Ian Bell has written the first book-length study of the Dominican Republic by an Englishman. The book thus provides new perspectives and is refreshingly free of the biases and hangups that often pervade the writings of United States authors on the area. In writing his analysis, Bell, who served as British ambassador in Santo Domingo from 1965 to 1969, has used a variety of British sources that offer fresh and interesting insights. His liberal use of the reports of the famed British traveler Robert Schomburgk—to my knowledge the first time these reports have been used in any history of the Dominican Republic—not only provide new information on the early independence period and the nineteenth-century caudillos Báez and Santana, but also serve to complement the observations of American traveler Samuel Hazard, who also wrote a classic book about the country at about the same time.
Bell’s study is divided into four parts. The background materials on “The People” are competently done, though unoriginal. The historical section is also familiar, except for the Schomburgk observations. Part Three, “Social Conditions,” and Part Four, “The Economy,” are detailed, original, and the best parts of the book. The author has a wealth of data on which he draws, and the presentation is clear, analytical, and insightful. There are few factual mistakes. The author has clearly done his homework.
To say that a British author does not have the same hangups as most American authors writing on the Caribbean is not to say this is a totally unbiased book. Almost quaintly, the author calls for fair play in Dominican politics, condemns Dominican politicians for thinking in terms of their own self-interests and not the interest of the nation, laments the “disease” of military interventionism, and prescribes a political system that bears striking resemblance to Britain’s own. Perhaps Ambassador Bell was constrained from saying very much about the political system of the country in which he served, but it must be remarked that the political analysis in the book is by far its weakest section.
Ambassador Bell’s book invites comparison with another volume by a former diplomat who served in Santo Domingo, the memoir of former United States Ambassador John Bartlow Martin. Bell’s book is mercifully shorter, for one thing. It concentrates almost exclusively on social and economic issues, while Martín wrote in excruciating detail on the day-to-day politics. The different focuses reflect the different time periods and preoccupations when these respective books were written, and the different perceptions and interests of the two countries these ambassadors represented.
Bell’s book is a welcome addition to the literature on the Dominican Republic. What is missing is a better political analysis and a clearer statement of what a British ambassador actually does in a country where the United States presence is so overshadowing.
