<< Expansion of Empire || The 18th Century >>
Fearing that its colony was slipping out of its control, Spain decided to destroy its north coast settlements, torching Puerto Plata in 1605 and forcing its residents to relocate to the south near Santo Domingo. The Spanish also razed Montecristi, a town in the far northwest (near the present-day Haitian border) that was founded around the same time as Puerto Plata and had enjoyed some level of prosperity on its own. For all practical purposes, Spain abandoned the area for the next century and a half. The shock waves were felt throughout the colony, whose economy was in shambles, its people often on the brink of starvation.
In 1655, the English returned to Santo Domingo in the form of an invasion force led by William Penn – an attempt that was beaten back by the Spanish. But by then, Santo Domingo had become a virtual backwater. In 1697, under the Treaty of Ryswick, Spain ceded the western third of Hispaniola to France (present-day Haiti), while retaining control of the eastern two-thirds, the present-day Dominican Republic. France’s colony, called Saint-Domingue, grew rich with an economy fueled by sugar cane and huge numbers of African slaves to work the plantations.
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