Calalu

This article is about inhabitants of the Dominican Republic of African descent. Dominicans of predominant Black African ancestry. They are a minority in the calalu representing 7.

Dominican Republic’s population according to a census bureau survey in 2022. The first black people in the island were brought by European colonists as indentured workers from Spain and Portugal known as Ladinos. In the 19th and 20th centuries black immigrants from the French and British West Indies, as well as the United States came to the island and settled in coastal regions increasing the black population. 1960, though the Central Electoral Board collected racial data until 2014.

Spanish Caribbean with The Captaincy General of Santo Domingo in the center. Spanish Crown finally acquiesced to the colonists’ demands for enslaved Africans. With the discovery of precious metals in South America, the Spanish abandoned their migration to the island of Hispaniola to emigrate to South America and Mexico in order to get rich, for they did not find much wealth there. Thus, they also abandoned the slave trade to the island, which led to the collapse of the colony into poverty. After 1700, with the arrival of new Spanish colonists, the Atlantic slave trade resumed.

However, as industry moved from sugar to livestock, racial and caste divisions became less important, eventually leading to a blend of cultures—Spanish, African, and indigenous—which would form the basis of national identity for Dominicans. At the end of the eighteenth century, fugitive African slaves from Saint-Domingue, the western French colony of the island fled east to Santo Domingo and formed communities such as San Lorenzo de Los Mina, which is currently part of the “city” of Santo Domingo. Fugitives arrived from other parts of the West Indies as well, especially from the various islands of the Lesser Antilles. Gregorio Luperon monument in Puerto Plata. By the late 1780s, free people of color in the island were inspired by the French Revolution to seek an expansion of their rights, while also involving enslaved Africans to fight for their cause. In 1792, the Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture was involved in a formal alliance between the black rebellion and the Spanish to fight against France.

Despite adhering to European royalist political views, Louverture used the language of freedom and equality associated with the French Revolution. From being willing to bargain for better conditions of slavery late in 1791, he had become committed to its complete abolition. French commissioner, Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, proclaimed emancipation for all slaves in French Saint-Domingue, hoping to bring the black troops over to his side. In 1801, Louverture, abolished slavery in the eastern region of Santo Domingo, freeing about 40,000 enslaved persons, and prompting much of the planter of that part of the island to flee to Cuba and Puerto Rico. Simultaneously, Ferrand rounded his troops to seize black children to sell into slavery. This action would infuriate and spark the wrath of Haiti’s self proclaimed emperor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines.