Conceptualizing Black Modernity in US Empire: Frederick Douglass and the Case for Dominican Annexation, 1869–71

As he stood before his audience following his return from visiting Santo Domingo in 1871, Frederick Douglass mourned the pitiable state of the island nation.  Douglass had traveled to Santo Domingo, the modern-day Dominican Republic, as the assistant secretary to the American Commission to Santo Domingo, which President Ulysses S. Grant had dispatched to assess Dominican resources and ascertain if the Dominican people were amenable to being annexed to the United States.  Although Santo Domingo had come of age, in Douglass’ view, waves of revolution and Spanish colonialism had left her “standing on the verge of civilization” and the only way she might be rescued was through the intervention of the United States.  In analyzing how Douglass came to this conclusion, my work captures a black conceptualization of modernity and highlights the benefits Douglass believed Dominicans and other people of African-descent in the Americas would accrue through the annexation of the Dominican Republic.  In doing so, I highlight the complex interplay of race, notions of progress, and U.S. imperialism as America approached the turn of the century.