1777-06-03: (The Treaty of Aranjuez, Signed Between France and Spain to Delineate the Boundary Between Their Colonial Possessions on Hispaniola, Marked With …

1777-06-03: (The Treaty of Aranjuez, Signed Between France and Spain to Delineate the Boundary Between Their Colonial Possessions on Hispaniola, Marked With Small Cement Pyramids That Roughly Correspond to the Modern Haitian-Dominican Border): On June 3, 1777, France and Spain signed the Treaty of Aranjuez, which formally delineated the boundary between their colonial possessions on the island of Hispaniola. Small cement markers in the shape of pyramids were placed along the boundary, physical monuments to an imaginary line drawn by two European empires through territory neither had any natural claim to. The border defined by the treaty roughly corresponds to the modern boundary between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, though the treaty left the central section ambiguous, a vagueness that would generate disputes well into the twentieth century. The area around Hinche, which sits within present-day Haitian territory, was placed under Spanish control by the treaty. What the Treaty of Aranjuez established was not merely a line on a map but the framework for the eventual emergence of two separate nations on a single island, nations whose relationship would be defined for centuries by the colonial partition that created them.