What happened to the indigenous people of Haiti under the stewardship of Catholic Spain?

[Boojatta]

[applegrove]

1. I think alot of the people in the caribbean all died of disease. Same thing happened in newfoundland

I guess because indigeonous peoples couldn't get far enough away from white folks and their diseases when they were on islands. No time (generations) to build up immunity.

[Boojatta]

2. How did Spain persuade indigenous people of Haiti to work in Spanish gold mines in Haiti?

What efforts were made to safeguard the health and safety of the miners?

[On the Road]

7. Persuade Them?

They enslaved them. And treated them so well that within a generation the tribe was extinct.

[Beregond2]

3. Terrible things, no doubt. What's your point?

[Boojatta]

4. I'm wondering whether anybody from Spain was excommunicated

over genocide of the indigenous people of Haiti. Perhaps the Roman Catholic Church reserves excommunication for actions that it considers more serious than genocide?

[enlightenment]

6. Try this, if you're actually interested in the history.

http://www.lascasas.org/

For the time - and please remember that temporal and cultural relativism is not a very good way to look at history - the writings of Bartolomé de Las Casas were a profound attack on the Spanish, and by extension, the church.

[Boojatta]

11. Do you think it would be worthwhile for someone to start a thread

in the DU World History Group based on information from lascasas?

[enlightenment]

13. Sure - go for it!

;)

[Boojatta]

15. I'm not going to rush into it. There are plenty of people who could take the "someone" role.

[Boojatta]

14. "if you're actually interested"

My intention is to spark a discussion on this message board. If I consult your source, do you anticipate that you will be interested in discussing how to interpret what it says, what significance a given interpretation has, and its basis in primary sources?

[enlightenment]

18. Possibly.

Much depends on how willing you are to actually engage in discussion, as opposed to simply asking rather convoluted questions without context. I am an historian - I like talking about history - but I don't like playing "twenty questions."

I think, Boojatta - and this is simply my opinion - that you sometimes fail to spark much discussion because your initial questions are never followed by engaging in discussion . . . you just ask another question. Very Socratic, but I suspect even Socrates occasionally offered his students some response beyond just another question!

I am familiar with the Black Legends, but not intimately familiar with them. I have read parts, but not the whole. I would be happy, however, to read more from them if you would like to talk about what they say, how they were received, what they provoked (or didn't), and of course how they are interpreted today (there's a big messy area!)

I'm also happy to talk about historical interpretation of primary sources in general; historiography is rather fun if you keep it all in perspective.

But I'm not a student in the formal sense, so I'm not interested in simply offering responses to your questions.

Okay?

[Boojatta]

19. Okay.

One comment:

I think that the following is factually incorrect: "your initial questions are never followed by engaging in discussion." In any case, I have sparked at least one discussion that I didn't participate in except by creating the thread in which the discussion occurred.

[Occam Bandage]

9. For a itty-bitty smidgen of perspective on the evolution of international human rights,

the term "genocide" was only coined in 1944.

[Boojatta]

12. I presume that would be perspective specifically on

international human rights and the English language. Unless, of course, 1944 happens to be the same year that comparable words were coined in Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, etc.

[John Gauger]

5. The Tainos are extinct.

It has been noted that Columbus, while in Hispaniola, erected more gallows than crosses.

[Occam Bandage]

8. Mostly died from disease. Many others died from abuse and slavery. Any remainder were absorbed.

Pretty well known. Any particular reason you're using R/T as Wikipedia today?

[Boojatta]

20. Can I create a thread like this in Wikipedia?

[HamdenRice]

10. In Puerto Rico, the indigenous people live on

This is a complicated issue, and obviously Spain was very cruel. But there was a fascinating study of the genetic makeup of the population of Puerto Rico recently (my S.O. is Puerto Rican, so it was of interest to us) and the result was surprising.

It had long been thought that the indigenous Tainos of Puerto Rico were wiped out, and replaced by a population that was a mix of Spanish, African, and the remnants of the indigenous people.

But the genetic survey showed that the largest genetic contribution to the people of Puerto Rico actually was indigenous -- 60%. In other words, the conventional wisdom was that the Tainos were exterminated and the Puerto Rican people were mostly Spanish, with a smattering of African (from Puerto Rico's relatively small slave system) and traces of indigenous. The genetic studies turned conventional wisdom on its head: the Puerto Ricans are mostly indigenous (60%), substantially African (27%) with only a relatively small amount of European (12%) genetic contributions.

So it seems their culture was destroyed but the unmarried men of Spain who settled in Puerto Rico took indigenous women as wives and consorts. I would guess that the same is true of the eastern half of Hispanola, Santo Domingo.

Haiti was a special case. It was one of the most densely populated places in the western hemisphere when slavery was at its height, packed with slaves from Africa, who had a short life span, mostly being worked to death.

Religion played a great role in the expansion of Spain. The religious connection in Spanish expansionism is often underplayed in history books for reasons that escape me. But the main point to keep in mind is that the Reconquista was completed the same year that Columbus sailed. In other words, Spain had developed into a highly militarized and religiously expansionist kingdom because it was engaged in a long term project of defeating and expelling the Moors (North African Muslim caliphate), and by extension the Jews, from Spain. The Moors had controlled Spain for centuries, and the Catholics finally "won" in 1492.

That system of military expansion, settlement under Catholic nobles, forced conversion, and economic exploitation was simply extended to the New World. Even the terminology was the same -- the Reconquista was extended to the New World as the Conquista by the Conquistadores.

Btw, however, human rights activism also had its birth in the same era, from within the Catholic Church. Bartolome de las Casas was a Catholic priest in Santo Domingo who wrote passionately against the extermination of the Tainos and developed a theory of the rights of all people by the mid 1500s.

[greyl]

16. Bartolome de las Casas: "If they pledge their souls to live like us, they may live." nt

[HamdenRice]

17. Wowie kazaowie!

Taking one line out of context to summarize an entire life's work! Great job and par for the course!

Oh, I forgot. Of course you would despise anyone who tried to stop a genocide -- if he had succeeded at his life's work, there would have been more mouths to feed, right?

[Boojatta]

21. Kick