Local Powerbrokers in Santo Domingo from Spanish Reconquest to Haitian Unification, 1809–22

After abolishing slavery in Santo Domingo in 1822, leaders of the Republic of Haiti appointed a group of local intermediaries in Santo Domingo City to serve as civil officials, charging them with transforming the former Spanish colony into equal departments of a now-islandwide republic. Who were these intermediaries? How did their previous administrative experiences and positions within colonial social hierarchies shape their participation in building the new Haitian state in Santo Domingo? This paper uses notarial and ecclesiastical records from the late Spanish-colonial era (the period from the 1809 Spanish reconquest of Santo Domingo to the 1822 annexation of Santo Domingo by Haiti) to map out the social and economic backgrounds of a key set of local powerbrokers. Far more than ideological sympathies for the Haitian government or its founding principles, what these men had in common was a (1) shared class position as large-scale property holders and (2) extensive connections to islandwide and regional commercial networks. This paper makes two contributions. First, it shows that a subset of leading late-colonial elites in Santo Domingo had clear economic incentives to participate in the Haitian unification project. Second, it reveals how Haitian officials sought to achieve continuity amidst change and to paper over deep social divisions by governing through established administrative structures and class hierarchies in Santo Domingo.