Tug of War and False Independence

                 The abolishment of freedom by Toussaint left a bitter taste in many of the dominican plantation owners and other since the Dominican population consisted mostly of mixed race, white, and spanish groups. Therefore they aided the Europeans in ousting the Haitians since they did not like the idea of being governed by a black man, Toussaint.
               Soon after the spanish wanted to regain control of Santo Domingo and annihilated french forces in the war of reconquest and slavery was reestablished.Although the Dominicans did not wanted to be governed by toussaint they did not want to be governed by the spanish either and they wanted their independence. When France made several attempts to regain Haiti, as a precaution the then haitian president Jean Pierre Boyer decided for strategic reason that he needed to secure the whole island of hispaniola so that it would not falter or provided an entrance point for European forces. Therefore he came in and annexed it which was the beginning of Santo Domingo becoming a republic. In 1844, the Dominican Republic became independent.
                Within 20 years, their short lived independence ended when the Dominican republic was returned to Spain because the country had become bankrupt.This was ill-recieved by the inhabitants of the island resulting in a revolt by rebels which eventually caused the Spanish to retreat from the island. Then the Dominican republic is proclaimed independent for a second time.
                The dominican republic went through a back and forth tussle of being independent and then being occupied by another country. Alot of this was due to strategic reasons as far as the hatian occupation was concerned and on the spanish side of it the reasons were colonual and economic. After they were declared independent for the first time the president turned them back over to the Spanish because of financial debts. Although they were officially independent the second time, because of their debt, they were still occupied by the U.S. for 50 years. It took over 60 years for the Dominican republic to be truly independent from outside rule which was not the case in its neighboring country Haiti. In the end the inhabitants of the dominican republic wanted to be independent but even after decolonialization they were still occupied by other countries which was not what the dominicans wanted, all because of financial issues and debt which they were placed in after becoming independent from Spain.


Moya, Pons Frank. The Dominican Republic: a National History. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 1998. Print