The Dominican Republic dates its independence from 1844 when civil war in dominant Haiti made it possible for the Spanish-speaking portion of Española to revolt. The history of Haitian brutality, the ignorance and the raw personalism of the young Dominican government inclined it toward a self-destruction that was guaranteed by foreign intrigue and intervention. In 1858 the dictator, General Pedro Santana, began secret negotiations to turn the republic into a Spanish protectorate, ostensibly to prevent another Haitian invasion. Santana had to overcome rebellion and the tacit opposition of a large majority of the Dominicans to carry out his scheme, but in 1861 the deed was accomplished, and the Spanish flag once more flew over the land that Columbus loved.
The occupation was hopeless. Ineptitude in Spain, quarrels between peninsulars and fifth columnists, and the ravages of yellow fever combined to encourage rebellion within a matter of months. In September, 1863, a provisional government announced the restoration of the Dominican Republic. José Salcedo was chosen president and Ulises Espaillat minister of foreign relations. Within two years the government of the Restoration, as it is now called, drove the last Spanish troops and officials from the island.
Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi, one of Latin America’s most productive scholars, helped the Dominican Republic celebrate the centennial of this Restoration with several works. Actos y doctrina del gobierno de la Restauración is the fifteenth volume of the Dominican Academy of History which began its publications in 1955. Primarily it is a reproduction of the Boletín Oficial of 1864-65, published by the Restoration Government in Santiago. The Boletín printed all of the documents concerning the war; Actos includes the proclamations, editorials of the philosophy of the revolution, resolutions, and decrees. Essentially military documents are excluded from Actos and reprinted in another work of this centennial, Diarios de la Guerra Dominico-Española de 1863-1865. Actos contains more than the Boletín offered, however. The editor included any significant documents that he could find which pertained in a non-military sense to those years. Readers now have easy access to such items as the Act of Independence of September 14, 1863 (like so many others, resembling the justification of 1776), the charges of treason against Santana, a small amount of diplomatic correspondence, and many of the decrees needed to carry on a revolutionary government.
In Naboth's Vineyard (probably the best-known work on this period) Sumner Welles had to rely heavily on the correspondence of United States foreign officers and the memories of former officials of the Dominican Republic. A comparison with these new volumes indicates the surprising accuracy of Welles’ work, at least for the preGrant days.
Diarios de la Guerra Dominico-Española is a compilation of official military journals collected in the archives of Sevilla, Segovia, Madrid, and Santo Domingo. Additional documents are in the possession of the editor. Interestingly the papers represent the Spanish army of occupation as well as the Dominican army of the restoration. Where the items are too skimpy the editor has added explanations. Further more he permits readers’ comparisons by setting off—when possible —journal items from the two forces concerning the same events. The accounts are frequently daily for weeks at a time Diarios is intended to complement Actos y doctrina; they belong together as a set although published with different sponsors.
Readers of the HAHR will have limited use for the above two collections unless they are doing specific research in that short period of the history of the Dominican Republic. This is not necessarily the case with Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi’s third recent work, Papeles de Espaillat. Not only does this documentary of Ulises F. Espaillat cover much of the nineteenth century, it also presents a side of the Dominican Republic which is too little known abroad and probably at home. Espaillat (1823-1878) served as a provincial deputy and lesser bureaucrat in his native province of Santiago. He was a doctor and an editor, and his liberal doctrine of government was probably the basis of the Constitution of 1858.
He served as a delegate to the convention that drafted that document. He approved the Act of Annexation to Spain in 1861, and presumably against his will, held office under the Santana government. Within a year he turned against Spain and Santana. Captured, he was sentenced to exile, but pardoned. He was one of the signers of independence in 1863 and became a general as well as the foreign minister of the Provisional Government. The next year he served briefly as vice president and played a significant role in trying to persuade Isabel II to withdraw her troops.
In the post-war years he dared to guide his nation away from the old path of alternating dictatorships. He opposed the numerous flirtations with foreign powers and was especially disappointed by the behavior of the United States during the Grant-Báez negotiations. In 1876 he became a reluctant but successful candidate for president. Báez and others constantly intrigued against him, and he resigned within a few months when civil war endangered the welfare of the whole nation.
Papeles gives only a few sketches of Espaillat’s life. It provides instead a wide assortment of writings by and about him that demonstrate Espaillat’s role as supreme statesman-philosopher for an unhappy land.
