The establishment of slavery in the French colony of St Domingue occurred for much of the same reasons as slavery in the Southern North American colonies. The first European to discover Haiti was Christopher Columbus, though at the time, it was referred to as Hispaniola. While Columbus, and other Spanish and Portuguese explorers were primarily searching for gold, the island of Hispaniola was eventually colonized, with an agricultural based economy. The entire island of Hispaniola was initially claimed by the Spanish, but over time French buccaneers began settling the west coast of the island, and in 1697 the treaty of Rijswijk gave France official ownership of the western third of the island and it was renamed Saint Domingue, as the French version of the Spanish name, Santo Domingo.
The economy in St Domingue, as was with most of the Caribbean colonies, was agricultural. With the expulsion of the Dutch from Brazil, and the decline of Brazil’s sugar market, the production of sugar moved into the Caribbean. St Domingue was no exception. It produced millions of pounds of sugar and coffee on plantations each year, and became the most profitable of any European colony, bringing in twice the annual revenue of all the British Caribbean plantation colonies combined. By the 1780’s, slave labor was required to support this tremendous industry. With about thirty to forty thousand whites on the island there simply wasn’t enough man power to bring the island to its economic potential. And so slaves began to be imported. Harsh working conditions and disease meant that slaves had a short life span, so the slave trade was a constant one, with the island accounting for approximately a third of the Atlantic market. With the implementation of slavery in the colony, production skyrocketed. At their peak, the colony’s plantations produced approximately 130 million pounds of sugar each year, changing it from a rare luxury good to a product that could be purchased by just about anyone.
Evaluation of Sources:
The Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History Vol. 2 is a compilation of entries on the United States economy ranging from topics like slavery, to others about the prohibitions. The extract I used in this Investigation spanned from p926 to p929 entitled Slavery(Issue). This section, like the rest of the text, focused almost exclusively on the economic portion of the effects of slavery and the economic reasons behind the establishment of slavery. Because this source is an Encyclopedia, there is very little personal analysis present that could change the presented information based on the author’s personal biases, making it reliable. However the choice in the facts presented in the text are fully subject to the author’s biases yet cannot be seen so there is a margin of lacking in the material while not being visible must be taken into account. It is also written by two American authors, and therefore is influenced by the lens of current American culture.
The Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, Ed. Jay Kinsbruner and Erick D. Langer is a large compilation of historical events taking place in various parts of Latin America. The text spans from pre-European times all the way to the near present. The sections of the text used in this investigation for research on St Domingue, Haiti, which spans from p616 to p632, and for research on plantations, Plantations, p270 to p272, present events in a fully factual manner. In the same way as the Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History, it provides no real analysis on the material it covers, reducing the reflections of the authors’ personal biases on the material. Also like the Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History however is the fact that both of the two authors are American, and therefore affected by current day American culture.
Analysis:
The establishment and development of slavery has always been for economic reasons. While it seems wrong to us now, there is no arguing that slavery was a major factor in the economies of both the North American South and Saint Domingue. With the predominant moral standards of the time, establishing slavery in both locations made complete sense, and paid off well. The only financial costs were the original price of the slave, and those for the necessities of life, and even those costs could be partially avoided. The original purchase price could be avoided if the children of slaves were put to work, and the maintenance cost could be minimized if no real care was given to keeping the slaves healthy. And while poor conditions meant that slaves lived for only a fraction of their natural life spans, on St. Domingue at least, it was more profitable to work them to death and then replace them than to allow them to work for longer. This treatment, and the life span of slaves was the biggest difference between the southern North American colonies and the colony of St. Domingue. In the American colonies, slaves were expensize, and while they still received brutal treatment, their owners kept them healthy enough to be good workers, and allowed them to have children, who were then enslaved. On St. Domingue on the other hand, slaves were work so hard, and their living conditions were so poor, that their average life span was approximately five years.
Most likely the most prominent reason for the establishment of slavery in the Americas was the previous establishment of the plantation system. “Wherever it took hold, the plantation system disrupted or destroyed preexisting cultural norms and eliminated competing forms of economic and social organization”(Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture by Ed. Jay Kinsbruner and Erick D. Langer pg. 270). The plantation system, while being immensely productive and profitable, required an easy source of cheap labor, and while demands could be fed by indentured servants temporarily, need for labor soon outstripped supply and so, following in suit with other parts of the world, the Americas began the importation of slaves.
Another factor that must be taken into consideration when examining the reasons for the establishment of slavery in the Americas and the use of slave labor on plantations is the fact that the people establishing it as well as planters were for the vast majority white. And while many whites had no problem using other poorer whites for labor they were unwilling to do, they saw Africans as a truly inferior race, fit only to serve them. This feeling of cultural, and even biological, superiority justified using Africans as slaves. And why would anyone oppose it? Slavery was, by their interpretation, even supported by the bible. The Africans who were captured were obviously not Christian, and so according to beliefs of the time, this made it all the more acceptable to capture and enslave them.
Conclusion:
Due to the its success regarding the plantation system, slavery became a fully established practice in both Saint Domingue and the North American colonies. With the establishment of slavery St. Domingue became the most profitable colony of its time, supported by its plantation economy, and the North American colonies grew to become one of the most successful nations in the world. Despite its opposition, the economic benefits of slavery, for the slave holder, were able to establish it into a trade that spanned the Atlantic, and a tradition that lasted hundreds of years and only with bloody revolution, retreated and disappeared.
Total Word Count: 1560
Bibliography:
. Ed. Jay Kinsbruner and Erick D. Langer. Vol. 3. 2nd ed. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons , 2008. p616-632.
"Slave states." The Atlantic June 2009: 17. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Web. 8 Oct. 2010.
. Ed. Leonard W. Levy and Kenneth L. Karst. Vol. 5. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2000. p2434-2436.
. Ed. Shirelle Phelps and Jeffrey Lehman. Vol. 9. 2nd ed. Detroit: Gale, 2005. p203-211.
. Ed. David S. Tanenhaus. Vol. 4. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2008. p411-419.
. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 2000. p926-929.
. Ed. Thomas Tandy Lewis. Vol. 3. Magill's Choice Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 2007. p1064-1071.
