From the initial period of conquest until 1869 the sugar industry occupied a
minor position in the Dominican political economy. Although Christopher
Columbus introduced sugar cane cultivation to Hispaniola in 1493, during the
colonial era of Dominican history ( 1492-1795) and well into the nineteenth
century, the few criollos and peninsulares (Europeans living in America) involved
in this second-rate economic activity made an insignificant contribution to the
economy. Although mining was the main economic activity of the island during
the first decades of colonization, in the early sixteenth century a few landowners
in the southern parts of the island began to experiment with sugar cane
cultivation. ⁷ Gonzalo de Velosa, a wealthy landowner, built the first trapiche (a
rudimentary sugar mill operated by human and animal labor) near Santo Domingo
in 1515. ⁸ Although de Velosa initiated limited sugar exports to Spain, the Spanish
Hapsburgs never encouraged the exploitation of sugar in Santo Domingo to the
extent that it was promoted by the French Bourbons in neighboring Saint
Domingue. Whereas the French colony in Saint Domingue became a profitable
sugar-producing colony during the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the
minimal amounts of sugar produced in Santo Domingo were primarily for internal
consumption. ⁹

The initial expansion of the Dominican sugar industry was also inhibited by
insufficient labor. Forced labor and European disease had wiped out Hispaniola's
indigenous population by 1530. ¹⁰ Unlike the wealthy criollo elite in French-
speaking Saint Domingue, the modest resources of the Spanish-speaking criollo
elite in Santo Domingo prohibited the importation of vast numbers of slaves to
tend the sugar cane fields. ¹¹ Although the Dominicans never imported enough
slaves to significantly expand the sugar industry, the incipient colonial sugar
industry experienced modest growth and became thoroughly tied to the institution
of slavery. ¹²

The Dominican struggle for independence, a series of wars and violent
conflicts between 1795 and 1844 that debilitated the economy, precipitated a
further decline in the Dominican sugar industry. From the moment of the 1795
Treaty of Basil, when the Spanish Crown granted the eastern two-thirds of
Hispaniola to France, until 1821 when José Nuñez de Cáceres simultaneously
proclaimed the Dominican Republic an independent nation and a protectorate of
Gran Colombia, over two-thirds of the Dominican criollos emigrated to other parts
of Latin America. ¹³ During this period, the old Dominican oligarchy, whose
wealth had been based primarily on the possession of large cattle ranches, virtually
disappeared. Wars and invasions during the first two decades of the nineteenth
century decimated the cattle herds and destroyed the economic base of many of
those Dominican families who chose to remain in the country. ¹⁴

Following a brief period of nominal independence and nebulous efforts at
national economic construction, including the return of several criollo families

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