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White Haitians (, ; Haitian Creole: Blan Ayisyen), are Haitians of predominant or full European descent. There were approximately 20,000 whites around the Haitian Revolution, mainly French, in Saint-Domingue. They were divided into two main groups: The Planters and Petit Blancs. The first Europeans to settle in Haiti were the Spanish. The Spanish enslaved the indigenous Haitians to work on sugar plantations and in gold mines. European diseases such as measles and smallpox killed all but a few thousand of the indigenous Haitians. Many other indigenous Haitians died from overwork and harsh treatment in the mines from slavery. Most Europeans who settled in Haiti were killed or fled during the Haitian Revolution.
The settlement of Yacanagua was burnt to the ground three times in its just over a century long existence as a Spanish settlement, first by French pirates in 1543, again on 27 May 1592 by a 110 strong landing party from a 4 ship English naval squadron led by Christopher Newport in his flagship Golden Dragon, who destroyed all 150 houses in the settlement and finally by the Spanish themselves in 1605, for reasons set out below. Historic Cities of the Americas: An Illustrated Encyclopedia (2005). David Marley. Page 121
In 1595, the Spanish, frustrated by the twenty-year Dutch Revolt, closed their home ports to rebel shipping from the Netherlands, cutting them off from the critical salt supplies necessary for their herring industry. The Dutch people responded by sourcing new salt supplies from Hispanic America where colonists were more than happy to trade. So large numbers of Dutch traders/pirates joined their English and French brethren trading on the remote coasts of Hispaniola. In 1605, Spain was infuriated that Spanish settlements on the northern and western coasts of the island persisted in carrying out large scale and illegal trade with the Dutch, who were at that time fighting a war of independence against Spain in Europe and the English, a very recent enemy state, and so decided to forcibly resettle their inhabitants closer to the city of Santo Domingo.Knight, Franklin, The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism, 3rd ed. p. 54 New York, Oxford University Press 1990. This action, known as the Devastaciones de Osorio, proved disastrous; more than half of the resettled colonists died of starvation or disease, over 100,000 cattle were abandoned and many slaves escaped. Rough Guide to the Dominican Republic, p. 352. Five of the existing thirteen settlements on the island were brutally razed by Spanish troops including the two settlements on the territory of present-day Haiti, La Yaguana and Bayaja. Many of the inhabitants fought, escaped to the jungle or fled to the safety of passing Dutch ships Peasants and Religion: A Socioeconomic Study of Dios Olivorio and the Palma Sola Movement in the Dominican Republic. Jan Lundius & Mats Lundah. Routledge 2000, p. 397. This Spanish action was counterproductive as English, Dutch people and French pirates were now free to establish bases on the island's abandoned northern and western coasts, where wild cattle were now plentiful, and thankfully and free.
In 1664, the newly established French West India Company took control of the new colony and France formally claimed control of the western portion of the island of Hispaniola. In 1665, they established a French settlement on the mainland of Hispaniola opposite Tortuga at Port-de-Paix. In 1670, the headland of Cap-Français (now Cap-Haïtien), was settled further to the east along the northern coast. In 1676, the colonial capital was moved from Tortuga to Port-de-Paix. In 1684, the French and Spanish signed the Treaty of Ratisbon that included provisions to suppress the actions of the Caribbean , which effectively ended the era of the buccaneers on Tortuga, many being employed by the French Crown to hunt down any of their former comrades who preferred to turn outright pirate. Short History of Tortuga, 1625–1688 Under the 1697 Treaty of Ryswick, Spain officially ceded the western third of Hispaniola to France which renamed the colony Saint-Domingue. By that time, planters outnumbered buccaneers and, with the encouragement of Louis XIV, they had begun to grow tobacco, indigo, cotton and Cacao bean on the fertile northern plain, thus prompting the importation of African slaves.
In 1777, France and Spain signed a border treaty, in which the western and northwestern coast of Hispaniola would be French and the rest of the island would be Spanish. By 1780 Saint-Domingue was the richest colony in the world, even than all the British Thirteen Colonies and the West Indies together. The French established an economy based on the production and export of sugar sustained on the forced labor of black slaves imported from West and Central Africa. Slavery of blacks was characterized as one of the most ruthless in which terror and severe punishments were applied to slaves.Robert Hein, Written in Blood: The History of the Haitian People (University Press of America: Lantham, Md., 1996)
By 1789, the Saint Dominicans population was composed as follows:
The white population were 8% of Saint-Domingue’s population, but they owned 70% of the wealth and 75% of the slaves in the colony. The mulatto population were 5% of the population and had the 30% of the wealth. The slaves were 87% of the population.
Most French colonists died or fled Saint-Domingue during the Haitian Revolution and the surviving remainder were either killed in the 1804 Haiti massacre or were thought to be of some use to the country's development, such as doctors, teachers and engineers. These colonists were considered valuable and were not to be harmed in any way. Prior to the US occupation of 1915 it was hard for white foreigners to become Haitian citizens due to restrictions on owning land in Haiti. Exceptions were made for Germans, Poles and Frenchmen who had fought with the rebels against France in the war and their descendants. White foreigners could become citizens only by marrying Haitians.Girard 2011 pg 340
According to the Haitian constitution since the time of independence, all citizens are to be referred to as black, where all races are considered equal to avoid prejudice. The Creole language term nèg is derived from the French word negre (which means "black") and is used similarly to dude or guy in American English. A Haitian man is always a nèg, even if he is of European descent where he would be called a nèg blan ("white guy") and his counterpart being nèg nwa ("black guy"); all with no racist overtones. Foreigners are always referred to as simply blan regardless of skin-tone, denoting a double meaning for the word.
In the countryside, it is common to hear a poor light-skinned person called ti-wouj (little red), ti-blan (little white) or simply "blan" rather than a milat (mulatto), which is commonly being used to exclude individuals at the bottom of the social ladder as the term "mulatto" historically coincides with people who were more privileged.
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