The 1521 Santo Domingo Slave Revolt in the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo on the island of Hispaniola took place around the time of Christmas festivities in 1521. It is the earliest recorded slave rebellion in the Americas.[1] Just days after the rebellion, the colonial authorities introduced a set of laws to prevent another uprising. These are thought to be the earliest surviving laws created to control enslaved Africans in the New World.
There is some disagreement by historians on the precise date of the rebellion. Some historical sources state the rebellion took place on the first or second day of Christmas. Contemporary historians generally mark the anniversary of the rebellion as December 25th or 26th, other sources mistakenly call it the "1522 slave rebellion".[2]
The rebellion started on the Nueva Isabela sugar plantation (located today in the northwestern outskirts of Santo Domingo city[3]) owned by the colony's governor Diego Columbus, son of Christopher Columbus. The text of 1522 slave laws describe that a "certain number" of slaves "agreed to rebel and rebelled with intention and purpose to kill all the Christians they could and to free themselves and take over the land."[1] The historical documents present the uprising as well-planned and coordinated action. Local oral tradition says that the rebellion was led by Maria Olofa (Wolofa) and Gonzalo Mandinga, a romantic couple, both Muslims from the Wolof nation.[4]
On January 6 of 1522 (Day of the Three Kings also known as Ephiphany), just days after the uprising, the governor of Santo Domingo, introduced strict laws designed to prevent the "Black and slaves" from uprising again. These are thought to be some of the earliest laws created to control enslaved Africans in the New World. The 1522 laws restricted the physical movements of the enslaved, prohibited the enslaved from bearing arms and accessing weapons, required enslavers to keep strict slave registers, and introduced harsh punishment in the form of physical torture and execution.
Background
At the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the next, the Spanish conquerors and colonizers who arrived on the island of Hispaniola imposed a system of exploitation, first on the native population, but as this ethnic group became extinct and they were not in conditions for this type of work, the importation of African slaves was authorized to work in the mines, in sugar production and in other productive areas.
Intervention of Dominican friars
There are various versions about whether or not there was an African presence during the first and second voyages of Admiral Christopher Columbus to the New World. But it is assumed that these voyages are the product of new Atlantic commercial societies dependent on slave labor. In 1496, when Columbus was in the Cape Verde archipelago, in a letter addressed to the Catholic Monarchs, in a fragment he notes: “Slaves were sold for eight thousand maravedis per head” 4. It would not be surprising if on the first or second voyage he transported African blacks. Dominican historian Celsa Albert Batista, quoting Carlos Larrazábal Blanco, states: “In 1496, when the city of Santo Domingo was founded, there was a black presence on the island” 5 . There are documents that provide important clarifications on the facts discussed. Consuelo Varela and Isabel Aguirre, in a recent investigation, express: “A young free black man, named Juan Moreno or Juan Prieto, worked as a servant of Columbus in Hispaniola, he is considered as the first black person to arrive in America in 1492 or in the second voyage in 1493. Years after the death of Columbus, with the name of Juan Portugués, he participated in the colonization of Central America” 6 . In the following years, other blacks were brought by Spanish colonizers to work as their servants. Towards 1501, the bringing of blacks who were raised in Spain as a slave labor force was being considered, excluding those who were not Christianized. The first merchants who obtained permission to do so were: “Juan de Córdoba, a wealthy convert, silversmith, friend of Columbus and later of Cortés, in 1502 sent a black slave to Hispaniola in the company of other agents in order to sell him and Luis Fernández de Alfaro, captain of merchant ships, traded with the recently discovered Spanish domains” 7 .
Others who obtained licenses were the Sevillians Juan Sánchez and Alonso Bravo, both Christians. Precisely, in the year 1502, the Catholic Monarchs sent Nicolás de Ovando as governor of the island of Santo Domingo, a man characterized by being efficient and far-sighted; also implacable and insensitive. He was ordered to force the natives of the island to work because of the great “freedom” that said Indians have… “they flee or separate themselves from the conversation and communication of the Christians, so that they do not want to work and wander around as vagabonds. I ordered that you compel and urge the said Indians to work, paying them the wages that you have set; which they should do and fulfill as free people, as they are, and not as servants, and see that the Indians are well treated” 8 . While he had the government in his hands, Ovando was the one who carried out the most policy changes; He requested that the crown suspend the importation of African slaves, believing that not only did they take advantage of every opportunity to flee, but they also encouraged the Indians to rebel. In 1504 the Spanish Crown allowed ten years of free trade with Hispaniola, with the exception of trade, gold, silver, arms and horses; it is assumed that the exception was included because they were needed in Europe. The following year, the crown authorized the importation of seventeen black slaves, with the promise of others; however, Ovando was later ordered to expel the Berber and pagan slaves, for not adapting to the type of work. By this time, there was already sugar cane, although in modest quantities. In 1505 a colonist named Aguilón cultivated it in La Vega. According to Las Casas, “He ground it with certain wooden instruments with which the juice was obtained” 9 . He did this by means of slave labour, in sugar mills brought from the Madeira or Canary Islands. Shortly after Ovando ceased to be governor of the island in 1509, a decisive change in the strategy regarding slaves took place. The new governor, Viceroy Diego Columbus, wrote a letter to King [[Ferdinand about the shortage of labour. In a fragment of the letter he says: “The Indians had a hard time breaking the rocks where the gold was found” 10 . The Spanish monarch had recently given him “carte blanche” to import all the natives he wanted from the surrounding islands; he could kidnap them, as in the case of the Lucayans of the Bahamas, as had been done on other occasions, place them where they were needed and distribute them according to the custom that had been followed until then. In 1510 “there were only about twenty-five thousand people left who were fit to work” 11 . The Indians had shown that they were not profitable in labour, unlike the African blacks.
On February 14, 1510, King Ferdinand authorized the Casa de Contratación to manage the Spanish maritime activities of the slave trade. From then on, the sale of all captives would be regulated, as well as a tax on the license; smuggling was encouraged. However, the obligation to buy slaves would be an important source of income for the Crown, representing the beginning of the slave trade to the Americas; its basic incentive was gold, later in sugar production and in other productive activities on the island. From this moment on, a constant flow of slaves was established, many of them ending up in the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo, a point that served as a redistribution port for trade coming from the Iberian Peninsula to other Spanish colonies in America.
Mistreatment of the Africans
Referring to the massive black presence, Spanish author Carlos Esteban Deive explains: “The African black arrived in Santo Domingo as a slave, and it was he who completed, with his forced labor, the activity of the Spanish conqueror… He arrived with a broken culture; forcibly torn from his land, transported and transplanted to a new habitat that was not his own, forced to integrate into an unknown society; he found himself in a position of economic and social subordination. He thus saw his tribal and political organization destroyed, his ways of family life, in short, all his native social and cultural structures” 12 . These Africans were stripped of their languages, gods, tools and work instruments. They were also stripped of their conception of time and their imagination of their landscape. Most of them came from different areas of western Africa; they were distinct ethnic groups in which they reflected diversity of characters. Therefore, they had cultural and linguistic differences, which made any type of communication difficult for them.
Arrival of first enslaved Africans
No one ignores that the island of Hispaniola, like all slave societies in America, was governed by special treatment for slaves: producing wealth by working from dawn to dusk without rest and suffering physical abuse. According to French politician Victor Schoelcher, he noted that the whip was part of the colonial regime, when he stated that: “The whip was the main agent; the whip was his soul; The whip was the bell of the houses, it announced awakening and retirement, it signaled the time for work; The whip also marked the time of rest; and the guilty were punished with the sound of the whip, and the members of a room were gathered in the afternoon as in the day for prayer; The day of death was the only time in which the black man forgot waking up with the whip” 13 . For his part, Colombian anthropologist Aquiles Escalante Polo points out that: “The punishments given to the runaway fugitives ranged from lashes, the stocks, the cutting off of their genitals, limbs and death itself… to the escaped black, after twenty days of having fled. , he was sentenced to one hundred lashes, given in such a way: that one day in the morning, he would be taken to the pillory of this city, in which he would be tied and put on a belt of bells tied to his body... everything, so that the bells would resonate. to each lash of the executioner” 14 . They were common punishments for slaves in all the colonies of America; Of course, all this led them to constant escapes and rises to the mountains.
Cyriaque Simon Pierre, quoting Martinican historian Edouard Glissant, says: “The enslaved person was undoubtedly a mobile tool in a slave production system” 15 . Undoubtedly, the enslaved person did not possess material goods, a characteristic of this system. In addition, the most commonly known arguments of that time consisted of depicting the black person in an angle of barbarism and savagery, first in Europe and then in the American colonies. Although the term barbarian was rejected many years ago by the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, he stated “The barbarian is first the person who believes in barbarism” 16. The black person was sought to be feared by other peoples. Francisco Jimenes de Cisneros, who was King Regent of the Spanish Crown between 1516-1517, quoted by Carlos Federico Guillot, stated: “Blacks are suitable for war, men without honor and without faith and thus capable of betrayals and unrest, which by multiplying will infallibly rise up, wanting to impose on the Spaniards the same chains that they carry” 17 . It was a kind of warning to the Spanish that they had to distrust black slaves and take the necessary measures to prevent any uprising. With the accession to the Spanish throne of Charles V, surprisingly, the Jerónimo friars, who had been appointed governor of the island of Hispaniola by the now deceased Cisneros, also made requests to bring in African slaves. One of them was Friar Bernardino de Manzanedo, who wrote a letter to the Spanish monarch, and in a fragment of it he literally states:18
That all the citizens of Hispaniola asked His Majesty to grant them a license to import blacks, because the Indians were not enough for the colonists to support themselves... they should send as many women as men and, since the blacks raised in Castile could turn out to be rebellious, that these new slaves should be bozales (brought directly from Africa), from the best territories of Africa or from any part south of Senegal.
In January 1518, Judge Alonso Zuazo, “very concerned” about the decline in the Indian population, wrote to the Emperor Charles suggesting ways to increase the labor force in the New World, “where the land was the best on the planet, where it was neither too cold nor too hot, where there was nothing to complain about, where everything was green and everything grew, as when Christ, in the great Augustinian peace, redeemed the Old World; he added, obsequiously, that there was something similar in the arrival of Charles, for he would redeem the New World…he recommended that he grant a general license for the importation of blacks suitable for work on the islands, unlike the natives, “so weak that they were only good for light work…it would be foolish to suppose that, if they were brought there, the blacks would rebel…the canes were as thick as a man’s wrist and it would be wonderful to build large sugar mills” 19 . As a result of all of these, on August 18, 1518, Charles V granted permission to export black slaves to all Spanish colonies in the New World. The massive arrival brought with it a series of problems that owners and authorities had to face; these were the so-called rebellions.
In reference to the power of the monarch, British historian Eric Hobsbawm stated that: “The king or emperor himself, apart from his power as a great patron or lord, functioned through the mediation of local patrons or patrons rooted in localities who responded to negotiation rather than orders."20 The King exercised power through the apparatus of state or state-authorized officials, a practically total monopoly of power over everything that happens within his borders. As for the facts, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas firmly supported these requests, to bring African slaves to be replaced in the work done by the Indians. Las Casas, a recognized and established defender of the Indians to protect them from mistreatment, protested for many years that he was blinded to the need to prevent Africans from suffering these same treatments. Later, in the 1550s, when he was writing his “History of the Indies,” he would explain that he had realized that it was wrong to want to replace one form of slavery with another.
The harsh working conditions, punishment, discrimination, excessive working hours, among other aspects, led many black slaves to rebel against the colonial order. The bringing of slaves to the island has a very long history, between the years of 1515 to 1518 the need to import more slaves was discussed; Most of the colonial authorities advised the Spanish monarch, Charles V, to acquire them directly from Africa and not in Spain, because it was believed that the latter lived in the Iberian Peninsula, becoming familiar with Spanish and could communicate with each other to plot rebellions and rise up against the slave system.
Albert Batista, Celsa. Africans on our island. Santo Domingo: Editora La Trinitaria, 2010. Collection of documents for the history of the social formation of Latin America, 1493-1810, Cédula (05/11/1526), CSIC, Madrid: 1953.
Jesús Domínguez, Jaime. Dominican History. Santo Domingo: Editora ABC, 2001.
Deive, Carlos Esteban. "Marronage in the Spanish Colony of Santo Domingo," Mar Océana, Journal of Spanish and Ibero-American Humanism. 2008, No. 24.
“The slavery of black people in Santo Domingo (1492-1844)”. Museum of Dominican Man. Santo Domingo: editions of the Museum of Dominican Man. 1980.
The black guerrillas: slaves, fugitives and maroons in Santo Domingo. Santo Domingo: Dominican Cultural Foundation, 1989.
Fernández de Oviedo, Gonzalo. General and Natural History of the Indies (1478-1557), Volume I. Madrid: Printing Office of the Royal Academy of History, 1992.
Franco Pichardo, Franklin. Blacks, Mulattoes and the Dominican Nation. Santo Domingo: 9th Edition, Editora Vidal, 1998.
History of the Dominican People. Santo Domingo. Workshop Editor. Dominican Publishing Society, 1993.
Guillot, Carlos Federico. Black Rebels and Black Maroons (African American profile in the history of the New World). Buenos Aires: Editora Francisco Colombo, 1961.
Hugh, Thomas. The Slave Trade:A History of the Traffic in Human Beings from 1440 to 1780. Barcelona: Editorial Planeta, 1997.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, Race et Histoire Race et Culture. Paris. (Ed UNESCO. Réédition). 2011.
Niño Roja, Victor Manuel. Research methodology, Design and execution. Bogotá: Editions of the U, 2011.
Pérez Tudela, Juan. The Armies of the Indies, and the origins of the policy of colonization, 1492-1505. (Madrid: Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo Institute), 1956.
Saco, José Antonio. History of the slavery of the African race in the New World and especially in the Hispanic-American countries. Volume I. Havana: Editora Cultural, 1938.
The recorded history of the Dominican Republic began in 1492 when Christopher Columbus, working for the Crown of Castile, arrived at a large island in the western Atlantic Ocean, later known as the Caribbean. The native Taíno people, an Arawakan people, had inhabited the island during the pre-Columbian era, dividing it into five chiefdoms. They referred to the eastern part of the island as Quisqueya, meaning 'mother of all lands.' Columbus claimed the island for Castile, naming it La Isla Española, which was later Latinized to Hispaniola.
Hispaniola is an island between Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean. Hispaniola is the most populous island in the West Indies, and the second-largest by land area, after Cuba. The 76,192-square-kilometre (29,418 sq mi) island is divided into two separate sovereign countries: the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic (48,445 km2 to the east and the French and Haitian Creole–speaking Haiti (27,750 km2 to the west. The only other divided island in the Caribbean is Saint Martin, which is shared between France and the Netherlands.
The history of the Caribbean reveals the region's significant role in the colonial struggles of the European powers since the 15th century. In the modern era, it remains strategically and economically important. In 1492, Christopher Columbus landed in the Caribbean and claimed the region for Spain. The following year, the first Spanish settlements were established in the Caribbean. Although the Spanish conquests of the Aztec empire and the Inca empire in the early sixteenth century made Mexico and Peru more desirable places for Spanish exploration and settlement, the Caribbean remained strategically important.
Saint-Domingue was a French colony in the western portion of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, in the area of modern-day Haiti, from 1697 to 1804. The name derives from the Spanish main city on the island, Santo Domingo, which came to refer specifically to the Spanish-held Captaincy General of Santo Domingo, now the Dominican Republic. The borders between the two were fluid and changed over time until they were finally solidified in the Dominican War of Independence in 1844.
Francisco de Bobadilla was an official under the Crown of Castile and a knight of the Order of Calatrava. He was also the nephew of Beatriz de Bobadilla, marchioness of Moya and of Peñalosa, a patron of Christopher Columbus and close friend to Queen Isabella. He was sent to the island of Hispaniola as a judge, where he arrested Columbus for official misconduct. He served as Viceroy from 1500 until 1502. He is often mistaken for his uncle with whom he shares a name, Francisco de Bobadilla y Maldonado.
Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón was a Spanish magistrate and explorer who in 1526 established the short-lived San Miguel de Gualdape colony, one of the first European attempts at a settlement in what is now the United States. Ayllón's account of the region inspired a number of later attempts by the Spanish and French governments to colonize the southeastern United States.
Diego Columbus was a navigator and explorer under the Kings of Castile and Aragón. He served as the 2nd Admiral of the Indies, 2nd Viceroy of the Indies and 4th Governor of the Indies as a vassal to the Kings of Castile and Aragón. He was the eldest son of Christopher Columbus and his wife Filipa Moniz Perestrelo.
George Biassou was an early leader of the 1791 slave rising in Saint-Domingue that began the Haitian Revolution. With Jean-François and Jeannot, he was prophesied by the vodou priest Dutty Boukman to lead the revolution.
Slavery in the Spanish American viceroyalties was an economic and social institution which existed throughout the Spanish Empire including Spain itself. Enslaved Africans were brought over to the continent for their labour, indigenous people were enslaved until the 1543 laws that prohibited it.
Afro-Dominicans are Dominicans of predominant or full Black African ancestry. They are a minority in the country representing 7.8% of the Dominican Republic's population according to a census bureau survey in 2022. About 4.0% of the people surveyed claim an Afro-Caribbean immigrant background, while only 0.2% acknowledged Haitian descent. Currently there are many black illegal immigrants from Haiti, who are not included within the Afro-Dominican demographics as they are not legal citizens of the nation.
Islam in the Dominican Republic is a minority religion. Accurate statistics of religious affiliation are difficult to calculate and there is a wide variation concerning the actual numerical amount. Although the majority of the population is Christian, Muslim community is leaded by the Círculo Islámico de República Dominicana. Currently, the Círculo Islámico has an estimation that Muslims number in Dominican Republic is about 3,000 to 4,000, including of a good number of dominicans included.
Frey Nicolás de Ovando was a Spanish soldier from a noble family and a Knight of the Order of Alcántara, a military order of Spain. He was Governor of the Indies (Hispaniola) from 1502 until 1509, sent by the Spanish crown to investigate the administration of Francisco de Bobadilla and re-establish order. Ovando "pacified" the island by force, subduing native Americans and rebellious Spaniards, with disorderly colonists being sent back to Spain in chains. He implemented the encomienda system with the native Taíno population.
The Captaincy General of Santo Domingo was the first Capitancy in the New World, established by Spain in 1492 on the island of Hispaniola. The Capitancy, under the jurisdiction of the Real Audiencia of Santo Domingo, was granted administrative powers over the Spanish possessions in the Caribbean and most of its mainland coasts, making Santo Domingo the principal political entity of the early colonial period.
The Haitian occupation of Santo Domingo was the annexation and merger of then-independent Republic of Spanish Haiti into the Republic of Haiti, that lasted twenty-two years, from February 9, 1822, to February 27, 1844. The part of Hispaniola under Spanish administration was first ceded to France and merged with the French colony of Saint Domingue as a result of the Peace of Basel in 1795. However, with the outbreak of the Haitian Revolution the French lost the western part of the island, while remaining in control of the eastern part of the island until the Spanish recaptured Santo Domingo in 1809.
In the history of the Dominican Republic, the period of Era de Francia occurred in 1795 when France acquired the Captaincy General of Santo Domingo, annexed it into Saint-Domingue and briefly came to acquire the whole island of Hispaniola by the way of the Treaty of Basel, allowing Spain to cede the eastern province as a consequence of the French Revolutionary Wars.
The Jaragua massacre of July 1503, was the killing of indigenous natives from the town of Xaragua on the island of Hispaniola. It was ordered by the Spanish governor of Santo Domingo, Nicolás de Ovando, and carried out by Alonso de Ojeda during a native celebration that was held in the village of Guava near present-day Léogane in the territory of Jaragua of the Cacique Anacaona.
Santiago was a Spanish territory of the Spanish West Indies and within the Viceroyalty of New Spain, in the Caribbean region. Its location is the present-day island and nation of Jamaica.
Dominican Republic–Haiti relations are the diplomatic relations between the nations of Dominican Republic and Haiti. Relations have long been hostile due to substantial ethnic and cultural differences, historic conflicts, territorial disputes, and sharing the island of Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The living standards in the Dominican Republic are considerably higher than those in Haiti. The economy of the Dominican Republic is ten times larger than that of Haiti. The migration of impoverished Haitians and historical differences have contributed to long-standing conflicts.
White Haitians, are Haitians of predominant or full European. There were approximately 20,000 whites around the Haitian Revolution, mainly French, in Saint-Domingue. They were divided into two main groups: The Planters and Petit Blancs. The first Europeans to settle in Haiti were the Spanish. The Spanish enslaved the indigenous Haitians to work on sugar plantations and in gold mines. European diseases such as measles and smallpox killed all but a few thousand of the indigenous Haitians. Many other indigenous Haitians died from overwork and harsh treatment in the mines from slavery. Many Europeans who settled in Haiti were killed or fled during the Haitian Revolution.
Sebastián Lemba was an early Dominican slave rebel leader who led a prolonged maroon rebellion in the colony of Santo Domingo,. He is remembered as a significant figure in Dominican history, as that his actions paved the way for the eventual liberation of the Dominicans from their Spanish oppressors.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
