such an extent
and the advantages of settlement on the mainland were so superior that
the settlers of Tortuga gradually left the smaller island and settled
along the Haitian coast. Within twenty years Tortuga was practically
deserted and it so continues to this day.
A better class of people now arrived from France. Families were
brought in from Anjou and Brittany, and the French settlements
continued to spread all the way down the western coast of the island,
the French settlement at Samana being withdrawn. Slaves were imported
from Africa, and in 1678 a rising took place among them, which was
easily put down. In 1684 the French government formally sent out
commissioners to provide for the regular government of the colony, and
churches and courts of justice were established.
The Spanish inhabitants of Santo Domingo meanwhile made attack after
attack on the French, but the Spanish colony was in such reduced
straits that no extended efforts were possible. Where the French were
repulsed the Spaniards were too few numerically to hold the territory
and it was soon reoccupied. Angered at the repeated aggressions,
D'Ogeron sent out an expedition under Delisle in 1673, which landed at
Puerto Plata and marched inland to Santiago. The inhabitants fled to
La Vega and only avoided the burning of their city by paying a ransom
of 25,000 pesos, whereupon Delisle returned to the French colony.
D'Ogeron at this time proposed to the French government the conquest
of the entire island for France, and would probably have attempted to
carry out this plan, had not his death occurred shortly after.
Cordial relations existing between France and Spain in 1685,
tentative boundary agreements were made between the French and Spanish
authorities, but each side accused the other of violations and the
strife continued as before. When in 1689, war broke out between Spain
and France, the French governor organized an expedition to invade the
Spanish section. He reached Santiago where some of his men died after
consuming meat and wine found in the deserted houses. Believing them
poisoned, he ordered the torch to be applied to the city and retired
after seeing it reduced to ashes. Admiral Perez Caro, the Spanish
governor, thereupon made preparations for a telling blow on the
French. The colony's militia and regular troops sent by the viceroy of
Mexico invaded the French section and on January 21, 1692,
administered a crushing defeat on the opposing force in the plain of
La Limonade, killing the French governor and his principal officers.
The victorious army marched through the French settlements, desolating
the fields and putting all prisoners to the sword. At the same time a
new settlement the French had made at Samana was exterminated.
The new French governor found the affairs of his colony in very bad
condition; but with the assistance of refugees from other islands he
sent an expedition to Jamaica, from where over 3,000 slaves together
with stores of indigo and other property were carried off. In
retaliation the English and Spanish fleets combined and with 4,000 men
aboard set sail from Manzanillo Bay in 1695, and sacked and burned
Cape Français and Port-de-Paix, the English carrying off all the men
they took prisoners and the Spaniards the women and children.
Hostilities were ended in 1697 by the peace of Ryswick by which Spain
recovered territory conquered from her by the French and ceded the
western part of the island of Santo Domingo to France. The occupation
of the western coast by France, so long resented as an intrusion, was
thus formally recognized.
The French colony immediately entered upon an era of prosperity which
soon made it the richest country of the West Indies. Great plantations
of tobacco, indigo, cacao, coffee and sugar were established. The
country came to be known as the paradise of the West Indies and the
wealth of the planters became proverbial. The grave defect was that
this prosperity was built on the false foundation of slavery. In 1754
the population numbered 14,000 whites, 4000 free mulattoes and
172,000 negroes.
The Spanish colony on the other hand sank lower than ever. Practically
abandoned by the mother country, there was no commerce beyond a little
contraband and only the most indispensable agriculture, the
inhabitants devoting themselves almost entirely to cattle raising. The
ports were the haunts of pirates, and a number of Dominicans also
became corsairs. By the year 1730 the entire country held but 6000
inhabitants, of whom about 500 lived in the ruined capital and the
remaining urban population was disseminated among the vestiges of
Cotui, Santiago, Azua, Banica, Monte Plata, Bayaguana, La Vega, Higuey
and Seibo. Such was the poverty prevailing that a majority of the
people went in rags; and the arrival of the ship from Mexico, which
brought the salaries of the civil officials and the military, was
hailed with the joyful ringing of church bells.
To how great an extent this depression was due to trade restrictions
is evident from the circumstance that when in 1740 several ports were
opened to foreign commerce there was an immediate change for the
better. Agriculture expanded, exports and imports increased, money
circulated, the cost of the necessaries of life fell, the population
rapidly increased and many new towns sprang up. According to an
ecclesiastical census the population had in 1785 advanced to 152,640
inhabitants. Of these only 30,000 were slaves, owing to the Spanish
laws which made it easy for a slave to purchase his freedom. Many of
the freemen were negroes or mulattoes.
In 1751 the colony was visited by a severe hurricane, which caused the
Ozama to leave its banks, and by a destructive earthquake which
overthrew the cities of Azua and Seibo and did much damage to the
church buildings of Santo Domingo. Azua and Seibo were reestablished
on their present sites. Another earthquake in 1770 destroyed several
towns in the French part of the island.
From the beginning of the century the boundary between the French and
Spanish colonies of Santo Domingo had been a source of constant
friction and bickerings. A preliminary agreement had been made in
1730, but in 1776 a permanent treaty was drafted, it was ratified at
Aranjuez in 1777, and the boundary was marked with stone monuments.
When the French revolution broke out in 1789 both the Spanish and
French colonies of Santo Domingo were enjoying a high degree of
prosperity. In the French colony there were about 30,000 whites, and
the haughty white planters were wont to indulge in every form of
luxury and sybaritic pleasure; the negro slaves, whose number had
grown to almost half a million, were subjected to the most barbarous
ill-treatment; and a class of about 30,000 ambitious free mulattoes
had arisen, many of whom where cultured and wealthy, but who were all
rigidly excluded from participation in public affairs. It was evident
that but a spark was needed to produce what might turn out to be a
general conflagration.
The spark came in the formation of the National Assembly in France and
its declaration of the rights of man. The mulattoes at once petitioned
the National Assembly for civil and political rights, which were in
1790 equivocally denied and in 1791 finally granted them. The whites
resisted the government decrees and uprisings began. The first of
these was a revolt of the mulattoes under Ogé, which was quickly
suppressed. Ogé fled to Spanish Santo Domingo, but was surrendered by
the Spaniards on condition that his life be spared, a promise that was
not kept for he was publicly broken on the wheel. Jean François,
another mulatto, then raised an insurrection of the negroes in the
north, marching on Cape Français, burning and murdering, with the body
of a white infant carried on a spear-head at the head of his troops.
His forces were defeated by the whites, who commenced an
indiscriminate slaughter of their victims. The negroes thereupon rose
in every direction and the paradise of the West Indies became a hell.
The great plantation houses were burned, the wide estates desolated,
white women were ravished and murdered and white men put to death with
horrible tortures, while the liberated slaves indulged in orgies at
which the beverage was rum mixed with human blood. It was a fearful
day of reckoning.
In 1793, France went to war with England and Spain. The Spanish
authorities of Santo Domingo made overtures to negro leaders of whom a
number entered the Spanish army as officers of high rank, among them
Toussaint, an intelligent ex-slave who later assumed the surname of
l'Ouverture and who showed remarkable military and administrative
qualities. The French government sent commissioners to the colony,
whose tactless handling of a difficult situation fanned the flames of
civil war. The English attacked the colony, captured Port-au-Prince,
and enlisted the aid of the revolted slaves in overrunning the
surrounding country. When they besieged Port-de-Paix the French
commander sent secret emissaries to Spanish Santo Domingo and induced
Toussaint to desert from the Spanish ranks and with his negro
followers help to drive out the English. Killing the Spanish soldiers
he found in his way, Toussaint went to fight the English, with such
success that in 1797 he was made general-in-chief of all the French
troops. The English, decimated by disease, were obliged to leave in
1798 and sign a treaty of peace with Toussaint by which the island was
recognized as an independent and neutral state during their war with
France. The operations in Santo Domingo are said to have cost the
English $100,000,000 in money and 45,000 lives.
In the meanwhile border fights were going on in Spanish Santo Domingo
between Toussaint's troops and forces collected from the various
Spanish possessions on the Caribbean Sea. They continued until 1795,
when by the treaty of Basle peace was declared between France and
Spain and the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo was--to the dismay of
its inhabitants--ceded to France, the whole island thus passing under
French control. Toward the end of that year part of the Spanish troops
and members of religious orders embarked and an emigration of the
better families began, many taking their slaves with them. The
Spaniards also exhumed what they supposed to be the remains of
Columbus in the cathedral of Santo Domingo and carried them to Havana.
One of the terms of the treaty was that the colony should formally be
delivered when French troops were sent to occupy it, but as the
French were at this time kept busy in the western portion, the Spanish
governor and authorities continued to administer the country for
several years. Little by little troops and civil officials were
withdrawn and in 1799 the royal audiencia or high court was
transferred to Puerto Principe, in Cuba, most of the lawyers of the
colony leaving at the same time with their families.
Toussaint l'Ouverture was now in supreme command in the west, though
nominally holding under the French republic. He displayed considerable
ability in promoting peace, ordered the blacks to return to work and
gave protection to the whites. It was evident, however, that he aimed
to make himself absolute master of the whole island. Pursuant to this
plan he called on the Spanish governor, General Joaquin Garcia, to
surrender the Spanish colony in accordance with the stipulations of
the treaty of Basle, Governor Garcia prepared to resist, but Toussaint
invaded the colony with an army, was successful in a skirmish on the
Nizao River and appearing before the capital protested that he came as
a French general in the name of the French republic. Garcia had no
alternative but to comply with the negro chief's demands. On the 27th
of January, 1801, Toussaint l'Ouverture entered the capital with his
troops and formally took possession. Amid the booming of cannon the
Spanish ensign was lowered and the French tricolor raised; and
Toussaint invited the authorities to the cathedral where a Te Deum was
chanted. Governor Garcia immediately embarked for Cuba with the
remaining Spanish civil and military authorities.