The division of the Island of Ayiti is an accident of history. When Christopher Columbus landed on Ayiti in 1492, he proceeded to rechristen it Hispaniola or Little Spain. Little did he or anyone else know that within the space of two hundred years, the Spanish king Charles II, would be trading off part of it, in exchange for the return of Spain’s European territories seized by France during the ‘War of the Grand Alliance’. During the governorship of Columbus, Hispaniola was renamed Santo Domingo. The island remained one undivided entity as a colony of Spain with this name between 1493 and 1697.

The Division However in September 1697 all that changed. At a conference in Ryswick, in the Dutch republic, which was convened to find a peaceful resolution to the ‘War of the Grand Alliance’; Spain was forced to surrender part of Santo Domingo in exchange for return of two Spanish territories in Europe, namely, Catalonia and Mons. The western one third of the island was given to France, who promptly named its new colony Saint Domingue; the French equivalent of the Spanish name Santo Domingo. The remaining two thirds of the island retained the original Spanish name Santo Domingo. This state of affairs has remained till today, but the names have changed since their independence from France and Spain respectively. Saint Domingue is now Haiti while Santo Domingo now bears the name, Dominican Republic.

Saint Domingue When the French took over their part of Hispaniola, which they renamed Saint Dominique, they promptly began both intensive and extensive development of their colony, to the admiration and envy of their neighbor across the boarder. Saint Domingue, according to historical records, became at that time, the richest colony in the whole world. You would have expected a better deal for the inhabitants of Saint Domingue, arising from the change of masters, from the cruel overbearing and genocidal Spanish conquistadors to the more easy going, liberal French. That turned out to be a pipe dream. What came out of the acquisition of Ayiti by the French in 1697 and afterwards, can best be likened to the takeover of Israel by Rehoboam who became king after the death of king Solomon: "Whereas my father chastised you with rods, I will scourge you with scorpions."

The new French colonizers intensified their use of African slaves to create great wealth for the French colonists. At a point in the eighteenth century, the landed gentry of Haiti became the richest colonists in the Americas. The prosperity of Haiti was at a great price to the very existence of its African slaves. The severity of their forced labor completely drained their energy. They could not procreate naturally and, like the indigenous Taino before them, their population plummeted to an all time low. In many cases, the slaves have killed their newborn babies to prevent them from growing up to be slaves like their parents. Records have it that a particular tribe among the African slaves, the Ibos, even went to the extreme extent of self destruction, by committing mass suicide.

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