We Dream Together: Dominican Independence, Haiti, and the Fight for Caribbean Freedom by Anne Eller (review)

The history of Hispaniola is one marred by slavery, colonization, Euro-American competing interests, wars, and rebellions. The 1697 Treaty of Ryswick ceded the western part of the island (Haiti) to France. In We Dream Together, Anne Eller explores the unification and separation of the island during the early nineteenth century, Spain's annexation of the Dominican Republic, and the subsequent Restoration. Moving away from conventional narratives that merely focus on the conflicts in the island, the author argues that the relationship between the Dominican Republic and Haiti is more complicated and needs to be placed in an international context.

Eller's text is separated into two main sections. The first section examines the challenge the Dominicans faced in forging a new state following liberation from Haitian rule and how this resulted in annexation, and the second section looks at post-annexation colonization and resistance. In the first chapter, Eller shows how Dominicans navigated living in the shadow of both internal political revolutions, some inspired by Haiti and the competing interests of foreign powers such as the United Kingdom, France, Spain, and the United States. The president, Pedro Santana, was a dictator and executed many of his opponents, some of whom organized and sought a return to Haitian rule. Eller argues that Santana's push toward annexation was because he "hoped a foreign monarch would centralize the political administration, defeat opponents, and offer strong defense to external threats" (60). The second and third chapters discuss the process of making this island a Spanish province and the attempts to "reeducate" the Dominicans to conform to a certain way of life. Colored by racial prejudices that portrayed the Dominicans as lazy, the Spanish wanted to make them more "productive subjects" by bringing the people and "peasant labor" under the control of the colonial state. This program restructured all aspects of the lives of the colonized, including their religious beliefs. The promotion of Catholicism became synonymous with the promotion of Spain.

The fourth chapter turns to the new colonial project and Dominican opposition. Santana and his supporters claimed the opposition they faced was Haitian. He resigned in 1862 for health reasons. Eller fails to take a position on the actual reasons Santana resigned. The evidence she marshals in the book proves that his administration was a failure. The opposition against his government continued to mount, and the Spanish were disappointed with his leadership. Dominicans who had supported the annexation began to express reservations as the price of colonization became too costly. The author notes that "town clergy, even those who had initially supported Spain's arrival, resented their newfound role as tax collector for various sacraments" (134–135).

Some Dominicans suspicious of the Spanish mission decided in February of 1863 to overthrow the Spanish administration. The fifth chapter looks at this insurrection and the War of Restoration that ensued. The anti-colonialist fighters received widespread support from the people because of persistent rumors that the Spanish were going to reintroduce slavery. Opposition to Dominican colonization became an anti-slavery struggle. The resistance, Eller notes in chapter 6, was "not just armed struggle locally but a hemispheric defense of their right to self-determination" (185). By January of 1865, Spain had taken steps to accept defeat and withdraw its control over Santo Domingo.

The last chapter examines the end of Spanish rule. With failure eminent, Spain insisted annexation was a burden they accepted to bear as a benevolent mission. They argued that the failure of this colonial project was because "politically, socially, and religiously, the former republic was too different from the neighboring Spanish projects" (223). In the epilogue, Eller reveals that the end of Spanish rule did not usher a reign of peace for the island as it continued to face threats, some coming from the United States.

Eller's book is an important addition to the historiography on anti-colonial struggles. Her globalized perspective is insightful as...