The recorded history of the Dominican Republic began in 1492 when Christopher Columbus, working for the Crown of Castile, arrived at a large island in the western Atlantic Ocean, later known as the Caribbean. The native Taíno people, an Arawakan people, had inhabited the island during the pre-Columbian era, dividing it into five chiefdoms. They referred to the eastern part of the island as Quisqueya, meaning 'mother of all lands.' Columbus claimed the island for Castile, naming it ('the Spanish Island'), which was later Latinized to Hispaniola.
Following 25 years of Spanish occupation, the Taíno population in the Spanish-controlled regions of the island drastically decreased due to the Taíno genocide. With fewer than 50,000 survivors, those remaining intermixed with Spaniards, Africans, and others, leading to the formation of the present-day tripartite Dominican population. The area that would become the Dominican Republic remained the Captaincy General of Santo Domingo until 1821, except during the Era de Francia, when it was a French colony from 1795 to 1815. It briefly became an independent state in 1821, known as the Republic of Spanish Haiti, until it was annexed and merged by Haiti into Republic of Haiti from 1822 to 1844.
In 1844, the Dominican Republic declared its independence, establishing the First Dominican Republic. The republic maintained its independence except for a brief annexation by Spain from 1861 to 1865, after which the Second Dominican Republic was established. The country later experienced its first occupation by the United States from 1916 to 1924, followed by the establishment of the Third Dominican Republic.
During the 19th century, the Dominican Republic frequently engaged in conflicts involving the French, Haitians, Spanish, and internal factions. This period was characterized by a society heavily influenced by caudillos, who exercised control over the nation as a personalised dictatorship. Between 1844 and 1914, the Dominican Republic underwent numerous leadership transitions, with 53 individuals assuming the presidency, although only three completed their terms. The country also saw the adoption of 19 constitutions, with many leaders obtaining power through military force. During this period, three presidents were assassinated: José Antonio Salcedo in 1864, Ulises Heureaux in 1899, and Ramón Cáceres in 1911.
In 1930, the Dominican Republic came under the rule of Rafael Trujillo, a dictator who maintained control until his assassination in 1961. Following Trujillo's regime, Juan Bosch was democratically elected president in 1962 but was removed from office in a military coup d'état in 1963. The Dominican Civil War in 1965 lead to a U.S.-led intervention prompted by an uprising to restore Bosch to power and allegations of communist support for the coup. In 1966, Joaquín Balaguer, a caudillo, defeated Bosch in the presidential election and remained in power for 30 years. Due to U.S. pressure in response to flawed elections, Balaguer was compelled to shorten his term in 1996.
Subsequent to this period, the Dominican Republic has conducted regular competitive elections, with opposition candidates successfully assuming the presidency, showing a transition towards more stable democracy.
Pre-European history
The islands of the Caribbean were first settled around 6,000 years ago by hunter-gatherer peoples originating from Central America or northern South America. The Arawakan-speaking ancestors of the Taíno moved into the Caribbean from South America during the 1st millennium BC, reaching Hispaniola by around 600 AD. These Arawakan peoples engaged in farming, fishing, hunting and gathering, and the widespread production of ceramic goods. The estimates of Hispaniola's population in 1492 vary widely, including tens of thousands, 100,000, 300,000, and 400,000-2,000,000. Estimating how many people lived on the island in pre-Columbian times is challenging, as no accurate records exist. At the time of Columbus' arrival in 1492, the island's territory consisted of five Taíno chiefdoms: Marién, Maguá, Maguana, Jaragua, and Higüey. These were ruled respectively by caciques Guacanagarix, Guarionex, Caonabo, Bohechío, and Cayacoa. The Taíno name for the entire island was either Ayiti (land of high mountains) or Quisqueya (mother of all lands).
Spanish colony (1492–1795)
Arrival of the Spanish
Christopher Columbus reached the island of Hispañola on his first voyage, in December 1492. Guacanagarí, the chief who hosted Columbus and his men, treated them kindly and provided them with everything they desired. However, the Taínos' egalitarian social system clashed with the Europeans' feudalist system, which had more rigid class structures. The Europeans believed the Taínos to be either weak or misleading, and they began to treat the tribes with violence. Columbus successfully tempered this trend, and he and his men departed from Quisqueya, the Taínos' name for the island, on good terms.
After the sinking of the Santa María, Columbus established a small fort to support his claim to the island. The fort was called La Navidad because the shipwrecking and the founding of the fort occurred on Christmas Day. While Columbus was away, the garrison manning the fort was wracked by divisions that evolved into conflict. The more rapacious men began to terrorize the Taíno, the Ciguayo, and the Macorix peoples, which included attempts to take their women. Guacanagarix tried to reach an accommodation with the Spaniards; however, the Spaniards and some of his own people viewed him as weak. The Spaniards treated him with contempt, including the kidnapping of some of his wives. Fed up, the powerful Cacique Caonabo of the Maguana Chiefdom attacked the Europeans and destroyed La Navidad. Guacanagarix was dismayed by these events but did not try hard to aid the Europeans, probably hoping that the troublesome outsiders would never return.
In 1493, Columbus came back to the island on his second voyage and founded the first Spanish colony in the New World, the city of La Isabela. Isabela nearly failed because of hunger and disease. In 1496, Santo Domingo was built and became the new capital, and remains the oldest continuously inhabited European city in the Americas.
An estimated 400,000 Tainos living on the island were soon enslaved to work in gold mines. By 1508, their numbers had decreased to around 60,000 because of forced labor, hunger, disease, and the Taíno genocide. By 1535, only a few dozen were still alive.
During this period, the colony's Spanish leadership changed several times. When Columbus departed on another exploration, Francisco de Bobadilla became governor. Settlers' allegations of mismanagement by Columbus helped create a tumultuous political situation. In 1502, Nicolás de Ovando replaced de Bobadilla as governor, with an ambitious plan to expand Spanish influence in the region. It was he who dealt most brutally with the Taíno people. The Taino population declined by up to 95% in the century after the Spanish arrival,S, Rosenbaum S. Alan. Is the Holocaust Unique?: Perspectives on Comparative Genocide. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2018. Page 302,313.Stannard, David E. 1992. American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World. New York: Oxford University Press. Page 261-268. https://archive.org/details/americanholocaus00stan from a pre contact population of tens of thousands to 8,000,000.Stannard, David E. 1992. American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World. New York: Oxford University Press. Page 267. https://archive.org/details/americanholocaus00stan Many authors have described the treatment of the Taino in Hispaniola under the Spanish Empire as genocide. Multiple sources: Sheri P. Rosenberg, "Genocide Is a Process, Not an Event," Genocide Studies and Prevention 7, 1 (April 2012): 16–23. © 2012 Genocide Studies and Prevention. doi: 10.3138/gsp.7.1.16 David Moshman (2007) Us and Them: Identity and Genocide, Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research, 7:2, p. 125, DOI: 10.1080/15283480701326034, Alexander Laban Hinton, "Critical Genocide Studies," Genocide Studies and Prevention 7, 1 (April 2012): 4–15. © 2012 Genocide Studies and Prevention. doi: 10.3138/gsp.7.1.4, p. 11 Keegan, William F., "Destruction of the Taino" in Archaeology. January/February 1992, pp. 51–56. Grenke, Arthur. God, greed, and genocide: The Holocaust through the centuries. New Academia Publishing, LLC, 2005. pp. 141–143, 200. Rosenbaum, Alan S. Is the Holocaust unique?: perspectives on comparative genocide. Routledge, 2018. p. 302. Donald Bloxham, A. Dirk Moses, The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, OXFORD UNIVERSITY press, 2010, p. 310. Norman M Naimark, Genocide a world history, OXFORD UNIVERSITY press, 2017, p. 39. Jones, Adam. 2006. Genocide: a comprehensive introduction. London: Routledge. pp. 108–111. In 1511, Antonio de Montesinos denounced the abuses against the indigenous people.
One rebel, however, successfully fought back. Enriquillo led a group who fled to the mountains and attacked the Spanish repeatedly for fourteen years. The Spanish ultimately offered him a peace treaty and gave Enriquillo and his followers their own town in 1534.
Sixteenth century
In 1501, the Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand I and Isabella, first granted permission to the colonists of the Caribbean to import African slaves, who began arriving to the island in 1503. In 1510, the first sizable shipment, consisting of 250 Black Ladinos, arrived in Hispaniola from Spain. Eight years later African-born slaves arrived in the West Indies. The Colony of Santo Domingo was organized as the Royal Audiencia of Santo Domingo in 1511. Sugar cane was introduced to Hispaniola from the Canary Islands, and the first sugar mill in the New World was established in 1516, on Hispaniola.Sugar Cane: Past and Present, Peter Sharpe The need for a labor force to meet the growing demands of sugar cane cultivation led to an exponential increase in the importation of slaves over the following two decades. The sugar mill owners soon formed a new colonial elite and convinced the Spanish king to allow them to elect the members of the Real Audiencia from their ranks. Poorer colonists subsisted by hunting the herds of wild cattle that roamed throughout the island and selling their hides.
The first major slave revolt in the Americas occurred in Santo Domingo on December 25, 1521, when enslaved Muslims of the Wolof nation led an uprising in the sugar plantation of admiral Don Diego Colon, son of Christopher Columbus. Many of these insurgents managed to escape to the mountains where they formed independent maroon communities, but the Admiral had a lot of the captured rebels hanged.Jose Franco, Maroons and Slave Rebellions in the Spanish Territories, in "Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas", ed. by Richard Price (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 35. Latter that decade, there were other rebellions of enslaved Africans.Jose Franco, Maroons and Slave Rebellions in the Spanish Territories, in "Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas", ed. by Richard Price (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp. 38-40.
While sugar cane dramatically increased Spain's earnings on the island, large numbers of the newly imported slaves fled into the nearly impassable mountain ranges in the island's interior, joining the growing communities of cimarrónes—literally, 'maroon'. By the 1530s, cimarrón bands had become so numerous that in rural areas the Spaniards could only safely travel outside their plantations in large armed groups. When Archdeacon Alonso de Castro toured Hispaniola in 1542, he estimated the maroon population at 2,000–3,000 persons, living mainly on the Cape of San Nicolas, in the Ciguayos, on the Samana peninsular, and on the Cape of Iguey.