Contact & Conquest (1492 - 1520s)
In December 1492, Christopher Columbus established the first European settlement on Hispanola using the timber from the wrecked Santa Maria.
What is La Navidad?
As Hispaniola's surface gold deposits were exhausted in the early 1500s, this agricultural crop became the island's main export and economic driver.
What is sugar cane?
Known in Dominican history as Las Devastaciones de Osorio, this governor ordered the total evacuation and destruction of Hispaniola's northern and western towns.
Who is Governor Antonio de Osorio?
This small, turtle-shaped island off the northwest coast of Hispaniola became the primary stronghold for French, English, and Dutch pirates and hunters during the mid-17th century.
What is Tortuga (Île de la Tortue)?
In 1655, Oliver Cromwell sent an English fleet under Penn and Venables to capture Santo Domingo; after failing, they sailed south and conquered this island instead.
What is Jamaica?
These indigenous inhabitants of Hispanola, whose population plummeted within decades of Spanish colonization due to disease and forced labor, called the island Ayiti or Quisqueya?
Who are the Taino?
Following the conquest of Mexico and Peru, Hispaniola suffered from this economic phenomenon as Spanish settlers abandoned the island for richer mainland territory.
What is depopulation (or "spillover/desertion")?
The Spanish monarchy ordered the Devastaciones primarily to halt illegal trade with these Protestant European rivals.
Who are the Dutch and English (or French)?
French hunters on western Hispaniola earned the nickname buccaneers from the boucan, a wooden frame used for this purpose.
What is smoking/curing meat (or making jerky)?
This European treaty, signed in 1697 to end the Nine Years' War, officially recognized France's control over the western third of Hispaniola.
What is the Treaty of Ryswick (Rijswijk)?
Established in 1496 by Bartholomew Columbus, this city became the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the Americas and the Spanish colonial capital.
What is Santo Domingo?
In 1586, this English privateer sacked and looted Santo Domingo, holding the city for ransom and dealing a major blow to Spanish colonial prestige.
Who is Sir Francis Drake?
Residents of destroyed towns like Puerto Plata and La Yaguana were forcibly relocated toward Santo Domingo, establishing new settlements such as Monte Plata and this town.
What is Bayaguana?
To maintain order and mutual protection, the pirate and privateer community based on Tortuga formed this informal confederacy.
What is the Brethren of the Coast (Frères de la Côte)?
After formalizing control in 1697, France renamed its new colony on western Hispaniola this, which eventually became the wealthiest plantation colony in the world.
What is Saint-Domingue?
This brutal Spanish system of forced labor granted conquistadors control over native villages, compelling Taínos to extract gold and farm crops.
What is the Encomienda System?
Because Spain tightly restricted trade through its royal monopoly system, Hispaniola's isolated northern and western settlers turned to this illegal activity with Dutch, English, and French traders.
What is contraband trade (or smuggling / rescate)?
An unintended catastrophe of the Devastaciones was that thousands of abandoned cattle and swine reverted to this wild state, creating a massive food source for future intruders.
What is feral (or wild)?
Sent by Louis XIV in 1665, this official became the first formal French governor of Tortuga and western Hispaniola, asserting royal French authority over the region.
Who is Bertrand d'Ogeron?
Founded in 1670 on the northern coast of the mainland opposite Tortuga, this city served as an early capital of French operations on Hispaniola.
What is Cap-Français (Cap-Haïtien)?
This Dominican friar delivered a famous 11th-hour sermon in Santo Domingo in 1511, fiercely condemning Spanish atrocities and demanding human rights for the indigenous people.
Who is Antonio de Montesinos?
The rapid collapse of the Taíno population led the Spanish crown to authorize the importation of enslaved Africans starting in 1502, leading to this first major slave revolt on the island in 1521.
What is the Santo Domingo Slave Revolt (or the revolt at Diego Colón's plantation)?
This Spanish monarch issued the royal decrees (cédulas) that mandated the destruction and depopulation of western Hispaniola.
Who is King Philip III?
While buccaneers hunted wild game inland, this distinct group of maritime raiders launched sea raids against Spanish silver fleets from Tortuga and Port-de-Paix.
Who are freebooters (or corsairs / privateers)?
Although France controlled the west after 1697, the official boundary between the French and Spanish sides of the island was not formally surveyed and mapped until this 1777 treaty.
What is the Treaty of Aranjuez?