Slavery in Hispaniola

The Trans-Atlantic slave trade is credited as resulting in the largest migration of people in history. It is estimated that anywhere from four to twenty million Africans made the journey across the Atlantic ocean to the North American colonies, the Caribbean Islands, and Central and South Americas. Many of those slaves who made the voyage were captured from the inland portion of the African continent by other Africans or taken as prisoners of war, and the sold by them to European traders. On their journey across the vast Atlantic, these slaves were tightly packed below deck on slave ships where they were shackled to another slave who was sure to be from a different area of Africa. It is estimated that one out of every eight slaves traveling across the Atlantic died along the way.  This is the effects of the lucrative business' affects on the island of Hispaniola.

Saint Domingue (Haiti)

Background
In 1501, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel of Spain granted the settlers of Hispaniola the right to import African slaves to the island. These early African slaves were imported to the island to replace the waning native Taino population of workers who were quickly being wiped out by disease and over work. This importation made Santo Domingo the first place in the Americas to be involved in the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Initially, while Hispaniola was under the sole control of the Spanish, slavery was not a large market. However, by the year 1697, the Spanish had worked Hispaniola's gold mines almost dry on the Western part of the island. Because of this, many of the Spanish settlers abandoned the area in pursuit of gold and silver that had been discovered in Peru and Mexico. Seeing this abandonment as an ideal opportunity  The French soon moved into the area.  The French saw the great value in the land and quickly began to establishing large sugar plantations in the land they called Saint Domingue (present-day Haiti). It is estimated that by the late 19th Century, there were about 400,000 slaves living in Saint Domingue. The immense slave population greatly outnumbered the estimated 32,000 whites and 28,000 free blacks and mulattoes living in Saint Domingue at the time. Unlike in the American colonies, free blacks and mulattoes were given higher statuses in society and they even owned about one-third of the slave population on the island.

Slavery by the Numbers
The Slave Trade Database shows that between the years 1701-1850 Saint-Domingue consistantly recieved more and 1,000,000 new slaves in the colony per 25 years. This steady influx of new Africans was due to the harsh working and living conditions the slaves were subject to on the sugar plantations in the colony. Saint-Domingue, because of these slaves and the sugar industry, Saint-Domingue was the most profitable colony in the Atlantic.
Free Blacks and Mulattoes in Society  and Building Tension

Because of their largely outnumbered population, the whites and slaveholders enforced the strict Code Noir or "slave code."  Médéric Louis Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry was a French Creole colonist, lawyer, and writer who was born in Martinique and composed a famous study on the race relations in Saint Domingue. His study is described as mainly theorizing the gene progressions between black and white and the progression between white and mixed raced people which carried political consequence in Saint Domingue. It also explores the sexual relations between white men and free black women which created the large mulatto population in Saint Domingue. Marriage between the two races was not outlawed in the colony but it was not highly agreed upon either. Saint-Mery's study makes the point that "Faced with the population increase, social ambition, wealth and political demands of free people of color, the white elite responded with an extraordinarily oppressive regime of racially exclusionary laws intended to halt their advancement. Free people of color were forbidden to wear luxurious clothing, take the name of a white person, carry arms, practice certain professions and hold public office."


John D. Garrigus, a history professor at the University of Texas wrote an article as well about race relations in Haiti/Saint Domingue at the time. He states "that by the year 1789, Saint-Domingue had the largest, wealthiest and most self confident population of free blacks in the Americas." In response to the power of this class, many whites in the colony attempted to knock them down by spreading portraying negative images and stereotypes of the race. Because of the white's opposition to the free blacks and mulattoes' power in the colony, the people of color fought hard for their civil rights and in the 1789 they were granted these rights. Garrigus attributes many of the opinions of those who fought for civil rights to be fuel for the Haitian Revolution.

Sources 

1.) Slave Trade database: http://slavevoyages.org/tast/assessment/estimates.faces

2.) Hispaniola's History: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/shop_pickandmix/free_chapters/dominican-rep-haiti-4-hispaniola-history.pdf

3.) Hispaniola Slave Routes: http://old.antislavery.org/breakingthesilence/slave_routes/slave_routes_dominicanrepublic.shtml

4.) Garrigus, John D. "Redrawing the Color Line: Gender and Social Construction of Race in Pre-Revolutionary Haiti." http://www.mixedracestudies.org/wordpress/?tag=mederic-louis-elie-moreau-de-saint-mery

5.) Garraway, Doris Lorraine. "Race, Reproduction and Family Romance in Moreau de Saint-Mery’s Description. ..de la partie francaise de l’isle Saint Domingue." http://www.mixedracestudies.org/wordpress/?tag=mederic-louis-elie-moreau-de-saint-mery