The Haitian occupation of Santo Domingo (; ; ) was the annexation and merger of then-independent Republic of Spanish Haiti (formerly Santo Domingo) into the Republic of Haiti, which lasted twenty-two years from February 9, 1822, to February 27, 1844. The part of Hispaniola under Spanish administration was first ceded to France and merged with the French colony of Saint Domingue as a result of the Peace of Basel in 1795. However, with the outbreak of the Haitian Revolution the French lost the western part of the island, while remaining in control of the eastern part of the island until the Spanish recaptured Santo Domingo in 1809.Wars of the Americas: A Chronology of Armed Conflict in the New World, 1492 to the Present. David Marley, 1998.
Santo Domingo was regionally divided with many rival and competing provincial leaders. During this period, the Spanish crown had limited influence in the colony. Dominican military leaders had become rulers, where the "law of machete" governed the land. On November 9, 1821, the former captain general in charge of the colony, José Núñez de Cáceres, decided to overthrow the Spanish government and declared independence from Spain. Meanwhile the mulatto president of Haiti, Jean-Pierre Boyer, offered his support to the frontier governors, and thus they allowed him to enter the city of Santo Domingo with around 10,000 soldiers in February 1822 which led to the occupation.
After losing the support of the elites, President Boyer was ousted in 1843 and replaced by Charles Rivière-Hérard."Haiti", Encyclopædia Britannica. Nationalist Dominican forces in eastern Hispaniola led by Juan Pablo Duarte seized control of Santo Domingo on 27 February 1844. The Haitian forces, unprepared for a significant uprising, surrendered to the Dominican rebels, effectively ending Haitian rule of eastern Hispaniola. In March Rivière-Hérard attempted to reimpose his authority but was unsuccessful. Rivière-Hérard was removed from office by the mulatto hierarchy on May 3, 1844.
Background By the late 18th century the island of Hispaniola had been divided into two European colonies: Saint-Domingue, in the west, governed by France; and Santo Domingo, governed by Spain, occupying the eastern two-thirds of Hispaniola. By the 1790s, large-scale rebellions erupted in the western portion of the island, spearheaded by men such as Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines which led to the eventual removal of the French and the independence of Haiti. Following the independence of Haiti, massive portions of the remaining French population were murdered. The eastern portion of the island was preparing itself for an eventual separation from Spain.
First unification under the French
During the second half of the eighteenth century, Saint-Domingue quickly developed into the most prosperous plantation colony of the New World. As a result of the sugar plantations of the French colony worked by African slaves; sugar had become an indispensable commodity in Europe. By contrast, Santo Domingo, the eastern side that had once been the headquarters of Spanish colonial power in the New World, had long fallen into decline. The economy was stalled, the land largely unexploited and used for subsistence agriculture and cattle ranching, and the population was much lower than in Saint-Domingue. The accounts by the Dominican essayist and politician José Núñez de Cáceres cite the Spanish colony's population at around 80,000, mainly composed of criollos, mulattos, freedmen, and a few black slaves. Saint-Domingue, on the other hand, was nearing a million slaves.
In the aftermath of the war between the new French Republic and Spain, the latter, by the Peace of Basel of July 22, 1795, ceded its two-thirds of the island to France in exchange for the evacuation of the province of Guipuzcoa occupied by the French since 1793. However, due to the near chaotic situation in Saint-Domingue resulting from uprisings by mulattos and freedmen since 1791, the expected armed opposition of the Spanish settlers of Santo Domingo who feared the abolition of slavery if the French were to take over, and under the belief that the British would seize Santo Domingo if the transfer was effected, the Committee of Public Safety decided to delay the occupation until such time as it had enough military and naval forces to take possession of the eastern part of the island. This was to occur in January 1801 when Toussaint Louverture, then still loyal to France, occupied Santo Domingo in the name of the French Republic.Yves Benot, "Comment Santo Domingo n'a pas été occupé par la République française en 1795–1796", Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 1998, No. 311, pp. 79–81. https://www.persee.fr/doc/ahrf_0003-4436_1998_num_311_1_2089 In 1804 the leader of the Haitian revolution, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, declared Haiti's independence. Independence did not come easily given the fact that Haiti had been France's most profitable colony.
Under Toussaint Louverture's government, slavery was abolished for the first time on the eastern portion of Hispaniola until the colony was ceded to France. While the French had lost their former colony of Saint-Domingue by 1804, the French commander of the former Spanish side had been able to repulse the attacks of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, but in 1808, the Dominicans, led by Juan Sánchez Ramírez, revolted and the following year, with the help of a Royal Navy squadron, ended French control of the city of Santo Domingo. Spanish rule was reestablished. However, this short period under which the whole of Hispaniola was de jure under French rule was to be the chief justification of the freed Haitians in their quest to reunite the island under their rule.
1805: Haitian Forces Invasion
In February 1805, Haitian forces, under Jean-Jacques Dessalines, invaded from the southern route in opposition of French-led approved slave raiding. Unable to overpower the Spanish–French defense, and intimidated by the arrival of a French fleet in support of Borgella in Santo Domingo, the army of Dessalines along with Henri Christophe raided through the interior Dominican towns Santiago and Moca, while Alexandre Pétion invaded Azua. On his retreat from Santo Domingo, Dessalines arrived in Santiago on April 12, 1805. While in Santiago, Haitian forces set fire to the town, including churches and convents. The army killed approximately 400 inhabitants including some priests and took prisoners to Haiti. More people were killed on Dessalines' orders in the French-held portions of the island, including the towns of Monte Plata, Cotuí and La Vega and approximately 500 people of the northern town of Moca. The barrister Gaspar de Arredondo y Pichardo wrote, "40 [Dominican] children had their throats cut at the church in Moca, and the bodies found at the presbytery, which is the space that encircles the church's altar..."Gaspar de Arredondo y Pichardo, Memoria de mi salida de la isla de Santo Domingo el 28 de abril de 1805 (Memoirs of my leaving the island of Santo Domingo 28 April 1805) Survivors from the raids fled to eastern locations including Higüey through Cotuí as well as to other territories of the Spanish Antilles. Prisoners rounded up by the troops were forced to accompany the army back to Haiti, where, once they arrived, were either killed or forced to work on plantations. In total, over the course of a few weeks, nearly half of Santo Domingo's population were slaughtered by the Haitian soldiers.
Haitian rebel leaders encouraged fugitive African slaves to move into Hispaniola and they formed communities such as San Lorenzo de Los Mina, which is currently part of the "city" of Santo Domingo. Fugitives arrived from other parts of the West Indies as well, especially from the various islands of the Lesser Antilles.Francisco del Rosario Sánchez One of the Padres de la Patria / Fathers of the Patriotism – Colonial Zone-Dominican Republic (DR) – Retrieved 3 November 2012.
Due to the political instability and volatile environment in the island, many of the wealthiest white families in Santo Domingo fled between 1795 and 1820. They settled in Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and Cuba resulting in a human capital flight. The white families who stayed on the island did not consider owning slaves due to the political crisis in the island but the few rich white elites that did, fled the colony. Many of these white families that stayed on the island settled in the Cibao region owning land. Historians state that "Santo Domingo lost most of its best families" at that era, specially during the slave revolts. Nevertheless, during the Dominican independence movement many whites returned back to the island to reclaim their territory.
1806: Struggle to unite the South and North of Haiti
On October 17, 1806, Dessalines was assassinated, an act which was instigated by his own generals Henri Christophe and Alexandre Pétion. Afterward, both Christophe and Pétion failed to agree on who was going to be the next leader-for-life (a title created by Dessalines himself), so they went separate ways: Christophe took the North of Haiti (which he named Kingdom of Haiti), while Pétion got for himself the South part of Haiti (the newly created Republic of Haiti); and immediately they started a series of wars to take over the other's side. The internal military conflicts lasted until 1820 when Haitian president Jean-Pierre Boyer finally unified both the South and North of Haiti. After this, Boyer aimed his sights on the struggling Spanish-side of the island.
Spanish reconquest of Santo Domingo
Juan Sánchez Ramírez a Dominican general commanded the troops that fought against the French in Santo Domingo between 1808 and 1809 in the Battle of Palo Hincado, resulting in a victory against the French, and the return of Santo Domingo to Spanish governance.
Sánchez Ramírez, an agricultural landowner, had already fought against the French in the War of the Convention, and in 1803 he had emigrated to Puerto Rico, from where he returned in 1807 to foment the insurrection. To do this, he requested the help of the governor of Puerto Rico, Toribio Montes, and of Dominican settlers who had fled to that island, with whose forces he revolted against the French troops of general and governor Jean-Louis Ferrand, whom he defeated on July 11, 1808, in the battle of Palo Hincado.
Shortly after, with the help of the Royal Navy fleet that came to support him from the Colony of Jamaica, he managed to take the capital of the island. He was therefore appointed captain general and mayor of the island by the Junta of Seville, thereby reestablishing Spanish sovereignty. During his government he harshly repressed any independence attempt, acting with total impunity. Sanchez convened the board of Bondillo, which established new laws and declared the Treaty of Basel null and void. So the board confirmed the permanence of Santo Domingo in Spanish hands. Santo Domingo was declared Spanish by Ramírez in July 1809.
Under his government, Santo Domingo again traded with the allied countries to Spain, and the Universidad Santo Tomás de Aquino (UASD) was reopened.
He suspended the confiscations that the French government had executed against the colony. He also allowed the British to trade in the ports of Santo Domingo.
Ramírez was ill and died on February 11, 1811, at the age of fifty, while still ruling the colony, and was buried in the National Pantheon.
1821: Independence from Spain
On November 9, 1821, Spanish colonial rule over Santo Domingo was overthrown by a group led by José Núñez de Cáceres, the colony's former administrator, and the rebels proclaimed independence from the Spanish crown on December 1, 1821. The new nation was known as Republic of Spanish Haiti (), as Haiti had been the indigenous name of the island. On 1 December 1821 a constitutive act was ordered to petition the union of Spanish Haiti with Gran Colombia.
Prelude to the occupation