Saint-Domingue was a French colony from 1697 to 1804 that is today the independent nation of Haiti. Saint-Domingue is the French equivalent of the Spanish term Santo Domingo. Spain once controlled the entire island of Hispaniola, which was also known as Santo Domingo. But in the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697, Spain recognized that France had established control of the western one-third of its territory.