Dominica

Dominica is the second-largest island in the Caribbean Sea, after Cuba.

The island was discovered by Christopher Columbus during his first voyage to the New World in December 1492, and named Hispaniola. After Columbus's flagship the Santa Maria was wrecked, Columbus was forced to leave some of his men behind, creating a fortified encampment called La Navidad and stationing 21 of his men there. After Columbus returned to Spain, La Navidad was overrun by the native Taino and its garrison killed.

The discovery of gold on Hispaniola by Columbus led him to outfit 17 ships with 1,300 settlers for a second voyage to the New World. Columbus reached Hispaniola in November 1493, learning that La Navidad had been destroyed. Columbus founded the settlement of La Isabela and established a fort in the interior near the gold fields. By the end of 1494, a combination of disease and famine had killed two thirds of Columbus's settlers. Columbus proceeded to enslave as many of the native Taino as possible, putting them to work mining gold or sending them to Spain to be sold.

In 1496 the town of Nueva Isabela was founded on the south coast of the western part of the island. After it was destroyed by a hurricane in 1502 it was rebuilt on the other side of the Ozama River and renamed Santo Domingo, Saint Dominic, which came to be the name of the whole island. Due to the collapse in the population of the native Taino, the Spanish began importing enslaved African Negroes in 1503. Settlers from the Canary Islands introduced sugar cane, and the first sugar mill was opened in 1516. When the gold mines were played out, sugar became the island's leading export.

The presence of gold attracted pirates from the other European nations on the Atlantic: England, France, and the Netherlands. French pirates and settlers colonized the western part of the island, and in the 1697 Treaty of Ryswick ending the Nine Years' War Spain formally ceded the western third of Santo Domingo to France.

Santo Domingo was still divided between Spain and France when the 1799 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ending the Habsburg War placed a Protestant uncle of King Frederick William III of Prussia on the Spanish throne, prompting a wave of revolts in Spanish America. The revolts spread to Santo Domingo and the other Caribbean islands, leading to a series of slave revolts in 1804. The islands' white planters were able to regain control within two years, establishing a series of independent republics. It is likely that both the Spanish and French sections of Santo Domingo suffered slave revolts, and it is possible that the need to maintain control over all of the island's slaves led to a union of the two sections to form the nation of Dominica.

Dominica was still an independent republic in the 1890s when Mexican Chief of State Benito Hermión began to plan its annexation. However, fear of drawing Mexico into a war with the Confederation of North America led Hermión to abandon his plans. Attempts by Councilman Thomas Kronmiller ten years later to annex Dominica and the other Caribbean islands to the C.N.A. were frustrated by isolationist Governor-General Christopher Hemingway.

Although there is a small Caribbean island called Dominica IOW, it is clear from the context that the Dominica referenced on p. 236 is the island of Hispaniola, which became an independent republic at the same time as its neighbors Cuba and Porto Rico.