This great change was fatal to the commercial prosperity of French Hayti, decidedly the more valuable section of the island. In its progress, it had destroyed capital in every shape; and in its issue, it could not fail to paralyze labor under circumstances where continuous exertion of any kind was equally irksome and superfluous. Nor was the political experience of the lately servile population more satisfactory than its economical condition. Sometimes consolidated into one state, and sometimes divided into two. the country alternated, through the instrumentality of one revolution after another, between despotism and anarchy, between monarchy and republicanism, between aping. dour and an empire. Its only tranquil period of any duration coincided with the rule of president Boyer, which subsisted from 1820 to 1843—its last 21 years comprising not only the whole of French or western Hayti, but likewise the Spanish or eastern portion of the island. Hayti thus united, besides being immediately recognized by the European powers in general, was soon acknowledged even by France, on condition of paying 150,000,000f., or £6,000,000 sterling, as a compensation to the former planters.
About the year 1843 the inhabitants of the eastern or Spanish portion of Hayti, rising against their Haytian oppressors, formed themselves into a republic called the Dominican republic (q.v.), and in May, 1861, threw itself under the protection of Spain, a connection which was dissolved in 1865. The western portion of the island had been republican in its form of government previous to 1849, when its former president, gen. Soulouque, ascended the throne, proclaimed an empire, and assumed the title of emperor Faustin I. In 1859, however, a republic (republique de Haiti) was again pro claimed and a new constitution adopted. The eastern, once Spanish, portion still exists as a separate republic, the reptibbica Dominica. Of the former the area is upwards of 10,000 sq.m., and the pop. 572,000; the latter has an area of over 18,000 sq.m., but the pop. does not exceed 250,000. The joint exports of the two republics to Great Britain in 1877 were valued at £247.300; their imports thence at £383,200. Coffee, logwood, cotton, cocoa, and wax are the chief exports. Port-au-Prince, the chief commercial city of the island, is the capital of the western republic.