1717: The Demographic Collapse of the Spanish Colony: A Spanish census of the island recorded a total population of only 18,410 inhabitants of all ages and c…

1717: The Demographic Collapse of the Spanish Colony: A Spanish census of the island recorded a total population of only 18,410 inhabitants of all ages and conditions under the Spanish dominion. This low number reflected the extreme depopulation and degeneracy that followed the exhaustion of the island’s early gold mines.Nuance: This highlights the stark contrast between the booming French side (St.-Domingue) and the “degenerate” Spanish side. Having exhausted the gold mines and the Taíno population (as Rouse noted earlier), the Spanish colony had become a backwater of subsistence ranching, while the French side was becoming the “Pearl of the Antilles” through high-intensity sugar production.