Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Divided Island of Hispaniola

Starting point is 00:00:00 In the Caribbean, two nations share a single island, yet their histories, language, economies, and political systems developed along dramatically different paths. Their border is more than a line on a map. It can literally be seen from space. It reflects centuries of colonization, revolution, foreign intervention, and competing national identities that shape both sides in very different ways. Learn more about the island of Hispaniola and how it became divided on this episode of everything everywhere daily.

Starting point is 00:00:43 Real Canadian Superstore has everything you need this back-to-school season. Save on lunchbox savers like Ziggy's sliced deli-me meat products for always 375. And get Life Brand Pure Vita shampoo or conditioner for $8 each. At Real Canadian Superstore, when you're ready, we're ready with a whole world and more. Welcome to the I Can't Sleep podcast with Benjamin Boster. If you're tired of sleepless nights, you'll love the I Can't Sleep podcast. I help quiet your mind by reading random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. Each episode provides enough interesting content to hold your attention, and then your mind lets you drift off.

Starting point is 00:01:33 Find it wherever you get your podcasts. That's I Can't Sleep with Benjamin Boster. It is difficult, if not impossible, to conduct long-term experiments on large groups of human beings. Not only would it probably be unethical, but it would also be extremely challenging to organize. However, sometimes experiments occur naturally. Two peoples who are culturally or ethnically similar with similar geography might have radically different systems of government. Such natural experiments have occurred in North and South Korea, China and Taiwan, and East and West Germany.

Starting point is 00:02:22 And the same is true with the island of Hispaniola and the nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Before the arrival of Europeans, the island of Hispaniola was governed by the Taino Confederacy, consisting of five sovereign chiefdoms. Other smaller communities existed on the island, but the Taino occupied most of the land, and their five states reflected the region's geographic diversity. After Christopher Columbus and the Spanish arrived, the island would never be the same. Columbus and his men easily took control of the island boasting in his journal, quote, They would make fine servants. With 50 men, we could subjugate all of them and make them

Starting point is 00:02:58 do whatever we want." End quote. The Spanish made good on their promise as they enslaved the Tino and used them to exhaust the island's limited gold reserves by 1520, decimating the population in the process. Hispaniola was important to very early Spanish exploration, as the city of Santo Domingo was the very first city established in the Americas in 1496, just four years after Columbus's first voyage. As reports of Spanish exploration reached European heads of state, the Dutch, French, and English began to pay more attention to the Americas. To control trade in the hemisphere, the Spanish instituted the floater system.

Starting point is 00:03:39 Under the flota system, the Spanish allowed only two voyages per year to specified ports in South America, Mexico, and Cuba, largely bypassing Hispaniola. At the height of religious wars in Europe, Spain had largely ignored Hispaniola, opening the door for settlers to trade with any European nation that came to the island. These communities gradually started trading with Spain's Protestant adversaries. The Spanish king, Philip III, who was a bit of a religious zealot, believed that these Protestants were spreading anti-Catholic teachings throughout the island. So in an effort to stop the perceived proselytizing,

Starting point is 00:04:14 Philip ordered the island's governor to burn every coastal region, denying the Protestants access to the island's resources. This scorched earth policy did slow down Protestant engagement on the island, but add catastrophic impacts for the Spanish, as they destroyed valuable agricultural lands, killing hundreds of thousands of cattle and opened the door for French, English, and Dutch settlement in the region. As tensions increased in Europe and Spain's position diminished throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, Spain gradually lost control of the island. In a unique arrangement outlined in the 1697 Treaty of Ricewick at the end of the nine years war, Spain ceded control of roughly one-third of the western side of the island to France. Under this new arrangement, the western third was dubbed San Doming, while the eastern two-thirds remained the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo.

Starting point is 00:05:09 It was at this point that two sides of the island began to evolve very different personalities. In French San Doming, the island focused on sugar production, becoming a plantation state fueled by slave labor. By the close of the 18th century, Sandaming had grown into what was likely the world's most prosperous colony, leading global sugar production. However, it had become a hellscape for the enslaved people who worked its fields. The population of Sandameng was more than 90% slaves,

Starting point is 00:05:40 governed by a small minority of white landowners who oversaw a reign of terror that saw a life expectancy of only seven years for the enslaved people upon arrival. While the French side of the island received significant colonial attention because of its profitability, Santa Domingo on the eastern side was a totally different world. Santa Domingo was much larger, had a much smaller population, and the residents were largely free, with an enslaved population of roughly 20%. The free population of Santa Domingo focused on ranching and subsistence, farming, drawing very little attention from Spain. In 1791, the slaves in San Doming launched

Starting point is 00:06:21 the Haitian slave revolt, which I've covered in a previous episode. Led by Toussaint-Lovatour, the revolutionaries defeated French forces already devastated by yellow fever, rugged terrain, and the tropical climate. In 1804, John Jacques Desaline declared the creation of the new state of Haiti. It was the first republic to liberate itself from European slavery, but it was unfortunately short-lived. Haiti struggled to transition to independence, particularly as it tried to maintain its lucrative sugar trade, and global isolation swiftly compounded Haiti's economic problems. Terrified that a slave revolt would spread to their own shores, the United States, Britain and Spain imposed a crippling diplomatic quarantine, with the United States refusing to recognize Haiti

Starting point is 00:07:06 until 1862. The freed population, which had lived under French slavery, refused to work on a system of gang labor, creating challenges for a nation that needed to establish an economic and political infrastructure. Desperate for revenue, Haiti's early rulers enacted coercive state labor codes that resembled slavery, promoting the idea of work gangs who were connected to particular plantations. By 1806, Desilene reinstituted forced labor to get exports to return to their earlier levels. Haiti was learning the tragic truth, a strict monoculture, cash crop, economy was not compatible with the high ideals of their revolution. In 1821, Spanish Santo Domingo declared independence from Spain, planning to join Simone

Starting point is 00:07:54 Boulevard's Grand Columbia experiment. And it was at that point, Haiti saw a golden opportunity and marched forces into Santo Domingo to fill the void. Haitian forces gambled that Spain was too busy with dozens of revolutions happening simultaneously in the Americas to really care what was happening on Hispaniola. Fortunately for Santa Domingo, it avoided the financial ruin that was about to be unleashed on Haiti. The French king Charles X forever changed Haiti's fortunes in 1825 when France sent 14 warships to Port a Prince and demanded an outrageous payment of 150 million gold francs, later renegotiated

Starting point is 00:08:36 down to a slightly less absurd 90 million gold francs. The audacity of the king was backed by the fact. by the belief that the French were owed for the loss of slaves and property from the Haitian revolution more than 20 years earlier. To put that into perspective, the sum demanded by France was greater than what the United States paid for the Louisiana purchase. France threatened a naval blockade and withheld diplomatic recognition until Haiti paid the debt. The sum was impossible for Haiti to pay and France knew it, as it was ten times larger than Haiti's total budget. To pay the debt, Haiti had to agree to high-interest loans from French banks that

Starting point is 00:09:19 nearly doubled the balance. Sometimes referred to as the double debt or even the ransom, this indemnity devastated the Haitian economy for decades. In 2022, the New York Times published an investigation into the Haitian debt and noted, quote, two decades after declaring independence, the French forced formerly enslaved Haitians at gunpoint to pay reparations to the people who had enslaved them. It was the first and only time a formerly enslaved people paid reparations to their former enslavers." Haiti paid 112 million French francs in principal loan costs and interests associated with the independence indemnity by the time the debt was paid off in 1947.

Starting point is 00:10:05 Adjusted for inflation that comes to roughly 560 million 2022 U.S. dollars. When the broader effects on Haiti's yet, economic development are included, the estimated loss rises to as much as $115 billion. Initially, the debt had dramatic consequences on the other side of the island as well. The need to quickly finance the first debt payment to the French, prompted extraordinary taxes and forced labor on the people of Santo Domingo. The Dominicans were forced to speak French, and in opposition, La Trinitaria, a political resistance movement emerged and succeeded in ending Haitian rule.

Starting point is 00:10:43 The Dominican Republic was founded in 1844, although periodic battles continued with Haiti until 1856. The New Republic faced significant economic challenges of its own, but it wasn't saddled with the enormous foreign debt that Haiti had. In the late 19th century, foreign investment and mass migration from Cuba facilitated the expansion of sugar cultivation in the Dominican Republic. This openness to outside investment has been one of the major differences between the two economies. One area that both sides had in common was a brief United States occupation in the early 20th century. The United States occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. During the occupation, United States Marines disbanded the Haitian army, introduced forced labor to build roads, rewrote the Constitution to allow foreign land ownership, and transferred state finances to U.S. banks. In the Dominican Republic, the U.S. imposed direct military rule from 1916 to 1924.

Starting point is 00:11:43 As the island entered the 20th century, both sides faced profound challenges. Those challenges were compounded by conflicts between the two countries, including the Parsley Massacre of 1937. The Parsley Massacre was orchestrated by Dominican dictator Raphael Trujero, who ordered the systematic slaughter of ethnic Haitians living in the northwest border region, creating an intense anti-Hasian environment in the Dominican Republic. For much of the 20th century, the two nations had nearly identical populations, yet economic conditions in the two countries have radically diverged. Both nations had a similar GDP throughout

Starting point is 00:12:24 the pre-World War II period. Today's numbers, however, show a stark difference, with the Dominican Republic's economy approximately four times greater than that of Haiti's in both gross and per capita terms. The statistical divide doesn't stop there. Dominicans live on average, 10 years longer, enjoy near universal electrical access compared to only 50% of the people in Haiti, and hold a 30-point edge in literacy rates. All told, Haiti ranks near the bottom of the United Nations Human Development Index, 86 places below its next-door neighbor. While the Haitian debt is a big part of the difference between the two countries,

Starting point is 00:13:05 you also can't discount each country's experience with dictators in the 20th century. Haiti, under 30 years of Duvalier rule saw Francois Duvalier, aka Papa Doc, and Jean-Claude Duvalier, aka Baby Doc. They siphoned off much of the Haitian economy for their own personal enrichment. Meanwhile, the Trujillo government in the Dominican Republic, while very authoritarian, emphasized infrastructure, technology, and education. The Dominican Republic was one of the first nations in the Western Hemisphere to establish free trade zones as part of its globalization campaign. Strong storms in the Caribbean have always impacted Hispaniola.

Starting point is 00:13:46 Category 4 and 5 hurricanes are common, but Haiti's casualty numbers and pace of recovery have always been much worse than that of the Dominican Republic's. The levels of deforestation in Haiti can also be seen in satellite images. The border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic is clearly visible, even though there is no natural border between the two countries. Today, many international observers classify Haiti as a failed state. Over the past decade, severe gang violence and institutional collapse have paralyzed the country.

Starting point is 00:14:18 Meanwhile, the Dominican Republic enjoys high levels of development and is now classified as an upper middle income economy with a representative democracy, and it's ranked between Brazil and Albania. On a personal note, several years ago, I crossed the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The difference in the levels of development on either side was stunningly obvious the moment you crossed over. There are very few border crossings in the world where the development levels differ so dramatically. Haiti and the Dominican Republic are forever linked by geography, but they have followed very, very different paths, and today they find themselves in very,

Starting point is 00:14:58 very different places. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. Research in writing for this episode was provided by Joel Hermanson. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. And I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord, as this is where everything happens outside of the podcast.

Starting point is 00:15:27 As always, if you leave a review on any of the major podcast, apps, you two can have it run in the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Divided Island of Hispaniola

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