Crown licenses enslaved Africans for a sugar mill in Santo Domingo

Columbus landed on the island Indigenous people called Ayiti (later Hispaniola) and claimed it for Spain. This marked the start of Spanish colonial rule that displaced and violently coerced Taíno...

A royal instruction to Nicolás de Ovando allowed Black people enslaved in Spain, and people enslaved from birth under Christian authority, to travel to the Indies while excluding other groups. The...

The 1685 French royal ordinance governing enslaved people in French Caribbean colonies was registered by the Sovereign Council of Saint-Domingue on 6 May 1687. The code regulated enslaved people as...

The Treaty of Ryswick, signed by France and Spain among other powers, formalized a European settlement that recognized French possession of the western part of Hispaniola. The agreement treated the...

François Mackandal, an African-born maroon and organizer associated with a wide anticolonial resistance network, was condemned and executed by French authorities at Cap-Français. Colonial records...

France’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen proclaimed liberty and equality as universal principles, but colonial slavery and racial hierarchy remained in place. Enslaved people, free...

The French National Assembly voted to extend political rights to free men of color born to free parents. The measure did not emancipate enslaved people and excluded many free people of color whose...