Strains of Unity: Emancipation, Property, and the Post-Revolutionary State in Haitian Santo Domingo, 1822-1844

Abstract

Between 1822 and 1844, the former Spanish colony of Santo Domingo, today the Dominican Republic, was unified with the post-revolutionary Republic of Haiti, bringing the end of legal slavery across the entire island. This dissertation argues that the reforms proclaimed by Haitian leaders provoked adaptation, strategic alliances, and local political contests rather than any crystallization of nationalized or racialized divisions among the Spanish and Kreyòl-speaking populations of Haiti and Santo Domingo. The notarial records, judicial documents, and administrative correspondence produced on both sides of the island show that Santo Domingo’s Afro-descended majority took advantage of emancipation and the elimination of colonial-era terminology of socioracial classification to make claims to land and movable property after 1822. Together, formerly enslaved people, rural inhabitants, and local administrators in Santo Domingo mediated the application of Haitian law rather than simply accepting or rejecting it. Indeed, their loyalties and identities transcended the narrow categories of “Dominican” and “Haitian.”

The structure of the dissertation follows the projection and negotiation of Haitian sovereignty in eastern Hispaniola after 1822, both chronologically and geographically. The first chapter follows the regiments of Haitian troops through the “livestock borderlands” of the center island region and into the capital city of Santo Domingo. The next three chapters follow the application of Haitian property law from the walled city of Santo Domingo to the larger estates of the southeastern riverine regions, and eventually into the more remote montes of the rural communes. The final chapter turns outward to the Pan-Caribbean dimensions of the annexation of eastern Hispaniola, focusing in particular on the participation of maritime maroons from surrounding islands in the ongoing juridical unification of the island. The end results of these negotiations were in the short term, the formation of a Haitian state whose authority was limited by local practices of law and longstanding struggles over resources, and in the long term, the political mobilization of the sparse, overwhelmingly rural population of eastern Haiti around a shared commitment to the permanent and universal abolition of slavery.