Treaty of Ryswick

The Treaty of Ryswick, signed September 20, 1697, formally ceded the western third of Hispaniola from Spain to France, creating the colony of Saint-Domingue. French buccaneers and colonists had occupied the western coast since the 1640s, using Tortuga as their base. The treaty ratified a fait accompli, giving legal standing to what had already become a de facto French settlement. Saint-Domingue would grow over the next century into the most profitable colony in the Atlantic world, producing over half of Europe's coffee and sugar by the 1780s — a wealth built entirely on enslaved African labor.