ABSTRACT
The French explored the world later than the Portuguese and Spaniards, and with fewer resources. The Spaniards had settled on the eastern end of the island of Hispaniola from 1492 on, and began the transportation of slaves from Africa to the colony; by the end of the sixteenth century the native Arawak Indians had been wiped out through exhaustion, disease and murder. French pirates based in the Cayman Islands began to establish plantations on the western end of Hispaniola and founded Port-de-Paix, subsequently claimed by the French West India Company; the French continued to introduce black slave labour from Africa to cultivate sugar, tobacco, and cotton. In 1697 the western part of the island was ceded to France and renamed Saint-Dominique.
