Full Description
2023 Honorable Mention, Isis Duarte Book Prize, Haiti/ Dominican Republic section (LASA)
After revolutionary cooperation between Dominican and Haitian majorities produced independence across Hispaniola, Dominican elites crafted negative myths about this era that contributed to anti-Haitianism.
Despite the island's long-simmering tensions, Dominicans and Haitians once unified Hispaniola. Based on research from over two dozen archives in multiple countries, Siblings of Soil presents the overlooked history of their shared imperial endings and national beginnings from the 1780s to 1822. Haitian revolutionaries both inspired and aided Dominican antislavery and anti-imperial movements. Ultimately, Santo Domingo's independence from Spain came in 1822 through unification with Haiti, as Dominicans embraced citizenship and emancipation. Their collaboration resulted in one of the most unique and inclusive forms of independence in the Americas.
Elite reactions to this era formed anti-Haitian narratives. Racial ideas permeated the revolution, Vodou, Catholicism, secularism, and even Deism. Some Dominicans reinforced Hispanic and Catholic traditions and cast Haitians as violent heretics who had invaded Dominican society, undermining the innovative, multicultural state. Two centuries later, distortions of their shared past of kinship have enabled generations of anti-Haitian policies, assumptions of irreconcilable differences, and human rights abuses.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Entire Island Has One Family
Chapter 1: Race and Place in Eighteenth-Century Hispaniola
Chapter 2: Following a Revolutionary Fuse, 1789-1791
Chapter 3: Belief, Blasphemy, and the Black Auxiliaries, 1792-1794
Chapter 4: Many Enemies Within, 1795-1798
Chapter 5: French Failures, 1799-1807
Chapter 6: Cross-Island Collaboration and Conspiracies, 1808-1818
Chapter 7: The "Spanish Part of Haiti" and Unification, 1819-1822
Epilogue: Becoming Dominican in Haiti
Archives Consulted
Notes
Index
