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Everything Everywhere Daily — The Divided Island of Hispaniola. Machine-transcribed; use the interactive transcript above to jump the player to any line.
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. In this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. 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. Find it wherever you get your podcast. That's I Can't Sleep with Benjamin Boster. Hey, I'm Arnie Nekan from the fully improvised comedy podcast Hello from the Magic Tavern. I'm here with my co-hosts, Jonathan Ogging Badger, Bing Bong, and Yousson or the Wizard. I greet the listeners. Look, I'm trapped in the magical land of fune, so I started a podcast interviewing elves, unicorns, and other weirdos. We have great guests like Felicia Day, Jason Manzooka, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Amy Mann, and so many more. Oh, and I think one time we interviewed a sentient shoe? I hope it was sentient.
Not to mention the evil people we've had to interview. How I hate evil. Join us as we bar crawl across the magical land of fune. Looking for adventure. Getting caught up in escapades. Hello from the Magic Tavern is available right now on your favorite podcast app, and add free and with lots of bonus content on Patreon. Subscribe to Hello from the Magic Tavern today. 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.
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 Tino Confederacy, consisting of five sovereign chiefdoms. Other smaller communities existed on the island, but the Tino 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 do whatever we want. 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'
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 Flota system. Under the Flota system, the Spanish allowed only two voyages per year to specify 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 prostalitizing, 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 had catastrophic
impacts for the Spanish, as they destroyed valuable agricultural lands, killing hundreds of thousands of cattle, and open 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. The unique arrangement outlined in the 1697 Treaty of Reichswick at the end of the 9 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 Sondemeng, while the eastern two-thirds remained the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo. It was at this point the two sides of the island began to evolve very different personalities. In French Sondemeng, the island focused on sugar production, becoming a plantation state fueled by slave labor. By the close of the 18th century, Sondemeng 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 at its fields. The population of Sondemeng was more than 90% slaves, 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, Santo Domingo on the eastern side was a totally different world. Santo 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 Santo Domingo focused on ranching and subsistence farming, drawing very little attention from Spain. In 1791, the slaves in Sondemeng launched the Haitian slave revolt, which I've covered in a previous episode. Led by Tussant Lovetour, the revolutionaries defeated French forces already devastated
by yellow fever, rugged terrain, and the tropical climate. In 1804, John Jacques Dessolene 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 until 1862. The freed population, which had lived under French slavery, refused to work under a system of gang labor, creating challenges for a nation that needed to establish an economic political infrastructure. Desperate for Revenue, Haiti's early rulers enacted coercive state labor codes that resembled slavery, promoting the idea of war gangs who were connected to particular plantations.
By 1806, Dessolene re-instituted forced labor to get exports to return to their earlier levels. Haiti was learning the tragic truth. A strict, monoculture, cash crop-based economy was not compatible with the high ideals of their revolution. In 1821, Spanish Santo Domingo declared independence from Spain, planning to join Simone Bolivar'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 Santo 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-au-Prince and demanded an outrageous payment of 150 million gold francs.
Later, we negotiated down to a slightly less absurd 90 million gold francs. The audacity of the king was backed 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 10 times larger than Haiti's total budget. To pay the debt, Haiti had to agree to high-interest loans from French banks that 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. End quote. Haiti paid 112 million French francs in principal loan costs and interest associated with the independence and indemnity by the time the debt was paid off in 1947. Adjusted for inflation that comes to roughly $560 million 2022 US dollars. In the broader effects on Haiti's 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. 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 US banks. In the Dominican Republic, the US imposed direct military rule from 1916 to 1924.
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-Maschicre of 1937. The Parsley-Maschicre was orchestrated by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujero, who ordered the systematic slaughter of ethnic Haitians living in the Northwest border region, creating an intense anti-Hation 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 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 ten years longer, enjoying 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, you also can't discount each country's experience with dictators in the 20th century. Haiti, under 30 years of Duvalier rule, saw a Francois Duvalier, aka Papadoc, and Jean-Claude Duvalier, aka Babydoc. They siphoned off much of the Haitian economy for their own personal enrichment. Meanwhile, the Trujillo government and 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.
Category four and five hurricanes are common, but Haiti's casualty numbers and pace of recovery have always been much worse than that of the Dominican Republics. 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. Meanwhile, the Dominican Republic enjoys high levels of development and is now classified as an upper-middle-income economy with a representative democracy, an entranced 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, very different places. The executive producer of everything everywhere daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. Research and writing for this episode was provided by Joel Hermenson. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the showover on Patreon. Their support helps make this podcast possible. I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord, as this is where everything happens outside of the podcast. As always, if you leave a review on any of the major podcast apps, YouTube can have it run in the show.
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