| An ethnohistorical study of the socio-cultural effects of inter-ethnic relations in rural Hispaniola---in the gold mines, reducciones (reorganized Indian villages), sugar ingenios ("plantations"), and cimarron communities during an era when the island's labor force was in transition from commended Indians to both Indian and African slaves. In the post- Columbian period, not only the main thrust of Spanish exploration, but the main thrust of Latin American scholarship, abandoned Hispaniola. Conquerors and historians alike reached out to the resource-rich and densely populated mainland regions, virtually ignoring the original colony, which lent Hispaniola the reputation of a poverty-struck, languishing backwater of no interest or importance. That was most definitely not the case. Hispaniola's capital remained a dynamic judicial and administrative center throughout the sixteenth century. More important, however, it was on the island of Hispaniola that the peoples and cultures of three different continents---America, Africa and Europe---came together on a sustained basis for the first time in history. This had far-reaching socio-cultural implications for all of the new colonies throughout the Caribbean, Mesoamerica, South America and North America, for Hispaniola was a seasoning, provisioning and proving ground for what would come to be called "American" infrastructures, patterns, values and beliefs.;The new American culture took shape in rural Hispaniola, where Europeans were dramatically outnumbered from the outset. By critically re-examining the accounts of contemporary chroniclers and consulting more than a thousand previously overlooked or under-utilized documents (royal cedulas, laws, advisories, letters, reports, orders, legal suits, censuses, wills, petitions, etc.), and with the support of archaeological and anthropological evidence, this study demonstrates that the new culture was catalyzed by geographical circumstances and, significantly, by the European conquistadors' and colonists' experiences and complex inter-relationships with the other peoples with whom they shared the island. These included Indians, Africans and---very quickly after the initial encounter---criollos, American-born people who were a dynamic mix of three ethnic groups, as was their culture. |
