Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Separation Anxiety
While France and Spain's power in Europe waxed and waned, so, too, did their imperialist
ambitions. Conflict within the colonies became an avenue for waging proxy wars against
their rivals, so when the enslaved African population of western Hispaniola's Saint-
Domingue rose up in bloody revolt, Spain supported the revolution. However, once the
French agreed to abolish slavery, the former slaves turned their attention to liberating the
entire island - the Spanish colony had about 60,000 slaves of its own. Lacking the appetite,
will and ability to forcefully oppose the uprising, Spain and France haggled over the de-
tails, one of which involved the injunction that Spanish colonists abdicate their lands in ex-
change for ones in Cuba.
In 1801, frustrated by the slow pace of negotiations, François Dominique Toussaint
Louverture, a former slave and leader of the rebel forces, marched into Santo Domingo
and, without French authority, declared that the abolition of slavery would be enforced
throughout the island. At odds with French leaders, especially Napoleon Bonaparte who
now viewed him as a loose cannon, he was betrayed to the invading forces, who sent him
in chains to France, where he died of neglect in a dungeon in April 1803.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who had been one of Toussaint's chief lieutenants, crowned
himself emperor of the Republic of Haiti (an old Taíno name for the island) with the clearly
stated ambition of uniting Hispaniola under one flag. Free, educated mulattoes were
spurned, laborers were forced back onto the plantations to rebuild the economy, the remain-
ing whites were massacred and the Spanish colony was invaded by General Henri Chris-
tophe whose forces participated in mass killings of civilians in Santiago and Moca. Dessa-
lines' rule was brutal and the reaction inevitable - in 1806, he was killed in an ambush out-
side Port-au-Prince.
Christopher Columbus, Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro, Juan Ponce de León and Vasco
Nuñez de Balboa all spent time in what is now the DR.
For the Spanish colonists in Santo Domingo, this new imperialist threat compelled them
to ask Spain to reincorporate them into the empire. But through neglect and mismanage-
ment Spain completely bungled its administration of Santo Domingo and on November 30,
1821, the colony declared its independence once again. Colonial leaders intended to join
the Republic of Gran Colombia (a country that included present-day Ecuador, Colombia,
 
Search WWH ::




Custom Search