TheDevastations of Osorio were an event in the history of theSpanish colony of Santo Domingo (now theDominican Republic andHaiti) in the early 17th century. The devastations took place as the result of the order[2] given byKing Philip III of Spain to the governorAntonio de Osorio, to depopulate the western and northern regions of the Caribbean island ofHispaniola, by force if necessary, in order to end the smuggling that flourished in those areas. Osorio then implemented this order between 1605 and 1606.[3][4]
TheSpanish crown believed that depopulating the western part of the island would put an end to the smuggling that so severely impacted the royal coffers, but the devastation made possible everything it had sought to prevent:the establishment of individuals from another nation in the western part of the island.[5] The devastations were the event that allowed the French to establish themselves in western Hispaniola. The Spanish tried to expel the French from the western part of the island on several occasions, but were unsuccessful.[6]
Under the leadership ofFrançois Levasseur, the bands of French buccaneers and filibusters that had swarmed across the west of the island were transformed into sedentary communities, officially becoming subjects of the French crown in 1660, as the French colony ofSaint-Domingue. Shortly afterwards, theFrench West India Company began purchasing vast numbers of black slaves fromcentral andwest Africa, bringing themto the west of the island to work in the planting and cultivation of coffee, cocoa, cotton, indigo and sugarcane plantations. The French were so successful in seizing the western part of the island that they were already planning to take over the entire island and take it from Spain. However, the Spanish managed to prevent this plan thanks to the swift execution of theSanto Domingo Repopulations.
Ultimately, the Spanish concluded that it was already impossible to remove the French (and their formidable mass of African slaves) from the western part of the island. Finally, the Spanish ceded the western part of the island to the French in theTreaty of Rijswijk of 1697. However, this treaty did not establish a border between the two colonies, which led to territorial disputes between the Spanish and French. Finally, to maintain peace, France and Spain decided to establish a definitive border in theTreaty of Aranjuez of 1777.
In 1604, the King of Spain, Philip III, observing the growing lack of Crown control in the north and western parts of theCaptaincy General of Santo Domingo, granted GovernorAntonio de Osorio and ArchbishopAgustín Dávila y Padilla the power to take whatever action they deemed prudent in order to stop the incursion of foreign contraband as well as contact betweenCatholic subjects of the Crown andheretics. The origin of the problem was that the residents ofPuerto Plata,Montecristi,Bayajá andYaguana traded their products (especially cured meat and hides) with the French, the English and the Dutch, and received contraband goods in return.
This traffic had been carrying on from the middle of the 16th century and kept growing year by year. The king's order forced the officials to carry out the depopulation of the regions in which smuggling was rampant, so that the Crown's subjects could be moved to a location closer to the capital of the island,Santo Domingo. When the people of the northwest first heard about this order, the town councils began to raise petitions in which they requested the abolition of the measure. However, Governor Osorio, who upon the death of the archbishop Dávila y Padilla had to face the situation alone, decided to comply with the letter of the royal ordinance. In mid-February 1605, royal representatives left for the northern part of Hispaniola to proclaim that the people of the area would be forgiven crimes committed against the Spanish Crown resulting from the practice of trafficking with foreigners and heretics, but only under one condition: that they would collect all their personal belongings, slaves, cattle and other property, and move to the southeast, to locations pre-determined by the royal authorities of Santo Domingo. (Some officials of the Spanishaudiencia tried to suppress the royal order, since their own smuggling interests would also be affected.)
The population of the north resisted and Osorio had to ask for reinforcements to comply with the royal order. The help came from the governorSancho Ochoa de Castro, who in September of that same year 1605 sent an infantry company to Santo Domingo to help out the forces of Hispaniola. The contingent, composed of 159 soldiers under the command of CaptainFrancisco Ferrecuelo, went to the north of the island, where the orders of Osorio were forcibly imposed, and the residents of the region obliged to abandon their farms and homesteads. In order to achieve their objective, the soldiers destroyed sugar plantations, burned huts, ranches, haciendas and churches, and dismantled everything that the villagers needed to live in those places. The main depopulated areas were Puerto Plata, Montecristi, Bayajá and Yaguana. At the end of January 1606, Antonio de Osorio wrote to the king, communicating that the devastation had ended and that he only needed to go through the herds of cattle of the north, and those of Santiago, San Juan and Azua. The process was however delayed until the middle of the year. Eventually, the governor established a border that stretched fromAzua in the south all the way to the north coast, and prohibited the Hispanic inhabitants from crossing it. The inhabitants of Bayajá and Yaguana were concentrated in a new town that received the name ofBayaguana, and the inhabitants of Montecristi and Puerto Plata were relocated toMonte Plata.
The destruction of some 120 cattle ranches, totaling more than 100,000 head of cattle, including cows, pigs, and horses, proved disastrous. Only 15% of the cattle could be moved to the new settlements, while the rest were abandoned. Within a short time, these herds became wild. Furthermore, the destruction of the sugar mills and sugar mills accelerated the decline of the sugar industry, which, combined with the loss of livestock and sugarcane and ginger plantations, increased poverty on the island and pushed Santo Domingo to the margins of colonial trade.[10]
The depopulation of the western and northern areas of Hispaniola was exploited by runaway blacks who, fleeing their masters, created communities in those regions. The runaway blacks came not only from the island itself but also from the neighboring captaincies of Cuba and Puerto Rico.
Dominicans who could afford to leave the island did so, going to Cuba, Puerto Rico, New Spain, or New Granada. Only those Dominicans who, due to lack of resources, could not emigrate, or those who, due to close ties and obligations, could not abandon it, remained on Hispaniola.[11]
The misery that followed the Devastations of Osorio also affected Hispaniola's tax revenues, to the point that they were no longer enough to cover public expenses or the salaries of the soldiers in the Santo Domingo garrison.
In response, King Philip III ordered the authorities of the Viceroyalty of New Spain to allocate a portion of their tax revenues to financially assist Santo Domingo. This allocation of money, officially known as "situado," came directly from the Royal Treasury of Mexico City. This economic aid took longer than expected to reach Santo Domingo, sometimes even months late, resulting in misery among the Dominicans and reducing economic activities to the simple exchange of the scarce goods produced on the island.
The devastation had catastrophic political, economic, and social consequences for the Spanish, including their loss of the territories in the west of the island. The depopulation of western Hispaniola did not prevent these territories from being entirely abandoned, as the Crown would have wished. Instead, following the devastation, adventurers from various countries attempted to take over the western part of the island.[12][13]
The French occupation of the unpopulated western part of Hispaniola began with a group of English and French adventurers who had previously settled on the island ofSaint Christopher under the leadership of the English explorerThomas Warner and the French privateerPierre Belain d'Esnambuc. By 1620, all the Caribbean islands were still Spanish territories, including Saint Christopher.
In 1629, a fleet of Spanish warships commanded byFadrique de Toledo was sent to the island to destroy the Anglo-French adventurers occupying it. TheSpanish attack was devastating; many of these adventurers were captured or killed. Others managed to save their lives by escaping to other parts of the Antilles.
Thus, this first group of Anglo-French fugitives ended up in the abandoned western part of Hispaniola in 1630, first making landfall on the mainland on Tortuga Island. Days later, they crossed to the northwest coast of Santo Domingo Island (known among them as Grand Terre or Grande Ile) and there they discovered astonishing numbers of wild cattle—cows, pigs, horses, and mules—grazing in areas where not a single person was living.
They decided to settle on Tortuga, as the island's topography made it a natural fortress.
The invaders organized themselves into "classes" based on their activities:
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Royal Decree commissioning the civil and ecclesiastical authorities of Santo Domingo on the Island of Hispaniola in the relocation that must be made of the towns on the north side of the island where trade is conducted with the enemy.[19][20]
Royal Decree to Antonio Osorio, President of the Audiencia of Santo Domingo, ordering the transfer that should be made of the populations that are in Puerto de Plata, Bayajá and La Yaguana, located on the North Bank of the island of Hispaniola, inland, reducing them to two populations, and establishing the pardon of the guilty who are reduced to them.[21]
The order to devastate the western part of the island was given to both Governor Antonio de Osorio and theArchbishop of Santo Domingo, Fray Agustín Dávila y Padilla, the highest religious authority on the island at the time.
Dávila y Padilla was also granted authority to participate in carrying out the Devastations because the Spanish Crown, under Philip III, considered smuggling with foreigners (mainly English and Dutch) not only an economic and political problem, but also a religious threat.[22] The introduction of Protestant Reformation influences (including Lutheranism and Calvinism) through the sale of Lutheran Bibles and contact with "heretics" was feared. However, historical evidence of Protestant baptisms or the establishment of formal Protestant churches in the west of the island before 1605 is very limited or nonexistent; the risk was more a suspicion and fear on the part of the Spanish authorities to justify the measure. The archbishop's involvement focused more on the moral management of the relocation of Catholic subjects and on offering pardon to those who complied with the royal order.
In the old Spanish legal system, thetrial of residence (or simply residencia) was a mandatory evaluation to which all imperial officials had to submit upon completion of their term, in order to examine and judge their performance in office.
Antonio de Osorio's term as governor and captain general of Hispaniola ended on February 11, 1608, and he was replaced by Diego Gómez de Sandoval.
According to available information, the residencia had disastrous consequences for Osorio. The trial was plagued by lawsuits for damages filed against him by those who had lost their livestock, property, and possessions due to the devastation. It is believed that the pressures of the process severely affected his health.
Despite this adverse legal situation, King Philip III of Spain had granted Osorio, in 1607, permission to return to Spain and a pension of 2,000 ducats a year as a reward for his service.[24]
Furthermore, the king ordered that his case be transferred to Spain for adjudication there. However, Osorio died at the age of 65 in the Atlantic Ocean in 1608, while sailing towards Spain, due to his poor health.
A similar situation occurred inSpanish Florida. In the middle of 1601, Philip III, observing the difficulties in maintaining the sparse population of Spanish settlers in the face of continued attacks by the native Indians (and also noticing the limited amount of agricultural and livestock production), ordered the governor of Havana,Juan Maldonado Barnuevo, to send an expedition northwards. The expedition, composed of soldiers and friars under the command of Captain DonFernando de Valdés, was to perform an inspection and determine the cost to the Crown of maintaining the province. Although the expedition found places in Florida that could have been better utilized for colonial establishments, the Captain warned that the abandonment ofSan Agustín could harm Spain to the benefit of her enemies. Finally, the combined efforts of Fernando de Valdés and other officials such asAlonso de las Alas,Bartolomé de Argüelles,Juan Menéndez Marques and thefriars who accompanied the expedition (who believed that the Indians of Florida provided bountiful opportunities for conversion to Christianity) proved to be successful in averting the abandonment of Florida.
The Osorio Devastations signified the beginning of the strengthening of the Spanish military presence in Hispaniola, since, to put the order into practice, the support of 159 soldiers from the garrison ofSan Juan Bautista was requested from Puerto Rico. The terrible economic impact of the royal order eventually caused a change in the financing of Hispaniola, transferring it from theviceroyalty of New Spain to that ofviceroyalty of Peru. However, from the 1680s onwards, the growing threat ofbuccaneers as well as that of French forces meant that Hispaniola and Cuba became major recipients of economic resources fromNew Spain, primarily for military purposes.
Historians conclude that the Devastations of Osorio constituted an error that brought no benefits to the colonists nor to the Spanish Crown. Instead, it left the economy of the island in a state of crisis and stagnation that lasted several decades. In addition, it presented an opportunity for foreigners and enemies of Spain to settle the abandoned territory, who later formed the French colony ofSaint-Domingue. From the 18th century, thanks to its productive sugar and coffee plantations, it became one of the strongest economies of the Caribbean and the principal colony of France.
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This article incorporatestext by Rafal Reichert available under theCC BY-SA 4.0 license.