page_title: Santo Domingo
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Santo Domingo / History
caption_attribution_description: Español: Fortaleza Ozama, Ciudad Colonial de Santo Domingo
context_page_description: Santo Domingo, officially Santo Domingo de Guzmán, is the capital and largest city of the Dominican Republic and the largest metropolitan area in the Caribbean by population. As of 2010, the city had a total population of 2,908,607, when including the metropolitan area. The city is coterminous with the boundaries of the Distrito Nacional, itself bordered on three sides by Santo Domingo Province.
  Founded by the Spanish in 1496, on the east bank of the Ozama River and then moved by Nicolás de Ovando in 1502 to the west bank of the river, the city is the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the Americas, and was the first seat of the Spanish colonial rule in the New World. Santo Domingo is the site of the first university, cathedral, castle, monastery, and fortress in the New World. The city's Colonial Zone was declared as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Santo Domingo was called Ciudad Trujillo, from 1936 to 1961, after the Dominican Republic's dictator, Rafael Trujillo, named the capital after himself. Following his assassination, the city resumed its original designation.
context_section_description: Prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492, the native Taíno people populated the island which they called Quisqueya (mother of all lands) and Ayiti (the land of the high mountains), and which Columbus later named Hispaniola, including the territory of today's Republic of Haiti. At the time, the island's territory consisted of five chiefdoms: Marién, Maguá, Maguana, Jaragua, and Higüey. These were ruled respectively by caciques (chiefs) Guacanagarix, Guarionex, Caonabo, Bohechío, and Cayacoa.
  Dating from 1493, when the Spanish settled on the island, and officially from 5 August 1498, Santo Domingo became the oldest European city in the Americas. Bartholomew Columbus founded the settlement and named it La Nueva Isabela, after an earlier settlement in the north named after the Queen of Spain Isabella I. In 1495 it was renamed "Santo Domingo", in honor of Saint Dominic. Santo Domingo came to be known as the "Gateway to the Caribbean" and the chief town in Hispaniola from then on. Expeditions which led to Ponce de León's colonization of Puerto Rico, Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar's colonization of Cuba, Hernando Cortes' conquest of Mexico, and Vasco Núñez de Balboa's sighting of the Pacific Ocean were all launched from Santo Domingo.
  In June 1502, Santo Domingo was destroyed by a major hurricane, and the new Governor Nicolás de Ovando had it rebuilt on a different site on the other side of the Ozama River. The original layout of the city and a large portion of its defensive wall can still be appreciated today throughout the Colonial Zone, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
  Diego Colon arrived in 1509, assuming the powers of Viceroy and admiral.  In 1512, Ferdinand established a Real Audiencia with Juan Ortiz de Matienzo, Marcelo de Villalobos, and Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon appointed as judges of appeal.  In 1514, Pedro Ibanez de Ibarra arrived with the Laws of Burgos.  Rodrigo de Alburquerque was named repartidor de indios and soon named visitadores to enforce the laws.
  The first major slave revolt in the Americas occurred in Santo Domingo during 1522, when slaves led an uprising in the sugar plantation of Diego Columbus, son of Christopher Columbus. In 1586, Francis Drake of England captured the city and held it for ransom. A report which reached England in May 1586 states that from Santo Domingo he took away 1,200 Englishmen, Frenchmen, Flemings, and "Provincials out of prison, besides 800 of the countrey people." Drake's invasion signaled the decline of Spanish dominion over Hispaniola, which was accentuated in the early 17th century by policies that resulted in the depopulation of most of the island outside of the capital. An expedition sent by Oliver Cromwell in 1655 attacked the city of Santo Domingo, but the English were repulsed by mulatto and mestizo militiamen. Santo Domingo suffered only 25 dead. In 1697, the Treaty of Ryswick included the acknowledgement by Spain of France's dominion over the Western third of the island, now Haiti. During the 18th century, privateers from Santo Domingo trolled the Caribbean Sea, attacking slave ships. This activity proved very beneficial to the Dominican privateers, as evidenced by the fact that Captain Lorenzo Daniel, aka Lorencin, captured more than 70 ships from Britain during the Anglo-Spanish War of 1762–1763.
  The French imported slaves to work on plantations in their colonies in Saint-Domingue, and they were exploited until the French Revolution of 1789. Former plantation slave Toussaint L'ouverture led an uprising of slaves in 1791, arming them with French weapons. They allied with Spain and raided the colony from Santo Domingo, but in 1794 the French revolutionary government capitulated to Toussaint and made him a Brigadier-General. The Haitian rebels fought not only against the Dominicans, but also the French, rival rebel groups, and the British.
  From 1795 to 1822 the city changed hands several times along with the colony it headed. It was ceded to France in 1795 after years of struggles. However, the French failed to consolidate this cession, mainly because o
caption: The Ozama Fortress is the oldest military fort of European origin in the Americas.[11]
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