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Sharing the same island means nothing unless the two places also share an ethnic seed and they don't. Haitians and Dominicans are not one nation split apart. Th

Sharing the same island means nothing unless the two places also share an ethnic seed and they don't. Haitians and Dominicans are not one nation split apart. They're two different nations that grew side by side. The Taíno, the original inhabitants of the island, were wiped out / assimilated by the Europeans who settled the island. Years later the Spanish and criollo settlers relocated to the east of the island leaving the west free for the French to develop. The French and the Spanish had different cultures and radically different strategies on how to develop their colonies and thus the island ended up with two different cultures and governments and languages and political systems and with people of different (but overlapping) racial composition. A lot of people wrongly assume that Caribbean is an ethnic group but that couldn't be farther from the truth. I'm a Puerto Rican and I have a lot in common with Dominicans and Cubans because the three territories are former Spanish colonies. But I have little in common with Haitians, Jamaicans or the inhabitants of the smaller islands of the archipelago. To illustrate my point, I have an archipelago 40 miles east of where I live and we have no ferry between the islands and no connection of any sort beyond the fact that we're both US territories. I've been there as a tourist but nothing more.

wolverine876 5y ago
> Sharing the same island means nothing unless the two places also share an ethnic seed ... Plenty of countries do very well without shared ethnic seeds, whatever that means, including the wealthiest country in the world. Edit: Thanks for explaining what you meant, below. That makes sense.
- adolfojp 5y ago
  OP didn't understand why the two countries were so different despite sharing an island. I explained that they're different because they're comprised of different people with different histories. This might be obvious to you but in my experience a lot of people assume that the inhabitants of the Hispaniola came from the same seed, as in they were the same group of people who later split when that was not the case. One country was seeded by the Spanish and the other one by the French. My comment was not meant to be a thorough analysis on their respective economies.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    Thanks. I amended my comment above.

wolverine876 5y ago

> Sharing the same island means nothing unless the two places also share an ethnic seed ... Plenty of countries do very well without shared ethnic seeds, whatever that means, including the wealthiest country in the world. Edit: Thanks for explaining what you meant, below. That makes sense.

adolfojp 5y ago
OP didn't understand why the two countries were so different despite sharing an island. I explained that they're different because they're comprised of different people with different histories. This might be obvious to you but in my experience a lot of people assume that the inhabitants of the Hispaniola came from the same seed, as in they were the same group of people who later split when that was not the case. One country was seeded by the Spanish and the other one by the French. My comment was not meant to be a thorough analysis on their respective economies.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  Thanks. I amended my comment above.