9. The Introduction of African Slavery to the New World
Slavery was first introduced to Hispaniola, the island that encompasses modern Haiti and the Dominican Republic, soon after the Spanish reached the New World in 1492. The natives were forced by their European conquerors to mine for gold, and between the brutal working conditions and Old World diseases, they were all but wiped out. Within a century, the indigenous peoples of Haiti had been virtually exterminated. By then, however, the island’s gold mines had been exhausted, and the Spanish, who had discovered far richer mines in South and Central America, lost interest in Haiti.
In the seventeenth century, Spanish control waned, as settlers increasingly ignored official policies and went their own way. Spain’s efforts to reassert its control backfired, and before long, much of the island had become a haven for pirates. In 1697, the frustrated Spanish ceded the western part of Hispaniola – today’s Haiti – to France. The French, who named their new possession Saint Domingue, transformed it into a highly lucrative colony, with a labor-intensive sugar-based economy that relied on vast numbers of African slaves.
