República de Dominica Oriental
Republic of East Dominica
East Dominica comprises the eastern, Spanish-speaking half of the island of Saint Dominic. As the New World's first colony, it has a long and eventful history. Its relationship with the other states has been complex and often strained, beginning with its conquest by veterans of the West Dominican slave revolution.
History
1. Foundation
Christopher Columbus landed on St. Dominic on his first voyage and established a colony on his second. The modern state of East Dominica traces its origin to Columbus's settlement of 1493 and honors the famed admiral as its founder. On that and later voyages, Columbus also set the colonial pattern of enslaving and terrorizing the inhabitants. Over the next several years, thousands and thousands of Taínos died, many of them, if accounts are to be believed, in mass suicides provoked by the misery of Spanish rule. In recent years the state has grappled with its founder's complicated legacy; but for all the violence, East Dominicans can be rather defensive about Columbus. He remains their founder, after all, and they will always be proud to belong to the hemisphere's oldest colony.
Under Columbus's brother Bartolomé and son Diego, and subsequent governors, the reign of brutality continued. African slaves now joined the Taínos in the mines, plantations, and, after escaping, out in the hills. But the Spanish built as well as destroyed. Bartolomé founded the capital, Santo Domingo, in 1496. Fifteen years later the city held a bishopric; less than twenty years after that, a university. The island was becoming the center of a new colonial civilization.
2. Spanish rule
Despite Santo Domingo's early importance, when Spain conquered new empires in Mexico and Peru, they quickly surpassed it. Around mid-century it also lost its position as gateway to the New World when Spain shifted its sea traffic to Havana. This killed the island's nascent sugar industry as planters moved to Havana to be close to shipping. Santo Domingo became a backwater. Its people made a living mainly through cattle ranching, selling the hides to the richer colonies.
The decline changed the colony's people and culture. The slower pace and the poverty meant that colonial rule became less heavy-handed. The free communities of Black and Indian outlaws mixed more freely with the White population, so that within a few generations, most Dominicans had ancestry from all three races.
The same conditions also turned the Dominicans toward smuggling. French, Dutch and English ships visited the smaller settlements all around the coast to buy and sell contraband. These interactions would eventually lead to the French takeover of the western part of the island. The Spanish government tried to stop the illicit trade by destroying all the settlements of the north coast, but this only accelerated the process because foreign buccaneers were now free to roam the abandoned areas. Planters and soldiers followed the pirates. By the late 1600s, West Dominica was largely French and was organized as a new colony, Saint-Domingue.
Unlike Spain, France invested heavily in its colony and greatly expanded sugar cultivation. The French population was almost four times the Spanish in 1790 despite covering less territory. The overwhelming majority of those people were slaves. Their revolt shook and finally toppled Spanish rule in Saint Dominic after three hundred years, in the process tying the east to the Boreoamerican states.
3. Occupation
Just as the French Revolution sparked war all across Europe, the slave revolt in West Dominica quickly grew into a wider war. The Spanish in the east attacked first, badly outnumbered but contemptuous of their opponents. Their invasion failed, and shortly afterward free Maroon communities in the east invited the revolutionaries to launch a counterattack. The westerners had both ideological and practical reasons for invading the east. They wanted to spread their revolution and free the Spanish slaves; but their revolt had also destroyed much of their colony's infrastructure, and they hoped that conquering the east would give them land and resources to help them recover.
Importantly for both halves of the island, the Dominican revolutionaries still maintained links to the French Republic. While radicals held power in France, they got along well with the Dominicans. More conservative regimes, like that of the Bonapartes, had a more strained relationship. But the island stayed connected to France throughout the revolutionary era. In the occupied eastern colony, French soldiers and administrators were needed to keep control. Though the entire island of Saint Dominic was nominally a single colony, in reality the west functioned as a independent republic, while the east was ruled by French officials.
Spain did not give up on its colony right away. It sent several expeditions to Santo Domingo and set up a rival government with the cooperation of local loyalists. But Spain's stated intention to restore slavery doomed these efforts because it allowed the French to keep acting as liberators. In the end Spain signed away its oldest colony in a treaty, but it left behind a large group of supporters who resented the French occupation.
In 1810, the entire island was placed under the Kingdom of New France, a new colonial federation to be ruled by the emperor's brother Jerome. Canadians now began to replace the European French in occupied East Dominica, the start of a close connection between Canada and East Dominica that would last for decades. Canada had followed France and Saint-Domingue in abolishing slavery in the 1790s, and now its merchants were quite willing to seek opportunities to trade with the island. Plans continued to fully unite east and west; this never happened for fear of a revolt by the Spanish-speaking population. Instead, New French policy in this period focused on giving East Dominica just enough autonomy to placate the citizens, encouraging the maintenance of Spanish language and culture.
The Occupation era saw major reforms and investment in East Dominica's agriculture. Sugar, tobacco, and coffee were planted in large quantities for the first time in a century and a half. New France tried various models for managing the land and people. In some areas, abandoned estates were broken up to create smallholdings for freedmen and maroons. In other places plantations were kept intact and switched to wage or tenant labor rather than slavery. Not every scheme succeeded, and Dominicans complained that too much of the profit they generated ended up in Canada, but overall this growth did a lot to improve the material condition of the state.
4. Statehood
The Kingdom of New France collapsed as soon as news arrived that the French Empire was no more. Everyone knew that French control of East Dominica was just as precarious. Liberals longed to break free of colonial control and set up a republic. Another group, known as the Legitimists, wanted to return to Spanish rule. The Legitimists were to be the major conservative faction in East Dominica for nearly a century, even after the dream of monarchy was long past. They represented Spanish over French, monarchy over republicanism, White and Mestizo interests over Black, separation over Affiliation, traditional dominicano culture over Boreoamerican cosmopolitanism. As the French imperial system was falling apart, the Legitimists prepared to fight the Liberals for control over East Dominica's new government.
Canada, eager to protect its economic influence, strongly opposed a Spanish restoration on the island. So did other Boreoamerican states that had begun to take advantage of freer trade with the island. Just before the political fight came to blows, the Canadian government brokered a compromise between the two sides. East Dominica would be a monarchy, but rather than restore the Spanish king, it would find another Catholic prince willing to come and rule. The Dominicans made the offer to Antonio, Count of Busseto, brother of the Duke of Parma. He was distantly related to the kings of Spain, which it was thought might confer some legitimacy. Antonio arrived in 1834 with his family to be crowned Prince of "Dominica Española."
The Principality was the kind of compromise that nobody really likes. Legitimists still hoped for a real restoration, while liberals wanted a republic. Prince Antonio was also a complete outsider in East Dominica, so earning a devoted following was difficult. The situation would have been a challenge for the most gifted statesman. Antonio deserves credit for competently keeping the state stable and preventing a civil war, but he was never an inspirational leader. By the 1840s there were plots against him. While the Prince and his wife were off the island, the Liberal majority in the legislature staged a coup and declared a republic. Canadian officials, informed of the plot beforehand, saw to it that the prince's children were taken to safety and worked to gain support for the new regime in the other states. By now enthusiasm for the Spanish crown had waned, so despite some support among the Church and the landowning class, the Legitimists lacked the strength to fight back. The revolution was accomplished almost without bloodshed.
The new republic made many symbolic changes. The name of the state changed from "Spanish" to "East" Dominica. Under the Principality, the state had adopted a horizontal tricolor flag in Spanish colors to appeal to Legitimists; now it was rotated into a vertical tricolor to represent the Republic. The three colors were re-interpreted to represent the three ships of Columbus: gold for the Santa María, white for the Niña, red for the Pinta.
While the idea of monarchy was off the table for good, the Legitimists remained an active political party, controlling the government many times over the ensuing decades. The political fights shifted to other areas. One was the question of Affiliation. Liberals, with their backers in the Francophone states and worldly outlook, favored closer ties with the other states. Legitimists were more wary of the growing power of the confederal institutions. East Dominica has always had a strong separatist movement, and in the nineteenth century this movement was decidedly conservative and traditionalist.
5. Twentieth and twenty-first centuries
Economic changes came to East Dominica as the nineteenth century ended. New, less labor-intensive methods for refining sugar, introduced during the imperial era, now became universal, transforming the industry that had been synonymous with misery since slave times. Cacao became a major crop. Mining and manufacturing also began to grow, but very slowly. East Dominica in 1900 was still an agricultural society, but one that was part of an industrializing world. A growing need for labor was met by new immigrants, many of them from the Canary Islands and Italy.
East Dominica's politics reshuffled as the controversies of the nineteenth century faded. Legitimism had held on for quite a while after the end of the monarchy, but it was losing its luster. Much of the movement's energy found an outlet in a new Hispanic populism that took shape starting in the 1920s or 30s. This broad-based movement, today represented by the Partido Colombino, captured the spirit of the old loyalists in its resentment of mainland politicians and its praise of Hispano-American culture. But unlike them, it acknowledged the ASB as a generally good thing and sought to work within the confederal institutions to amplify "la voz hispana." As this was largely a movement in confederal politics, it won adherents among all parties at the state level.
Separatism again gained momentum around mid-century. This time, it appeared among the political left. They pointed out that East Dominica only belonged to the ASB due to armed conquest followed by economic domination by the mainland states - domination which, they said, never really ended. This took place in a context where tourism was becoming a major industry. Dominicans now saw privileged mainlanders ignorant of their culture tromping all over their island. The new separatists worked within existing left-wing parties until the 1990s, when they split off to form a new party. East Dominica is not the only state with a separatist party, but its Partido Kiskeiano has more seats in the state legislature than any other. A successful vote for statehood in Turks and Caicos in 2018 has given new energy to the movement, who see it as a model for achieving their own change in status. Secession seems unlikely for now, but the sentiment is an established part of East Dominica's political landscape.
Formed in a crucible of violence and slavery, East Dominica's history and culture continue to captivate. From its distant corner of the Confederation, the state continues to debate the meaning of the union and to seek its place among its peers.
Christopher Columbus landed on St. Dominic on his first voyage and established a colony on his second. The modern state of East Dominica traces its origin to Columbus's settlement of 1493 and honors the famed admiral as its founder. On that and later voyages, Columbus also set the colonial pattern of enslaving and terrorizing the inhabitants. Over the next several years, thousands and thousands of Taínos died, many of them, if accounts are to be believed, in mass suicides provoked by the misery of Spanish rule. In recent years the state has grappled with its founder's complicated legacy; but for all the violence, East Dominicans can be rather defensive about Columbus. He remains their founder, after all, and they will always be proud to belong to the hemisphere's oldest colony.
Under Columbus's brother Bartolomé and son Diego, and subsequent governors, the reign of brutality continued. African slaves now joined the Taínos in the mines, plantations, and, after escaping, out in the hills. But the Spanish built as well as destroyed. Bartolomé founded the capital, Santo Domingo, in 1496. Fifteen years later the city held a bishopric; less than twenty years after that, a university. The island was becoming the center of a new colonial civilization.
2. Spanish rule
Despite Santo Domingo's early importance, when Spain conquered new empires in Mexico and Peru, they quickly surpassed it. Around mid-century it also lost its position as gateway to the New World when Spain shifted its sea traffic to Havana. This killed the island's nascent sugar industry as planters moved to Havana to be close to shipping. Santo Domingo became a backwater. Its people made a living mainly through cattle ranching, selling the hides to the richer colonies.
The decline changed the colony's people and culture. The slower pace and the poverty meant that colonial rule became less heavy-handed. The free communities of Black and Indian outlaws mixed more freely with the White population, so that within a few generations, most Dominicans had ancestry from all three races.
The same conditions also turned the Dominicans toward smuggling. French, Dutch and English ships visited the smaller settlements all around the coast to buy and sell contraband. These interactions would eventually lead to the French takeover of the western part of the island. The Spanish government tried to stop the illicit trade by destroying all the settlements of the north coast, but this only accelerated the process because foreign buccaneers were now free to roam the abandoned areas. Planters and soldiers followed the pirates. By the late 1600s, West Dominica was largely French and was organized as a new colony, Saint-Domingue.
Unlike Spain, France invested heavily in its colony and greatly expanded sugar cultivation. The French population was almost four times the Spanish in 1790 despite covering less territory. The overwhelming majority of those people were slaves. Their revolt shook and finally toppled Spanish rule in Saint Dominic after three hundred years, in the process tying the east to the Boreoamerican states.
3. Occupation
Just as the French Revolution sparked war all across Europe, the slave revolt in West Dominica quickly grew into a wider war. The Spanish in the east attacked first, badly outnumbered but contemptuous of their opponents. Their invasion failed, and shortly afterward free Maroon communities in the east invited the revolutionaries to launch a counterattack. The westerners had both ideological and practical reasons for invading the east. They wanted to spread their revolution and free the Spanish slaves; but their revolt had also destroyed much of their colony's infrastructure, and they hoped that conquering the east would give them land and resources to help them recover.
Importantly for both halves of the island, the Dominican revolutionaries still maintained links to the French Republic. While radicals held power in France, they got along well with the Dominicans. More conservative regimes, like that of the Bonapartes, had a more strained relationship. But the island stayed connected to France throughout the revolutionary era. In the occupied eastern colony, French soldiers and administrators were needed to keep control. Though the entire island of Saint Dominic was nominally a single colony, in reality the west functioned as a independent republic, while the east was ruled by French officials.
Spain did not give up on its colony right away. It sent several expeditions to Santo Domingo and set up a rival government with the cooperation of local loyalists. But Spain's stated intention to restore slavery doomed these efforts because it allowed the French to keep acting as liberators. In the end Spain signed away its oldest colony in a treaty, but it left behind a large group of supporters who resented the French occupation.
In 1810, the entire island was placed under the Kingdom of New France, a new colonial federation to be ruled by the emperor's brother Jerome. Canadians now began to replace the European French in occupied East Dominica, the start of a close connection between Canada and East Dominica that would last for decades. Canada had followed France and Saint-Domingue in abolishing slavery in the 1790s, and now its merchants were quite willing to seek opportunities to trade with the island. Plans continued to fully unite east and west; this never happened for fear of a revolt by the Spanish-speaking population. Instead, New French policy in this period focused on giving East Dominica just enough autonomy to placate the citizens, encouraging the maintenance of Spanish language and culture.
The Occupation era saw major reforms and investment in East Dominica's agriculture. Sugar, tobacco, and coffee were planted in large quantities for the first time in a century and a half. New France tried various models for managing the land and people. In some areas, abandoned estates were broken up to create smallholdings for freedmen and maroons. In other places plantations were kept intact and switched to wage or tenant labor rather than slavery. Not every scheme succeeded, and Dominicans complained that too much of the profit they generated ended up in Canada, but overall this growth did a lot to improve the material condition of the state.
4. Statehood
The Kingdom of New France collapsed as soon as news arrived that the French Empire was no more. Everyone knew that French control of East Dominica was just as precarious. Liberals longed to break free of colonial control and set up a republic. Another group, known as the Legitimists, wanted to return to Spanish rule. The Legitimists were to be the major conservative faction in East Dominica for nearly a century, even after the dream of monarchy was long past. They represented Spanish over French, monarchy over republicanism, White and Mestizo interests over Black, separation over Affiliation, traditional dominicano culture over Boreoamerican cosmopolitanism. As the French imperial system was falling apart, the Legitimists prepared to fight the Liberals for control over East Dominica's new government.
Canada, eager to protect its economic influence, strongly opposed a Spanish restoration on the island. So did other Boreoamerican states that had begun to take advantage of freer trade with the island. Just before the political fight came to blows, the Canadian government brokered a compromise between the two sides. East Dominica would be a monarchy, but rather than restore the Spanish king, it would find another Catholic prince willing to come and rule. The Dominicans made the offer to Antonio, Count of Busseto, brother of the Duke of Parma. He was distantly related to the kings of Spain, which it was thought might confer some legitimacy. Antonio arrived in 1834 with his family to be crowned Prince of "Dominica Española."
The Principality was the kind of compromise that nobody really likes. Legitimists still hoped for a real restoration, while liberals wanted a republic. Prince Antonio was also a complete outsider in East Dominica, so earning a devoted following was difficult. The situation would have been a challenge for the most gifted statesman. Antonio deserves credit for competently keeping the state stable and preventing a civil war, but he was never an inspirational leader. By the 1840s there were plots against him. While the Prince and his wife were off the island, the Liberal majority in the legislature staged a coup and declared a republic. Canadian officials, informed of the plot beforehand, saw to it that the prince's children were taken to safety and worked to gain support for the new regime in the other states. By now enthusiasm for the Spanish crown had waned, so despite some support among the Church and the landowning class, the Legitimists lacked the strength to fight back. The revolution was accomplished almost without bloodshed.
The new republic made many symbolic changes. The name of the state changed from "Spanish" to "East" Dominica. Under the Principality, the state had adopted a horizontal tricolor flag in Spanish colors to appeal to Legitimists; now it was rotated into a vertical tricolor to represent the Republic. The three colors were re-interpreted to represent the three ships of Columbus: gold for the Santa María, white for the Niña, red for the Pinta.
While the idea of monarchy was off the table for good, the Legitimists remained an active political party, controlling the government many times over the ensuing decades. The political fights shifted to other areas. One was the question of Affiliation. Liberals, with their backers in the Francophone states and worldly outlook, favored closer ties with the other states. Legitimists were more wary of the growing power of the confederal institutions. East Dominica has always had a strong separatist movement, and in the nineteenth century this movement was decidedly conservative and traditionalist.
5. Twentieth and twenty-first centuries
Economic changes came to East Dominica as the nineteenth century ended. New, less labor-intensive methods for refining sugar, introduced during the imperial era, now became universal, transforming the industry that had been synonymous with misery since slave times. Cacao became a major crop. Mining and manufacturing also began to grow, but very slowly. East Dominica in 1900 was still an agricultural society, but one that was part of an industrializing world. A growing need for labor was met by new immigrants, many of them from the Canary Islands and Italy.
East Dominica's politics reshuffled as the controversies of the nineteenth century faded. Legitimism had held on for quite a while after the end of the monarchy, but it was losing its luster. Much of the movement's energy found an outlet in a new Hispanic populism that took shape starting in the 1920s or 30s. This broad-based movement, today represented by the Partido Colombino, captured the spirit of the old loyalists in its resentment of mainland politicians and its praise of Hispano-American culture. But unlike them, it acknowledged the ASB as a generally good thing and sought to work within the confederal institutions to amplify "la voz hispana." As this was largely a movement in confederal politics, it won adherents among all parties at the state level.
Separatism again gained momentum around mid-century. This time, it appeared among the political left. They pointed out that East Dominica only belonged to the ASB due to armed conquest followed by economic domination by the mainland states - domination which, they said, never really ended. This took place in a context where tourism was becoming a major industry. Dominicans now saw privileged mainlanders ignorant of their culture tromping all over their island. The new separatists worked within existing left-wing parties until the 1990s, when they split off to form a new party. East Dominica is not the only state with a separatist party, but its Partido Kiskeiano has more seats in the state legislature than any other. A successful vote for statehood in Turks and Caicos in 2018 has given new energy to the movement, who see it as a model for achieving their own change in status. Secession seems unlikely for now, but the sentiment is an established part of East Dominica's political landscape.
Formed in a crucible of violence and slavery, East Dominica's history and culture continue to captivate. From its distant corner of the Confederation, the state continues to debate the meaning of the union and to seek its place among its peers.