Hispaniola
Hispaniola is an island in the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean, located between Cuba and Puerto Rico. It is the most populous island in the West Indies, and the second-largest by land area, after Cuba. Covering an area of, it is divided into two separate sovereign countries: the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic to the east and the French and Haitian Creole–speaking Haiti to the west. The only other divided island in the Caribbean is Saint Martin, which is shared between France and the Netherlands. At the time of the European arrival of Christopher Columbus, Hispaniola was home to the Ciguayo, Macorix, and Ciboney and Classic Taíno native peoples.
Hispaniola is the site of the first European fort in the Americas, La Navidad, the first settlement, La Isabela, and the first permanent settlement, the capital of the Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo. These settlements were founded successively during each of Christopher Columbus's first three voyages under the patronage of the Spanish Empire.
The Spanish controlled the entire island of Hispaniola from 1492 until the 17th century, when French pirates began establishing bases on the western side of the island, which resulted in the creation of the Saint-Domingue colony under the French Empire by 1659. The most commonly used name for the island is Española, whose Latinized form is Hispaniola. The name of Santo Domingo, after Saint Dominic de Guzmán, the Castilian Catholic priest founder of the Dominican Order, is also widely used.
Etymology
Indigenous rule
At the time of its European discovery during the first voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492, the island of Hispaniola was called various names by its native peoples: the Ciguayo, the Macorix, and the Taíno. Early chroniclers identified the indigenous names of the island as Bohío, Haiti, and Quisqueya, which were used by natives from different geographic parts of the island, although doubts have been raised about the authenticity of Quisqueya. Another name that has been mentioned is Babeque, but it likely corresponded to another island, as Columbus only identified on his journal the island of Hispaniola as Bohío, and used Babeque to refer to an island located east of Hispaniola, which was likely Boriquén, today Puerto Rico.While navigating east-west along the northern coastline of the island of Hispaniola during Columbus's second voyage in 1493, physician Diego Álvarez Chanca recorded that Haiti was the name of the easternmost part of the island, which he described as low-lying and flat. This region was followed by two others called Samaná and Bohío. Spanish clergyman and historian Bartolomé de las Casas, who settled in the island's Cibao valley in 1502, documented that the island was called Bohío and Haiti by the Taíno, while administrator and historian Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, who was supervisor of gold smelting in Santo Domingo in 1514, reported Haiti. In addition to Haiti, which he defined as "altitude" synonymous with "mountains", Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, author of Decades of the New World in 1511 and chronicler of the newly formed Council of the Indies in 1520, recorded another name, Quisqueya, which he defined as "something large" or "larger than anything" synonymous with "universality".
Like de las Casas, Ferdinand Columbus, son of Columbus who visited the island of Hispaniola during the fourth voyage of his father and during the governorship of his brother Diego Columbus in 1509, identified the native names of the island as Bohío and Haiti. Like d'Anghiera, prominent Spanish historians Alonzo de Santa Cruz and Francisco López de Gómara identified Haiti and Quisqueya as the native names of the island. In 1540, de Santa Cruz defined the former as "montes" and "aperezas" and the latter as "grandeza excedía a todas", indicating that Haiti was how the natives called the island because it was how they universally named the many mountains in the island, while Quisqueya was used because they thought the large size of island meant that it and its neighboring islands were the full extent of the world. In 1553, López de Gómara defined Haiti as "aspereza" and Quisqueya as "tierra grande".
However, historians disagree on the authenticity of the indigenous origins of Quisqueya, as research has shown that the name does not appear to derive from the Taíno language. While some dismiss it as an invention of d'Anghiera, which was subsequently spread by later historians, others contend that it was one of the names used by the natives, possibly the Ciguayo. Despite the debate, Dominicans have adopted Quisqueya as the popular and poetic name of the Dominican Republic in eastern Hispaniola.
Spanish rule
Upon landing at the Nord-Ouest department of northwestern Haiti on December 5, 1492, Columbus called the island Española, as it resembled geographical parts of Spain in his opinion. Historians de las Casas and d'Anghiera popularized the name in its Latin form Hispaniola, meaning Spain in diminutive, according to Mártir. While the name for the island in Spanish today is La Española, Columbus did not use the article La.The island of Hispaniola continued to be called Española until shortly after the mid-17th century, when the territory began to be known interchangeably as Isla Española de Santo Domingo. The following two centuries, Santo Domingo prevailed as the name for the island until the 18th century. This name dates back to 1498, when Bartholomew Columbus founded a city on the bank of the Ozama River, which he named Santo Domingo after Saint Dominic. Antonio del Monte y Tejada and José Gabriel García, in their respective works, recorded that on December 6, 1508, by Royal Decree, the King of Spain extended the name Santo Domingo to the entire island. However, this Royal Decree is unknown, and it is believed that the name Santo Domingo was applied to the island out of general usage, as it was the name of Santo Domingo, the principal political and commercial center in the island, which is today the capital of the Dominican Republic.
Spanish and French rule
When the French occupied the western part of the island of Hispaniola in the mid-17th century, which had been abandoned by Spain following the Devastations of Osorio in 1605, they established a colonial plantation system based on the enslavement of Sub-Saharan Africans. This colony, which became the most prosperous of the French empire in the Americas, was known as Saint-Domingue.The island remained a Spanish possession under the official name of Capitanía General de Santo Domingo before the occupation of the French. After the establishment of Saint-Domingue, the Captaincy General of Santo Domingo became official name of the Spanish-controlled territory in eastern Hispaniola. In 1795, Spain ceded the Captaincy General of Santo Domingo to France by way of the Treaty of Basel during the French Revolutionary Wars. France annexed Spanish Santo Domingo into the French Saint-Domingue, uniting the entire island of Hispaniola from 1795 to 1809 under the official name of Capitainerie générale de Santo Domingo or French Santo Domingo.
Independence
Following the period of the successful insurrection against France in western Hispaniola from 1791 to 1804, which historians dubbed the Haitian Revolution, revolutionary leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines adopted the name of Haiti as the official name of the island, stating the Haitian Constitution of 1805 that "The people inhabiting the island formerly called St. Domingo, hereby agree to form themselves into a free state sovereign and independent of any other power in the universe, under the name of empire of Hayti." From 1804 to 1806, the independent western side of Hispaniola was officially known as the Empire of Haiti. Following the overthrow of the Empire of Haiti from 1806 to 1808, the northern part of the island of Hispaniola became officially known as the State of Haiti, while the south was called the Republic of Haiti.During this time the eastern side remained under de jure French control with the official name of Capitainerie générale de Santo Domingo or French Santo Domingo. After the Spanish reconquest of the eastern side of the island of Hispaniola in 1809, this territory regained its official name of Capitanía General de Santo Domingo, while the independent western side of Hispaniola had several official names: State of Haiti, Republic of Haiti, and Kingdom of Haiti.
With the independence of the Captaincy General of Santo Domingo in 1821, this territory officially became the Estado Independiente de Haití Español. However, after the Haitian occupation of the territory from 1822 to 1844, the entire island of Hispaniola became a unified country under the official name of Republic of Haiti. As the Dominicans rebelled against Haitian rule during the Dominican War of Independence from 1844 to 1856, a new independent country with the name of República Dominicana was established in eastern Hispaniola. In 1844, the first Substantive Charter of the new country, stated: "The Spanish part of the island of Santo Domingo and its adjacent islands form the territory of the Dominican Republic." Western Hispaniola remained as the country of Haiti with the official name of Empire of Haiti or Republic of Haiti.
With the official introduction of the name Haiti in the 19th century, the island of Hispaniola, which until then was most commonly called Santo Domingo, began to be widely identified as Haiti, particularly outside the Spanish-speaking world.