Haitian Creole: A Review of Slavery and Creation

             Christopher Columbus claimed Haiti when he landed there in 1492. Arawak Indians were the original inhabitants of this island when Columbus arrived. Later, the island became a colony of England. Haiti remained virtually unsettled until the mid-17th century, when French colonists, importing African slaves, developed sugar plantations in the north. Under French rule from 1697, Haiti (then called Saint-Domingue) became one of the world's richest sugar and coffee producers. Soon, Haiti became a land of wealth with the vast use of slavery as its method of production. The rising demand for sugar, coffee, cotton, and tobacco created a greater demand for slaves by other slave-trading countries. Spain, France, the Dutch, and English were in competition for the cheap labor needed to work their colonial plantation system producing those lucrative goods. The slave trade was so profitable that, by 1672, the Royal African Company chartered by Charles II of England superseded the other traders and became the richest shipper of human slaves to the mainland of the Americas. The slaves were so valuable to the open market - they were eventually called "Black Gold."
             Plantation owners began to be represented in the colony either by their agents or plantation managers, who kept them, informed of production levels, profits, expenses, and the general operations of the plantation. The arrogance and conceit of these agents, or procurers, was that they were surrounded by a multitude of domestic slaves to satisfy every want or need of their own. The greater number of domestic slaves one may have entails a great amount of prestige for these people in their time of the early 1700s and no thought was given to the immoral ways and acts taken by their race because they thought it not an issue. Plantation owners and those of the like continued to be heavily involved in social aspects of culture and the French way of life. Commuting from their authoritatively co...

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Haitian Creole: A Review of Slavery and Creation. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 21:03, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/44350.html