English

Abstract

This article considers two key moments in the Dominican War of Restoration (1863-1865), fought against the Spanish reoccupation of the territory after annexation in 1861. The course of the fighting demonstrates how residents of the former republic had a keen sense of regional context. Specifically, Dominicans were acutely conscious of the ongoing threat of slavery that surrounded them and the attacks and reversals of the period in general. Documents reveal that memory of the institution also persisted in the territory itself. New archival research promises to reveal more about popular thought of the era, as well as bonds of connection to citizens (and institutions) in Haiti. The War of Restoration is an example of these connections, exhibiting ideologies of political federation whose roots extend to the beginning of the century. It is a story that connects the radicalism of pan-Caribbean visions of the period of the Haitian Revolution and continental independence to movements at the end of the nineteenth-century and beyond.