Nation, Liberty, and the Legal Languages of Unification in Hispaniola

No event remains more enigmatic to scholars of nineteenth-century Hispaniola than the unification of 1822. In a blink of an eye, the newly formed Independent State of Spanish Haiti, modern day Dominican Republic, incorporated itself to the Republic of Haiti. Two main interpretations have been put forward. The Dominican nationalist historiography has often characterized this moment as a Haitian invasion. Haiti purportedly took advantage of the eastern side’s weakness and José Nuñez de Cáceres’ inability to secure Simón Bolívar's support. A new generation of scholars has denounced the insidious anti-Haitian sentiment embedded in this interpretation. These scholars suggest that 1822 was a moment of unity, when the black and mulatto majority of eastern Hispaniola realized that their interests coincided with Haiti's. This paper suggests that both of these interpretations are skewed, for they have imposed identity and racial politics to a context that had no such discursive tools. Rather than work with a priori categories, this paper seeks to get behind the logic and dilemmas of the historical actors themselves, and ultimately suggests that Haiti based its claim to the eastern side on the 1795 Treaty of Basel, when Spain ceded Santo Domingo to France. Every Haitian constitution, including Toussaint Louverture’s 1801 colonial constitution, had claimed that Haiti included the entire Island of Hispaniola. For Jean-Pierre Boyer, 1822 simply meant the redemption of territory that rightfully and legally belonged to Haiti. Nuñez de Cáceres, similarly, did not consider 1822 a moment of invasion. Rather, he asserted that unification was born from a social pact, where Haiti promised to deliver liberty, security, and equality to the inhabitants of the east. The paper concludes by suggesting that the antinomies of the 1822 moment framed the basis for the political culture that ultimately led to the Dominican declaration of independence in 1844.