Instead of leaving the island the French cultivated cocoa, indigo, cotton and sugar cane. However the island remained quite desirable. The Spaniards killed all San Domingo’s cattle hoping this would cause the French to leave. From Tortuga the French moved to San Domingo. They contacted France and demanded women and a chief be sent to the island. In 1659, the men of all crimes and all nationalities, from France were victorious. Fugitives, debtors, escaped slaves, quick fortune hunters, found a home in Tortuga.įor 30 years the Spaniards, English, Dutch and French fought over the land.

San Domingo was a lush and fertile island with millions of cattle that roamed its forests. In 1629 the French settled on the small island of Tortuga six miles away from San Domingo (Haiti).Then came the English and the Dutch. authorised the export of 15,000 slaves to San Domingo, and thus priest and King launched on the world the American slave-trade and slavery (The Black Jacobins, P4). So Las Casas, hit on the expedience of importing the more robust Negroes from a populous Africa in 1517, Charles V. The brutal conditions of life for the slaves continued to kill the Natives off. So to maintain the facade of a civilized country, Spain compromised it outlawed forced labor on paper while its colonies maintained it. There could be no end because the colony could not exist without slavery. Las Casas, a Dominican priest, was greatly disturbed by the prospect of the entire native population being wiped out within a generation, so he went to Spain and pleaded for the abolition of NATIVE slavery.

The black jacobins book