Hispaniola’s marginalization within the Spanish empire enabled the later rise of French Saint-Domingue

Evidence

The capital of Hispaniola, Santo Domingo, flourished, eventually boasting the first Catholic cathedral and the first European university built in the Americas. From there the conquest of neighboring Cuba was launched. Soon the Spaniards continued on to the mainland and the conquest of Mexico. Hispaniola was soon overshadowed by the treasures unveiled, and the opportunities opened up, with the fall of the Aztec and Inca empires. Having been for a few decades at the center of the new Spanish empire, Hispaniola was soon consigned to its margins. … Many slaves gained their freedom, and new slave imports to the colony were limited. By the end of the eighteenth century only 15 percent of the population remained enslaved. Meanwhile the western part of Hispaniola remained for the most part unsettled. The name of the island’s capital, Santo Domingo, was increasingly used to refer to the entire island, and the French who eventually settled there in the early seventeenth century simply translated the name into French, calling their colony Saint-Domingue. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 65

Categorization

• XREF: Sets up the colonial pre-history the Haitian revolution reacts against; connective tissue for the arc the reader is tracing.