The Independencia Efimera of 1821, and the Haitian Invasion of Santo Domingo 1822 : A Caseof Pre-emptive IndependenceAuthor(s): PATRICK BRYANReviewed work(s):Source: Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 3/4 (September-December 1995), pp. 15-29Published by: University of the West Indies and Caribbean QuarterlyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40653940 .Accessed: 22/06/2012 00:56

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The Independência Efimera of 1821, and the Haitian Invasion of Santo Domingo 1822 : A Case of Pre-emptive Independence

by

PATRICK BRYAN

Yesterday at dawn we were surprised at the gates of the city not having been opened as customary, and shortly after several patrols on horseback, with drawn sabres, were observed passing through the streets, directing their course to the government house, which they immediately took possession of, and carried the Governor prisoner to Maison a Force. On the rising of the sun, the tricoloured flag was hoisted, and a salute fired from all the forts, they having been previously taken possession of, without the least resistance. Several parties of troops on horseback afterwards patrolled the streets with loud cries of Viva Colombia! Viva la Inde- pendência! Viva la Pátria! etc.

Jago la Vega Gazette - Dec. 15, 1821

Letter signed by "Friend" in St. Domingo. Dec. 2, 1821.

On November 30, 1821 , Jose Nunez de Caceres, a Dominican créole who held high office under the Spanish administration - he was Auditor de Guerra and Asesor General as well as Rector of the University - declared independent the Spanish half of Hispaniola. He called it Spanish Haiti. In the same move he declared the newly established Republic of Spanish Hayti attached to Gran Colom- bia, the newly established Republic of Simon Bolivar.

In 1 795 Spain by the Treaty of Basle had surrendered Santo Domingo to France upon which an elite which claimed to be too hispanophile to live under French rule migrated from Santo Domingo to the other Spanish Caribbean territories of Puerto Rico and Cuba. Probably more important than their hispanophilsm was the fact that France had abolished the system of African slavery in neighbouring Saint Domin- gue and Spanish action in 1795 brought into question the new society which had been emerging at the end of the eighteenth century. In 1 801 Toussaint L'Ouverture invaded the 'Spanish province' in the name of France, abolished slavery, and

16

removed the old Spanish restrictions on commerce by throwing open the ports of Santo Domingo to trade with Great Britain and the United States.1 As it turned out Toussaint's inclination to use coercive measures to supply planters with labour made his brief sojourn in Santo Domingo partly acceptable - but only partly, since the Toussaint regime envisaged a regime of at least racial equality. When Tous- saint retired from Santo Domingo to face Le Clerc across the border French rule continued in Santo Domingo under General Ferrand. In 1809 the Dominicans, with full cooperation from the British - at war with Napoleon who had invaded the Iberian

peninsula - expelled the French, and invited Spain to resume control of the

province. For twelve years, until 1821 Spanish rule - Espana Boba - was restored. In 1821 Nunez de Caceres's movement again terminated Spanish rule. Precisely two months and nine days later, Santo Domingo - Spanish Hayti - was invaded and

occupied by Boyer's troops, an occupation which lasted until 1844. What is inter-

esting about the Independência Efimera - the name given to Nunez de Caceres's

independence - is not so much that Spain who had been invited to return twelve

years before was expelled, as that having declared independence the Dominicans should have in one swift movement appeared to have negated it. But the declara- tion of independence is also worth some consideration since Santo Domingo was

up to 1821 the only one of the Spanish Caribbean territories to have declared and

successfully maintained independence - if only for two months and nine days.

This paper then really begins with two questions - why the declaration of

independence and why the deliberate decision to declare it, simultaneously, non- existent. The paper ends with a hypothesis rather than with a firm conclusion with

respect to Dominican motivation. Certainly, the independence efimera is in many respects shrouded in nationalist myth and Dominican historiography has focused far more on the Haitian invasion which followed the Independence Efimera. The

independência efimera can best be understood as a culmination of developments in Santo Domingo and Haiti, set in motion since the latter half of the eighteenth century.

In the latter half of the eighteenth century, the colony of Santo Domingo had been experiencing changes of some significance. Firstly, the expansion of the

plantation economy of the French colony had created a demand for cattle, and foodstuffs from Santo Domingo. In the 1870s the Spanish province exported approximately 25,000 head of horned cattle and about 2,500 mules and horses across the frontier, at an average cost of 30 pesos per head.2 The demand for livestock had at first encouraged smuggling on a large scale. But the realistic

Spanish authorities had come to recognize that fiscal advantages could be gained for the Spanish treasury if the trade were legalised and encouraged. In 1870, the

Spanish government formally allowed the purchases of Dominican livestock for

17

sale across the frontier. It was the best times for the Hateros, the cattle ranchers of the east.

Bourbon policy, obsessed with increased agricultural production in the Empire facilitated the slave trade, and Bourbon 'generosity' was extended to Dominicans who saw the potential of Santo Domingo to become a significant sugar producer, based on slavery. Antonio Sanchez Valverde, a Dominican créole, writing in the late eighteenth century commented on the inefficient existence of twenty-two sugar engines in the environs of the capital city. In 1789, these estates altogether employed 600 slaves.3 Sanchez Valverde lamented that these mills were devoted

exclusively to the production of syrup, used principally by the Dominican population and only occasionally exported in limited quantity to Puerto Rico. The proprietors, he said, needed "Negroes, equipment and the advantages of trade." The available slaves in Santo Domingo, were, moreover, treated with far too much leniency.

Our slaves rest or work for themselves almost one-third of the year... The abuse of hiring out slaves for a wage, too widespread in our America, makes a large number of the few we have, use- less, because this is a type of Negro who lives without discipline or subjection. ..They hide and protect each other and those who escape from the haciendas. The few who do work do so without methods.4

The Dominican slave, continued Sanchez Valverde, worked one day and rested the next. He criticised the "poorly understood principle of religion, which consists in favouring by all means possible and without any foresight, the liberty of slaves."

Sanchez Valverde was in effect advocating a revolution in the mode of produc- tion in contemporary Santo Domingo; a society more sharply divided into a class of masters and a mass of slaves; a classical plantation model a la St. Domingue] and the emergence of a planter class which would probably over time have superseded the ranchers (the hateros).

Sanchez Valverde was not alone in his desire to see a more rigorous system of

slavery imposed in Santo Domingo. In 1783, Juan Batista Oyarzabal, an hacen- dado of Santo Domingo, requested from the Crown permission to import 400 blacks for work on his ingenio.5 The Crown obliged. More slaves, more production, and more gold for the Spanish treasury. Indeed, in 1789, the Crown, eager to stimulate production of sugar, coffee, and tobacco, granted a grace period of two

years for the free importation of slaves.6

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In the same year, the crown promulgated a slave code (Código Negro) to regulate the relationship between slave and master, the rights of slaves in educa- tion, clothing and amusements.7 The law allowing the free entry of slaves was suspended in 1794, but not before a large number of slaves had entered Santo Domingo to swell the black population and to consolidate the demographic dominance of coloured over white. In 1793, there were an estimated 14,000 slaves8 out of a population of 119,600,9 and in 1794, 30,000 slaves out of a population of 103,000.10 The slave and freed population outnumbered the white population by almost two to one in 1794. Jamaica, for a long time a port of re-export of slaves to Spanish possessions, was a source for the slaves entering Santo Domingo. Between 1796 and 1801, according to Klein's figures, Santo Domingo "again became the primary port of re-export, taking 2,617 of the 5,294 slaves leaving Jamaica."11

It is significant that up to 1789 a slave code had not been deemed necessary. Local custom, it would appear, had been the guiding principle in the relationship between master and slave, who, in the particular system of production which prevailed prior to 1780, relative to the rest of the Caribbean, enjoyed a certain measure of physical freedom. The inflow of slaves and the incipient revision of the mode of production made necessary a regulatory code. A Swiss traveller to Santo Domingo in 1782 went so far as to say that "here ... the white skin is a title of command, consecrated by the policy and laws. The black skin constitutes the uniform of contempt."12

The Bourbons also made Montecristi a free port, through which North American trade with the French in St. Domingue was conducted. Montecristi though a village port with a few huts was contiguous to northern St. Domingue. The exports from Montecristi were, it is true, all French produce, and its imports all went immediately to the adjoining French colony,13 but the essential point from the Spanish point of view was that fees could be collected from vessels, and the Spanish governor "gave them clearance and charged duties on the sugar and molasses exported." This trade with Montecristi was carried on mainly by the New England merchants and by a sprinkling of Virginians and West Indians. In order to facilitate the trade North Americans took up residence at Montecristi, purchased French sugar, shipped it from North American ports to London, where it entered as British sugars, "thus vitiating the preferential system which gave the products of British West Indies a monopoly of the home market."14 The British government while taking an adverse view of the American trade had of course no objection to trade with the Spanish colonies - in fact a Free Port Act had been passed in 1766 to encourage trade between Spanish ports and ports of the British Caribbean.

19

From the Dominican point of view the British Free Port Act of 1766 made possible closer commercial connections between British and Spanish ports. The ports of Kingston, Savanna-la-Mar, Montego Bay and Lucea (Jamaica) were opened to trade with Spanish ports. While the free port act forbade the importation of sugar, coffee, pimento, ginger, molasses and tobacco in foreign vessels, it allowed the export of negroes in exchange for a duty of thirty shillings per slave. By the first half of 1 788, of the 86 Spanish vessels entering Jamaica, over a quarter came from Santo Domingo.15 During the late eighteenth century, the Spanish province began to trade poultry, rice, horned cattle, corn and mahogany to Jamaican ports in exchange for ironmongery, salt provisions, and cotton goods of coarse quality, blue Yorkshire blaize, Osnaburgs, and a "variety of other articles required for the labourers in wood-cutting and agriculture."16 It is clear enough that Santo Domingo's imports were partly designed to feed and equip its growing slave population. In the Cibao Valley, across the Central range of mountains from the southern capital of Santo Domingo, the tobacco industry experienced growth. In 1778, authorization was given to export the surplus of tobacco to St. Domingue, after the royal factories were supplied. Tobacco cultivation spread from Moca to La Vega and Cotui.17 The town of Santiago became the major distribution centre of tobacco, and the Port of Puerto Plata the principal exit for the crop. The tobacco merchants are even described by Juan Bosch as composing an incipient "commer- cial oligarchy."18

The Haitian Revolution reversed or stunted some of these developments. The Haitian Revolution which was to provide a stimulus to the growth of the Cuban plantation system during the nineteenth century by providing a large gap in the international sugar and coffee markets, had precisely the opposite effect in Santo Domingo. In 1796, slave rebellions flared in Santo Domingo, as 200 slaves from the ingenio, (Boca Nigua) proclaimed their freedom, destroyed the canefields and attacked the home of the proprietor - Juan Oyarzabal.19 Other slaves fled across the frontier in search of immediate freedom. Slave owners, obviously sensing that France, when formal possession of Santo Domingo took place, would liberate the slaves, fled to Puerto Rico and Cuba with their available slaves, jewelry, titles, etc. Not only did the incipient sugar economy collapse, but the thriving cattle economy of the eighteenth century, intimately linked with Saint-Domingue was much weakened by the revolution across the frontier.20 The population of Santo Domingo fell from 1 1 9,600 in 1 783 to 71 ,223 in 1 81 9.21

The economy of Santo Domingo had continued to be regionalized during the late eighteenth century, but the predominant social class had been the hateros, who were not replaced by the sugar planters as the predominant social class. The long dominant hateros, a creation not of systematic expl station by Spain, but of

20

Spain's neglect of Santo Domingo, were a genuine créole institution, a response of Dominicans isolated from Spain to find their own means of survival. They had evolved something of the patriarchal quasi-feudal hacienda system, which while responding to the stimuli of trade in the 1780s, was much weakened by the events after 1791. Their position, however, could not be challenged by the tobacco farmers of the north, and the Haitian revolution had weakened the prospective competitors, in the sugar industry. But their economic base routed by revolution and war, and by migration, they yet retained the social prestige which was attached to their quasi-feudal control of peon and slave labour.

The invasion by Bonaparte of the Iberian peninsula in 1807 had provoked in Spanish America widespread sympathy for the deposed Spanish King. Santo Domingo was no exception. With the open assistance of Britain, the Dominicans, spearheaded by the hateros of the east, under Juan Sanchez Ramirez, expelled the French from Dominican shores in 1809. Governor Ferrand committed suicide. Ferrand had, after Toussaint's retreat to Saint Domingue, reimposed slavery in Santo Domingo, and had succeeded in reintroducing some 10,000 slaves into Santo Domingo,22 an action which contributed to the return of exiles to Dominican shores. There had been an increase in the production of and export of cacao, tobacco, sugar and coffee. The trade with the United States - especially in timber -

increased. It is probable that the anti-Ferrand reaction was related to the sentimen- tal attachments to the Spanish Crown, to the machinations of Great Britain, and to Ferrand's anti-clerical policies. Moreover, the restoration of Spanish rule promised a continuation of slavery and an expansion of trade with British ports. According to Armytage, between 1 808 and 1 81 5, many of the Spanish vessels entering Jamaica were either from Puerto Rico or Santo Domingo.23 Santo Domingo followed Cuba and Puerto Rico in the trade of cotton to Jamaica,24 and in 1809, the year of the expulsion of the French, British merchants went to Santo Domingo to establish relations with Spanish merchants and to charter vessels for trade.25 Napoleon's invasion of the Iberian peninsula had, after all, converted Anglo-Spanish hostility into an entente cordial between two traditionally hostile powers. One of Santo Domingo's emergent industries was woodcutting whose chief product, mahogany, found its way to British ports.

We now return to the independência efimera. Bosch, gives his view very explicitly:

Anybody, could have done something similar (to what Caceres did) with other objectives and the result would have been the same: no one moved to prevent the foundation of Hayti Espanol, but no one moved to help it. And there is but one reason:

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the society of the hateros had failed and in the country there was no social class to take the place of the hateros. Thus Nunez de Caceres acted with a group of friends in a social vacuum. It was as though he had gone to battle without soldiers against an enemy that did not exist.26

The assumption that Bosch makes, based on his reading of what had transpired over the previous half century, is that there was no social group or class which had the stamina to support independence. The strongest social group, the hateros, were too weak to attract the support of other social groups in the interests of political independence. If there was no 'social class' whose interests were to be served or defended by a declaration of independence, why did Nunez de Caceres act in the way he did? Did he act in a vacuum as Bosch suggests, going to war against a non-existent enemy? Was Nunez de Caceres, then, a hopeless romantic caught up in the struggle for independence which was rampant throughout the Spanish American Empire between 1807 and 1821? Did Nunez de Caceres behave as he did because of the personal factor, viz. the failure of the Spanish administration to grant him higher administrative office? The other question is why was it that Santo Domingo should have been the only Spanish Caribbean territory to behave in this way? Both Puerto Rico and Cuba remained loyal to Spain.

In his proclamation of independence Nunez de Caceres gave his own inter- pretation of his movement, and it might be useful to examine what the hero of independence thought. Among other things Nunez stresses that the "three prin- ciple goods in which lie the happiness of nations are life, liberty and property."

In order to enjoy these rights governments are instituted and formed, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed (Asociados); from which it follows that if the government does not conform to these essential ends, if far from looking for the conservation of society (ital. mine) it becomes oppressive, it comes within the province of the people to alter, or abolish that form of government and to adopt a new one which seems more appropriate to its own security and future good.27

If we assume that this is not just idle Enlightenment rhetoric, where does Caceres see a danger to the preservation of society? A hint of an answer is found later in the manifesto when he says:

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With (independence) we shall have laws formed by ourselves corresponding to the character, education and customs of the people accom- modated to the climate and locality, and our na- tional representation based on numerical proportion will provide a perfect equality between the people of these provinces, and will not serve to foster discord between the various classes, as has happened with the provisions (bases) estab- lished by the Constitution of Cadiz, (ital. mine).28

Nunez de Caceres and his associates were perhaps, after all not acting in a vacuum, but to 'conserve society' and eliminate 'class discord' which the Spanish government itself seemed to be threatening. In another section of the proclamation Nunez de Caceres declares that the turbulent situation in Spain and the inability of the mother country to offer help and improvement offered further justification for independence.

In 1821, in fact, the Spanish Crown was under attack from the liberal 1812 constitution of Cadiz. The constitution of 1812 was to be for over fifty years the

symbol - and to some extent the reality - of Spanish liberalism. This constitution would have suggested that the metropolis had gone liberal, liberal enough to threaten traditional social and economic relationships. In fact the liberal constitution was largely reformist, intended to "create", as Carr suggests "the legal framework of a bourgeois society." The constitution was concerned with the "sovereignty of the people," with the control of the powers of the king (the second followed from the first), with universal suffrage.29 It was concerned with civil equality, personal liberty, the rights of property, and freedom of contract. The constitution assumed an attack on 'regional , ecclesiastical, and aristocratic privilege, the removal of seigneurial privileges, the adoption of the elective principles in local government, the suppres- sion of the Inquisition and the payment of taxes by the clergy.30 The liberals also accepted the notion of the indisputable right of the "individual to dispose of his own

property as he saw fit... the essential foundation of a liberal economy and a

bourgeois society." The liberals of Cadiz were not "primarily concerned with a

socially desirable redistribution of landed property but rather with the establishment of clear and absolute property rights - the Roman Law notion of jus utendi et abutendi as against the medieval confusions of multiple claims to enjoy the use of the same piece of property."31

This liberal constitution was proclaimed in Spain and the Empire in 1812, and later in 1821. In 1812, there had been a serious slave revolt in Santo Domingo inspired by the constitution and led by free men of colour. It was feared that the new

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proclamation of the Constitution would reinforce the efforts of slaves and coloured in combination to bring about an end to slavery and all discrimination against the coloured population. "Inferiors revolt," Aristotle had declared, "in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior..." The constitution of Cadiz of 1812 and 1821 could - even though it might not have been so intended - have provided a charter of sorts for rebellion with its stress on 'sovereignty of the people,' equality before the law, personal liberty and freedom of contract. The proposal for the absolute title to property could also have affected traditional property relation- ships, and certainly the entrenched position of the Roman Catholic Church. It is often not what is but what people think is that determines action. And the Cadiz constitution could have been interpreted as a charter for freedom (for the enslaved) and equality (for the free but second-class citizen).

In 1821 Governor Kindelan recalled the year 1812

in which Jose Leocadio, Pedro de Seda, Pedro Henriquez, and several other free men and slaves, seduced by evil men, or hallucinated by the same false ideas of liberty, dared to disturb the public peace.32

The Governor of the Spanish colony also found it necessary to stress that the Constitution did not imply elimination of distinction between whites, browns and blacks, and between freemen and slaves, as some people either erroneously or maliciously were informing the 'less instructed' among the people. The governor clearly found it necessary to explain for the benefit of potential agitators or creators of class discord that the Cadiz Constitution was never intended to alter traditional class relationships. The liberal constitution the governor stressed did not imply freedom for Dominican slaves. Slaves were neither, declared the governor, Spaniards nor citizens, and freemen and libertos whether pardos or morenos were Spaniards but not citizens, until they received a charter from the (Spanish) Cortes indicating that they were. Could the view of the Spanish governor be entirely reassuring to the créoles or to the Roman Catholic Church? Evidently, Nunez de Caceres thought not, because referring to the turbulent situation in Spain in 1821 he expressed doubt about the ability of Spain to offer 'assistance and improve- ments.' We must presume assistance with respect to the potential disruption of the society created by the aspirations aroused in 1 81 2 and 1 821 by the Cadiz constitu- tion. The 1812 rebellion had been suffocated in blood, but was Spain able to do the same in 1821? The slaves had been restless and there had been conspiracies even after 1812. Apart from the threat faced in 1821 from them and from the freemen, there was in addition the very real threat from Haiti which in the latter year

24

was united under Boyer, militarily stronger than the Spaniards in Santo Domingo and dedicated to the principle that the island should be ruled under one flag, and that slaves were to have freedom.

It seems probable that Nunez de Caceres and his supporters sought inde-

pendence from Spain not, ironically, with the intention of breaking away from the

Spanish tradition but with a view to maintaining certain aspects of that tradition intact. Caceres's position on the slavery question was very clear - and coincided with that of Kindelan, namely that he would not "with the stroke of a pen ruin so

many of his compatriots." The freedom which he gave to his own slaves was

perhaps a political device to attract support from Pablo Ali who controlled the major battalion in Santo Domingo, and who was coloured. (Jose Gabriel Garcia describes him as a Valiant African,' others describe him as having Haitian origins).33

The independence coup of Nunez de Caceres emerges more and more as a

pre-emptive coup, against the possibility of a Haitian invasion which would have freed the slaves of Santo Domingo.

If we can assume that Nunez de Caceres was serious when he suggested that

Spain could not assist Dominicans in the defence of their society, we must ask defence from whom? The answer lies in the particular relationship which existed between Haiti and Santo Domingo at the time. In effect, it is being proposed that Nunez's act of independence was a pre-emptive coup against Haitian intervention, and that he sought the protection of Gran Colombia, still a slave state and one dedicated to the preservation of colonial hierarchy, to secure itself from Haiti. It was not only Haitian intervention which was feared, but the fact that Haitian intervention would bring about precisely what Nunez was seeking to avoid - the liberation of the slaves and a regime of legal equality.

Much has been made of the fact that the number of slaves in Santo Domingo was not large. But even the existence of 15,000 enslaved human beings who have the option of liberation through alliance with a neighbouring state is room enough for action.

President Boyer had been busy during 1820 campaigning for an annexation, and had even been in touch with Pablo Ali, the chief of the major battalion in Santo

Domingo. Pablo Ali, and others of his troops, had requested Spanish citizenship which had been refused. Nunez and his fellow conspirators, to win Ali's support and to wean him away from Haiti offered promotions for his men and a promise of

liberty to all slaves.34 That or those promises enabled Nunez to win Ali over to his side. Nunez de Caceres had prevaricated.

25

In his proclamation Nunez denounced Spanish monopoly as well. So that apart from expressing concern about the social discord arising out of the Cadiz Constitu- tion he was reasserting the traditional créole demand for free trade. In truth, the Spanish government had certainly up to 1 81 6 been permitting trade between Santo Domingo and British ports. Nunez envisaged nevertheless a period when

All nations will come to our ports to provide our needs and to ... purchase the fruit of our country; instead of the system by which Spain apart from lacking the principle articles which we consume, has never been able to negotiate other than for the benefit of the Exclusive and with the avarice of monopoly, which is born and is derived as the legitimate son of that absurd principle.35

If the break with Spain was deemed necessary, it was also true that Dominican independence could not be guaranteed if Haiti persisted in its designs, to annex Santo Domingo. Protection had to be obtained from elsewhere. Gran Colombia had in the past showed some interest in Santo Domingo, as Mexico had demonstrated interest in closer ties with Cuba. More vital was the fact that Colom- bia was still a slave-holding state, and had shown all the indications of maintaining or of being able to maintain créole, elite dominance. Bolivar had himself concluded that among the coloured masses of Colombia liberty could be confused with licence - and his execution of Admiral padilla was symbolic of his determination to avoid the establishment of a pardocracia.36 The suffrage was to be limited by prohibitive property qualifications which effectively disenfranchised the bulk of the population. The Colombian system, then, was infinitely superior to the regime envisaged - in the eyes of Nunez de Caceres and his associates - by the Constitu- tion of Cadiz or by a Haitian invasion and occupation which envisaged the unity of Hispaniola under Haitian rule, and the abolition of slavery. French "radicalism" to which Dominicans had already been exposed under Toussaint L'Ouverture had reached Spain through the Cadiz constitution, but could also return to Santo Domingo via Haiti in its most virulent form. (It was true that President Petion had militarily assisted Colombia in the latter's struggle against Spain after 1816 in exchange for Bolivar's promise to free Colombian slaves but Colombia was to refuse to recognize Haitian independence, and had only committed itself to gradual abolition).

Nunez de Caceres and his colleagues pronounced the independence of Spanish Hayti, and joined Colombia in order to forestall an imminent Haitian invasion. Haiti, united under Boyer, following the deaths of Henry Christophe and Alexander Petion was too strong militarily for Santo Domingo, which could not be

26

assured of military assistance from Spain. Neither Puerto Rico nor Cuba adopted the tactics of Santo Domingo, precisely because they were not under a similar threat. Moreover, a Haitian invasion was likely to lead to an immediate re-abolition of slavery in Santo Domingo.

Jean Pierre Boyer made it clear that he had no intention of recognizing Dominican independence, and regarded the proclamation of November 30, 1821 as invalid and in violation of the "fundamental laws" of the (Haitian) state, viz. that Hispaniola was "one and indivisible."

In a letter to the "General of Santo Domingo" on January 11,1 822, Boyer noted:

I have a high esteem for all those who were instrumental in preventing the effusion of blood; but at the same time I deplore the error which has led to the organization of a Government separated from that which has been established by the fundamental laws of the state, and declar- ing your intention of becoming a part of the Republic of Colombia... Always disposed to be in- dulgent, and to judge others by the pureness of my principles, I thought that those who directed the change which took place on the 1st Decem- ber, 1821, might have been mistaken in the choice of their means, and might have been governed by circumstances of which I am ig- norant.37

The Haitian President emphasised Article 41 of the Haitian constitution that had

proclaimed the island "one and indivisible," and noted that the disunity of the island had been prolonged only because of the "calamities suffered by our (Haitian) Government." Evidently, Boyer had heard of the proclamation of independence through a mission to Santo Domingo. The mission, headed by Colonel Frement, had found "on his arrival, at Santo Domingo, that the change had taken place the fist day of December."

The Haitian occupation commenced on February 9th, 1822, led by Boyer, whose entry in Santo Domingo was not resisted. One of Boyer's first acts was to abolish slavery. A letter from Martinique dated February 14th, 1822 referred to a fleet that included 2000 men, destined for Samana to retake Santo Domingo from the Haitians. "The unfortunate planters are ruined, in consequences of their slaves

having been declared free by act of the Haitian Government."39 A letter from

Mayaguez, Puerto Rico noted that "we have been inundated by an emigration of

27

Dominican Friars, from St. Domingo, the consequences of the negro government of Hayti having taken possession of the city... Arrivals from St. Domingo bring accounts of the whole of the slave population of Spanish St. Domingo having been added to Hayti."40 On March 8, 1822 Governor Manchester of Jamaica in a letter to Earl Bathurst commented on the great increase of Territory and power which this accession had added to the Republic of Hayti. The contiguity of that Island to Jamaica and the Language assumed by Boyer in his proclamation which breathes a spirit of ambition by no means favourable to the peace or security of neighbouring colonies made me extremely anxious to ascertain the real state of affairs in St. Domingo." Manchester promised to send the ship Carnation to Hispaniola to investigate the "designs" of the government of Haiti.41

Nothing important seems to have emerged out of these early responses. Haitian independence had been recognized (at great cost to Haiti and great profit for French planters), the British were by 1822 committed to abolition which took place twelve years later. The Spanish Government was in no position to intervene, and the Colombian Government continued to evince no substantial interest. Juan Bosch's comment, therefore, that no one moved to help Spanish Hayti, is equally valid for Spanish Hayti under Haitian rule.

Twenty-two years later the Dominicans expelled the Haitians, and proclaimed the Republica Dominicana, under the leadership of Juan Pable Duarte. Those twenty-two years, however, set the stage for an antagonism between the two countries, which has had implications for the current relationship between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

NOTES

1. Emilio Cordero Michel, La Revolucion Haitiana y Santo Dominqo, * Santo Dominqo; y Bibllioteca Taller 1968, pp. 49-53. y * y

2. M.L. Moreau de St. Mary. Description de la Parte Espanoia de Santo Dominqo. * Ciudad Trujillo" : Editora Montalvo/1 944, pp. 382-386.

*

3. Antonio Sanchez Valverde, Idea del Valor de la Isla Espanoia ed. Cipriano Utrera, Ciudad Trujillo, Republica Dominicana, Editores Montalvo MCMXLVII, p. 61 . 4. Ibid, ρ . 170. 5. Carlos Larrazabal Blanco, Los Negros y la Esclavitud en Santo Domingo. Coleccipn Pensamiento Dominicano, Santo Domingo, Republica Dominicana, Julio Postigo e hiios editores, 1 967, p. 56 and p. 60. 6. Ibid., p. 59. 7. Ibid. oo. 126-128. Q.lbidfo. 184. 9. Frank Moya Pons. 'Nuevas Consideraciones sobre Ia historia de a poblacion dominicana: curvas, tasas y problemas,' Estúdios Dominicanos, Vol. 3, Num. 15, nov.-dic, 1974, p. 21.

28

10. Larrazabal Blanco, Los Negros ... p. 185 and Franklyn Franco, Los Negros, Los Mulatos y La Nation Dominicana . Editora Nacional. 2a Edicion, Santo Domingo, 1970, p. 72. The population figures are not based on census data, and are in fact contradictory. However, they indicate the pattern of miscegenation. 11. Herbert Klein. The Middle Passage: Comparative Studies in the Atlantic Slave Trade. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978, pp. 154-155. 12. Jean Price-Mars, La Republica de Hait y La Republica Dominicana. Diversos Aspectos de un Problema Histórico, Geográfico y Etnológico (translated from the French by Jose Luis Munoz Azpiri), Vol. 2, Puerto Principe, 1953, p. 30. 13. George y Louis Beer, British Colonial Policy, y 1754-1765, New York, MacMillan Co. 1922, p. 97.

George y Policy, y

14. Ibid, p. 102. 1 5. Frances Armytaqe, The Free Port System in the British West Indies, A Study in Commercial Policy, Γ/66-1822. London and New York, Longman Green, 1953, p. 64. 1 6. James Franklyn, The Prescht State of Hayti (St. Domingue) with remarks on its Agricul- ture, Commerce, Laws, Religion, Finances, and Population, etc. (1828) Frank Cass Reprint, ι y / 1 , p. ob. 17. JMan Bosch, Composition Social Dominicana: Historia e Interpretation, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, tditoria Arte y Cine, 1970, p. 164. 18. Ibid, p. 167. 1 9. Hugo Tolentino, ΈΙ Fenómeno Racial en Haiti y en la Republica Dominicana," in Tolentino et al Problemas Dominico Haitianos y y del Caribe, Universidad Autónoma de Mexico, Mexico, 1973, p. 120.

y y

20. Dorvo Soulastre, 'Viaje por tierra de Santo Domingo, ai Cabo Frances, Capital de la Parte Espanola de la Misma Isla,' in Rodriquez Demorizi, ea. La Era de Franciaen Santo Domingo, Contribucion a su Estúdio. Academia Dominicana de Ia Historia. Editoria del Caribe, 1955, p. 75. 21. Moya Pons, 'Nuevas Consideraciones ...,' op. cit., p. 21. 22. 'Noticia Histórica y Estadistica de la Colónia y particularmente de la Parte Espanola,1 in Emilio Rodriquez Demorizi, La Era de Francia en Santo Domingo, p. 123. 23. Armytage, The Freeport System ..., p. 123. 24. Ibid, p. 79. 25. Ibid, p. 69. 26. Juan Bosch, Composition Social..., p. 171. 27. 'Reclaratoria de Independência del Pueblo Dominicano,' in E. Rodriquez Demorizi, Santo Domingo ν la Gran Colombia: Bolivar y Nunez de Caceres, Editora del Caribe, Santo Domingo R.D., 1971 p. 50. 28. Ibid, p. 50. 29. Raymond Carr, Spain: 1808-1939. London, Clarendon Press, 1966, p. 98. 30. H.V. Livermore, A History of Spain, Inc. New York, Grove Press, 1960, p. 358. 31. Raymond Carr, Spain..., p. 98. 32. Quoted in Franklyn Franco, Los Negros..., p. 128. 33. Jose Gabriel Garcia (Rasgos Biográficos de Dominicanos Celebres, Santo Domingo 1971) Editora de| Caribe, describes Ali, as 'a valiant African who commanded the battalion of 'pardos' organized after the reconquest.' See p. 160. 34. Frank Moya Pons, La Domination Haitiana, 1822-1844, UCMM, Santiago, Dominican Republic, 1972, pp. 2d-30. 35. Nunez de Caceres, Oeclaratoria...' p. 51. 36. See among others, David Bushnell, The Santander Regime in Gran Colombia, 1954. 37. Jean Pierre Boyer to the General of Santo Domingo. Published in St. Jago de la Vega Gazette (Jamaica), March 23, 1822. 38. Ibid.

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39. Letter from St. Pierre. Martinique dated February 14, 1822. St. Jago de la Vega Gazette (Jamaica), March 23, 1822. 40. St. Jago de la Vega Gazette (Jamaica), March 23, 1822. Letter from Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, dated February t>th, 1 822. 41. Jamaica Archives Governor's Despatches. Manchester to Bathurst. March 8, 1822.