Three European colonial powers--Spain, France, and the Great Britain--and several minor ones ruled the Caribbean from the 16th to the early 20th century. Genocide was committed on the Native American cultures. Estimates of the Indian population of the Caribbean islands in 1492 when Columbus arrived range from 225,000 to six million. Presently only few thousand of them live on the mainland South America and in Dominica
Bartholomew Columbus, brother of Christopher Columbus, founded Santo Domingo, which is today the oldest European city founded by Europeans in the New World. In reality the city dates back to 1496, the period when the first Europeans settled there, although officially it was founded on August 5, 1498.