Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean
The Classic Taíno lived in eastern Cuba, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico. They spoke a dialect called Classic Taíno. Compared to their neighbors, the Classic Taíno had substantially developed agricultural societies. Puerto Rico was divided into twenty chiefdoms which were organized into one united kingdom or confederation, Borinquen. Hispaniola was divided into roughly 45 chiefdoms, which were organized into five kingdoms under the leadership of the chief of each area's premier chiefdom. Beginning around 1450, Classic Taíno from Hispaniola began migrating to eastern Cuba; they are conventionally known as the Cuban Taíno. The Cuban Taíno gained power over some of Cuba's earlier Western Taíno inhabitants, the Ciboney, but no regional or island-wide political structure had developed on the island at the time of Spanish colonization of the Americas.
Unification of Hispaniola
By 1795, the eastern side, what was once the headquarters of Spanish colonial power in the New World had long fallen into decline. The economy was stalled, the land largely unexploited and used for sustenance farming and cattle ranching, and the population was much lower than in Haiti. The accounts by the Dominican essayist and politician José Núñez de Cáceres cite the Spanish colony's population at around 80,000, mainly composed of European descendants, mulattos, freedmen, and a few black slaves. Haiti, on the other hand, was nearing a million former slaves.