Dominican Republic 
The Dominican Republic occupies the eastern two thirds of the island called Hispaniola (Little Spain), which it shares with Haiti. In 1496 it became the site of the first European colony in the Western Hemisphere, with the city of Santo Domingo as the Spanish administrative capital for all the Americas. The early settlers enslaved many of the indigenous Taino people to work in their gold mines and brutality and disease all but wiped out a population of around one million in 50 years. With local labour in short supply, the gold hungry colonists made Santo Domingo the first destination for enslaved Africans in America, a substantial ‘cargo’ of 5000 arriving in 1511. The discovery of gold and silver in Mexico (1520) and Peru (1533) sparked a massive flight by Spanish colonists in the 1520s, as slaves were being forced to work Santo Domingo’s gold deposits to exhaustion. The Spanish abandoned the island almost overnight, the exodus leaving only a few thousand white settlers and their slaves to raise livestock and supply passing ships. Buccaneers gradually began to arrive in the west, in what is now Haiti followed by French colonists, eventually forcing Spain to cede the area to France in 1697. The French territory, Saint Domingue, developed into the worlds largest sugar producer, while Spanish towns in what is now the Dominican Republic continued to stagnate. By 1790 the colony’s 125,000 residents broke down into 40,000 white landowners, 25,000 black freemen, and 60,000 slaves, whereas in St. Domingue half a million enslaved Africans constituted 80% of the total population. The sugar industry did grow during the 18th Century, but it was mostly terminated by the slave revolt in Saint Domingue in 1791. In 1801 Haitian leader Toussaint Louverture invaded the east of the island, liberating some 40,000 slaves, and prompting most of the slave owning elite to flee to Cuba and Puerto Rico. The Spanish re-established slavery when they regained control of the east in 1809, and began sending slavers (slave ships) on expeditions into the newly independent Haiti. The Haitians invaded again in 1821, freeing all the slaves and the Dominican Republic finally declared its independence in 1844.
