Taíno Decimation

Within fifty years of Spanish contact, the Taíno population of Hispaniola — estimated at hundreds of thousands at contact — was reduced to near extinction. The causes were overlapping: smallpox, measles, and other Old World diseases to which indigenous people had no immunity; the encomienda system of forced labor in gold mines and on plantations; deliberate massacres by Spanish forces; and the displacement and starvation that followed the destruction of Taíno agricultural systems. The demographic collapse created the labor vacuum that drove the transatlantic slave trade to Hispaniola, structuring the entire subsequent history of the island.