Spanish colonialism reduced western Hispaniola to economic stagnation before France took it

Evidence

From about the end of the Sixteenth to the end of the Seventeenth Century (1697) when, at the signing of the Treaty of Ryswick, France acquired decisive control of the occidental part of Hispaniola, Haiti, the colony experienced what could be called a ‘dark age.’ — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2002