A Frontier Defined by Skin Colour: Controverted Relations Between Haiti and the Dominican Republic (17th-19th Century)

Abstract

After the peace treaty of Ryswick in 1697, Hispanic-French neighbourhood in Hispaniola was complex, given the circumstances in which the Spanish exit from the West of the island happened, as well as the context of the birth of French Saint-Domingue. A new element added to political rivalry in the 18^th Century: ideological opposition between a reactionary Spain and a revolutionary France. Everything complicated in the summer of 1791, when Saint-Domingue’s slave revolution made the Spaniards identify the western neighbour not only as revolutionary and French, but also as black. Things worsened after the birth of the Republic of Haiti in 1804, the first black independent country in History. The independence of the Dominican Republic came for decades later, and despite its hybrid ethnic identity, the Dominicans would turn their non-negritude into their main symbol.