7 - The Dominican Republic, c. 1870–1930

Summary

The proclamation of the independent Dominican Republic on 27 February 1844 crowned the efforts of LM Trinitaria, a secret society founded for that purpose six years earlier when Santo Domingo, the eastern two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola, was still united with Haiti. It was the second time sovereignty had been proclaimed. The first, so-called ‘ephemeral’ independence (from Spain), brought about by Núñez de Cáceres in 1821, had only lasted a few months, after which the capital city's keys were handed to the president of Haiti. The new sovereignty lasted long enough – and had a sufficiently appealing legitimation, based as it was on antagonism to neighbouring Haiti – to make 27 February the national holiday on which the birth of the Republic is commemorated. Yet in the period up to 1930 sovereignty was again twice suspended. Before two decades of new-found independence had passed the country had re-annexed itself to Spain, and remained under Spanish control for four years (1861–5); from 1916–24 it was under military occupation by the United States. In the remainder of the period, numerous plans were made to give up sovereignty in exchange for foreign protection. Seen in this light, the country's independence remained, if not ephemeral, at least tenuous. The passage from reannexation by Spain to occupation by the United States shows the direction in which the external forces, to which the Republic was subjected, changed. From a country still embedded in a European, quasicolonial network, it had become, by the end of the nineteenth century, a client-state of the United States.