Devastaciones de Osorio and the Depopulating of Western Hispaniola

Source

Devastaciones de Osorio, a perfect example of poor policy by Spain in the 17th century Caribbean and the root of the division of Hispaniola into two separate colonies. By ordering for the depopulation of the sparsely settled western Hispaniola, the destruction of the towns there, and forcing the inhabitants to leave without taking their cattle, western Hispaniola after 1606 was open to anyone willing to seize it from the crumbling Spanish empire in the Antilles. Based on popular resentment, colonial officials did not try to depopulate parts of Puerto Rico, but the damage to Hispaniola was done. Now vast herds of quickly feral cattle attracted French and other European "buccaneers," nobody was around to stop settlements on Tortuga and northern Hispaniola's coast, and smuggling continued as a way of life in the Spanish Caribbean. By the end of the century western Hispaniola was under French control and transforming from a tobacco-based colony to a slave society based largely on sugar. The French would later build towns on the old Spanish settlements (La Yaguana became Leogane, for instance). If the whole idea of depopulating the western section of the island was to curb smuggling and prevent the infiltration of Protestants (Dutch and English in the early 1600s) in the Caribbean, Spain failed miserably. For good sources on this, Eugenio Matibag and Frank Moya Pons are quite useful.