- Thread starter bachata
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From the Mother Land, Spain.
You're right - infractions being issued, and the next person who takes this thread off topic will feel my wrath.
We all know that, but why did Spain made that initial decision? Even afterwards much effort was made to expel the French, including various massacres committed against them on the northwestern part of the island as well as on Tortuga.
In an attempt to save the island from foreign influence. It backfired, but te intention was the complete opposite. Same reason why Spain later encouraged the settlememt of the island from the mid-1600s onward in an attempt at containing the expansionist tendencies of the French from the west.
It was also an attempt to save most of the island from French influence that in the mid to late 1700s the King of Spain passed legislation giving Dominican tobacco preferential treatment. In fact, the cultivation of tobacco actually spread out from the traditional areas of Santiago and La Vega. Even Cotui became a producing area.
The opening of the ports of Puerto Plata and Montecristi to free trade for 10 years was also an attempt to help the island.
The insurrection of the Haitians against the French was actually supported with an active role by the Spanish government. In one of the memoirs pf a French planter even says that the Spaniards auxiliary forces used to invade the northern part of Saint Domingue and attack the French, including initiating the massacre of the French of Fort Liberte, were nothing more than 'our very own slaves.' Of course, that too was a mistake because later on Toussaint et al treasoned the Spanish/Dominicans by siding with the French and then attacking the very hands that helped them when they were in need; any similarities with what we are seeing now, despite all the help we gave them during and after the earthquake, can't be seen as merely coincidental.
Even during the time of 'Espa?a Boba' there is evidences that at least in the beginning the island was given certain preferential treatment, such as granting Spanish SD the right to have its own diputado at the Cortes disregarding that the territory lacked the minimum population level to have one. Technically Spanish SD was suppose to be represented by the diputado of Puerto Rico, but being the 'Primada de Am?rica' and the 'Madre de las provincias espa?olas de Am?rica' was enough to grant Spanish SD a right that not even the provinces in the Iberian peninsula itself had. The Real Audiencia de Santo Domingo was even re-established for the sole reason that it was the first one in America, had it not been for that the island was going to be under Havana's rule.
There are many other details that, tacken in their totality, points towards Spain having done much to favor the island. Much backfired, but had they known what the results would had been, you would be hard pressed to not believe that those decisions would had never been taken, especially the devastaciones.
When Saint Domingue went up in smoke and many of its French inhabitants ended up in eastern Cuba, as soon that it was discovered that the French planned to massacre the Spanish population in eastern Cuba in order to them demand that eastern Cuba be ceded to them (basically turning Cuba into Santo Domingo part II; the French were for the most part expelled not just from there but also from Puerto Rico. Then came their expulsion from the Spanish part of the island, an endevour that received the approval from the Spanish governor of Cuba and especially from the Spanish governor of Puerto Rico. There is even a letter where Juan S?nchez Ramirez tells the governor of Puerto Rico that due to the events that took place he didn't know if to consider himself a Spaniard or a French or what. The governor of Puerto Rico's response was that you are all Spaniards because that island 'has always been ours,' his exact words.
So, things are much more complicated, but Spain definitely did a lot to favor the island and to keep the territory for as long as it could. Spain herself was not in the best of shape during the most critical part of Spanish SD's history with herself being invaded by the French and later on her whole empire falling apart all at the same time.
Just saying...
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I'd love to discuss this on depth, but I can't do so on this thread (specially not after receiving such a reprimand from AE), so if you'd open another with this premise, I'd be immensely grateful, thanks.
Some people claim that bachata derived from bolero. That was the most popular genre during the colonial period of the DR, especially during the final decades. Even today bolero has a decent following among Dominicans.
Sample of bolero (Los Panchos is a Mexican group).
[video=youtube;7Cp0tjTQv6M]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cp0tjTQv6M[/video]
Very funny!
To make the case for the topic of the thread, I will simply quote Prof. Juan Bosch...
"Espa?a nos trasmiti? todo lo que ten?a; su lengua, su arquitectura, su religi?n, su manera de vestir y de comer, su arte militar y sus instituciones jur?dicas y civiles; el trigo, los ganados, la ca?a de az?car, y hasta los perros y las gallinas".
"Spain transmitted to us everything that she had; her language, her religion, her ways of dressing and eating, her military art and her judicial and civil institutions; the wheat, the cattle, the sugar cane, and even the dogs and the chicken."
P. 16, Composici?n Social Dominicana
Samuel Walton said that bolero was one of the main music genre among the population of the Spanish side of the island. That was in 1810, 46 years before that guy was even born.