Best book I read about the history of the DR is Why the Cocks Fight by Michelle Wucker
First and last chapter are very boring but the rest if the book is a good read.
My Dominican friends that have read it have commented that is the most accurate book they have read covering the topics in it.
Happy reading to you
The biggest issue with that book is that the author (who isn’t Dominican or Haitian, so in a way this is from the outside looking in) goes to great length to project various types of reasons and ignore to very simple but crucial facts.
1. The DR became independent from one of its immediate neighbors while most countries in the Western Hemisphere became independent of countries in the other side of the world.
2, Dominican independence was achieved by one of its neighbors attempt to control and suppress Dominicans. Almost all countries in the region never went through that.
3. The DR actually has one of the longest war of independence, but the DR never initiated a single one of the battles (plus all fought in Dominican soil vs Dominicans taking the fighting to Haiti itself, main reason foe that is that Dominicans go to war with another country only to defend itself but never to attack it.) The gist if it, 99% of Dominican wars were against Haiti due to invasion attempts from their part. Had those invasions attempt never happened, the only wars the DR would have in its historical record are the civil wars.
Even then, prior to the 1920’s internal strife in the DR often had the backing of the Haitian government. To give two examples of that:
1) Most internal strifes in the DR were fought with what was known “Belgian guns” (I don’t kmow if that was simply how they were called or if they actually were Belgian.) Every single Belgian gun imported into Hispaniola was done by Haiti, each and every single one.
2) The Haitian government gave backing to every single Dominican dissident. This included offering Haitian military soldiers to join, it actively published a newspaper in Spanish in Port-au-Prince that was distributed exclusively in the DR abd it said on the front page it was printed in San Juan de la Maguana when it wasn’t. All the stories there were of imaginary and the rebels were always the victorious. The whole purpose was to demoralize Dominicans by attempting to make it seem hopeless the pro-Dominican stance.
3) For many years the Haitian government had an anti-Dominican campaign that was spread via its diplomacy in other countries. This was exacerbated by the hermitic nature of the DR (until relatively recently there was not much effort to make the country known in most places beyond its borders.) The Haitian government would also make a diplomatic protest whenever a foreign power sided with the Dominicans regarding anything.
Haiti was one of the last countries to recognize the Dominican Republic as a legitimate government and country.
There really isn’t much else to it. Much of the previous stance and involvements Haiti had in the DR subsided in part because of the US invasion first of Haiti in 1915 and then the DR in 1916. The problems affecting the Haitian government since the end of Baby Doc’s regime has further removed (more like pause) its traditional anti-Dominican stance given it has more serious internal problems. Ever since Haiti’s intervention in Dominican affair, direct and indirect, began to be removed; the DR has seen its condition go from what was known as “the republic of revolutions” (due to political instability which plagued it up to the early 20th century) to seeing higher rates of economic growth and development. Sonething tells me if Haiti’s intervention in Dominican affairs would not had extended beyond the first few years of Dominican independence, things in the DR would had been more stable for a longer time allowing economic growth and development to accelerate well into the second half of the 19th century.
That along with the history of invasions and border disputes (claiming the Guava Valley -Hincha, San Rafael, San Miguel, Las Caobas, etc- was Haitian when in fact it was an integral part of the DR since the DR inherited the entire territory of Santo Domingo prior to the invasion of Boyer in 1822) is basically all there is to it. Until the early 20th century the DR and Haiti had an official enemy stance between each other. The boats with the flag of one fountry was not allowed to dock in the ports of the other country, to give one example. All of that started badically because of the Haitians since they initiated every conflict between both nationalities. The DR simply wanted was to be left alone.
