From Saint Domingue to Haiti: some consequences of European colonisation on the physical environment of Hisponiola

The economic, political and social consequences of colonisation, slavery and slave trade since the 15th century are relatively well-documented, while the effects upon the physical environment have not been dealt with so frequently. 1n this paper changes in population and the environmental impact related to the European colonisation of Hispaniola, and people's perception of these processes are considered. A few decades after the Spanish colonisation of Hispaniola in 1492, the Amerindians had been decimated. In the beginning of the 17th century, French buccaneers and pirates settled on the north-western part of the island and a French colony, Saint Domingue, with a governor was established in the 1660s. 1mported slaves furnished the necessary labour for the plantation economy, which made Saint Domingue the richest French colony at the end of the 18th century. Prosperity had serious consequences on the environment through deforestation and overgrazing. The environmental degradation processes for which Harti is nowadays disreputable thus have a significant temporal causality that extends over more than 200 years, while spatial causality links between events in Hispaniola and Europe are considerable. A journey in space and time beginning with the colonising Europe of the 15th century to Haiti in the 20th century highlights the significant but concealed interdependencies between places and events far apart on earth