History

Haiti's history begins with its first known inhabitants, the Taino Arawaks, whose economy was based on agriculture. They were divided into regional chiefdoms led by caciques and believed in a supreme creator called Yocahu, along with other deities that controlled various aspects of nature. The spirits of their ancestors, known as cemíes or zemís, served as intermediaries between the living and the deities. In 1492, the Spanish conquest of Hispaniola commenced, and in 1496, they established the first European settlement in the Western Hemisphere in Santo Domingo (present-day Dominican Republic). This severely impacted the Taino population, which dwindled from an estimated 200,000 in 1492 to about 3,000 by 1519. In 1503, the Spanish brought slaves from West Africa to the island to replace the diminishing number of Taino laborers, who worked in the sugar processing mills set up by the Spanish. By the 1540s, approximately 12,000 West African slaves were living on the island. In 1697, the Spaniards ceded the western part of the island, now called Saint Dominique, to the French, further increasing the slave population. By 1791, there were around 480,000 slaves in Saint Dominique, where a wealthy sugar plantation economy had been established. Successful uprisings by African-descended slaves between 1791 and 1803 culminated in the 1804 declaration of the world’s first independent Black republic, Haiti, ruled by Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who succeeded Toussaint Louverture, one of the original leaders of the insurrection. Haiti became the first nation in the Americas to outlaw slavery completely. The French left a nation deeply divided by race including the white elite; the mulattoes, who aspired to higher positions in society through the attainment of wealth, education, or power; and the black slaves who made up the majority of the population.