St Domingo In The 1700s

In the 1700s, Saint Domingo was home to thousands of people. The majority of these people were slaves. With the majority of the people on the island living in discontent, it is easy to see why there was a massive revolt. Many people died, but in the end, Haiti was the second free and independent nation state in the Americas. The French convinced the pirates of the 1500s that they should stop robbing ships, and that they should settle on the Island. Many of them invested their money into sugar plantations that were on the island, and by 1700, they were thriving. The island became very successful in growing sugar and coffee. Saint Domingo provided the majority of all the sugar and coffee in Europe. It was also home to more slaves than anywhere else in the world. With more than 90% of people on the islands being slaves, the whites were vastly …show more content…
On the other hand, the poor white people argued that there wasn’t enough discrimination against blacks. They began lobbying for colonial independence. They voiced that things should be run like a democracy. Everyone should have a voice. However, they also believed that people of color were not people, so everyone should have a voice if they were white.
In 1791, these poor whites seized the city of Port Au Prince. France was at war with most of Europe, so the French Government sent troops to Saint Domingo. In France, urges of equality were growing stronger. It didn’t seem fair to grant citizenship based on race alone, however, so in 1791, the National Assembly gave full citizenship to all free men of color, with a few conditions being that they had to have a certain amount of money, they had to own property, and they couldn’t be the children of slaves. Poor whites did not like this, so fighting broke out between them and the free people of color who were now citizens. Then in August of 1791, the slaves began to