[1844 - 1865] The First Republic and Spanish Annexation

On the night of February 27, 1844, the air in Santo Domingo was thick with a nervous energy, a mixture of tropical humidity, fear, and intoxicating hope. A cannon shot shattered the stillness, not a signal of attack, but of birth. This was the 'Trabucazo', the shot fired by Matías Ramón Mella at the Puerta de la Misericordia, the definitive cry for freedom. On the nearby Puerta del Conde, the blue, red, and white of a new flag, the Dominican flag, was hoisted for the first time by Francisco del Rosario Sánchez. The 22 years of Haitian unification were over. The Dominican Republic was born.

This new nation was the dream of a generation, crystallized by the intellectual visionary Juan Pablo Duarte and his secret society, La Trinitaria. They envisioned a sovereign, democratic republic, a radical idea in a world of empires and strongmen. But dreams and reality are often warring siblings. The fledgling republic, with a population of barely 150,000 scattered across a rugged landscape, was immediately forced to defend its existence. From the west, Haitian forces, unwilling to accept the secession, launched repeated invasions. The Dominican people, a mix of ranchers, farmers, and artisans, rallied. At the Battle of March 19th in Azua and the Battle of March 30th in Santiago, Dominican forces, led by generals like Pedro Santana, miraculously repelled the larger, more experienced Haitian armies, securing the nation’s fragile borders.

Victory in the field, however, could not quell the turmoil within. The ideals of Duarte clashed with the ambitions of the military caudillos, the powerful men who had led the armies. Chief among them was Pedro Santana, a wealthy cattle rancher from the east. He was a man of action, not ideas; a pragmatist who believed the nation was too weak to govern itself. To him, Duarte's democratic principles were a dangerous fantasy. In a move that would define Dominican politics for a century, Santana seized power, declared himself the first president, and swiftly exiled Duarte and the other founding fathers. The very men who had birthed the nation were cast out, their dream hijacked by the sword.

Life in this First Republic was a study in contrasts. In the capital, Santo Domingo, stone walls built by the Spanish centuries earlier still enclosed the city. The elite, a small circle of white and light-skinned families, lived in colonial-style homes with interior courtyards, dressing in imported European fabrics. The vast majority of the population, however, was rural, mixed-race, and poor. Their lives revolved around the rhythms of agriculture. In the fertile Cibao Valley to the north, tobacco was king, its cultivation providing a crucial export. In the south and east, mahogany was felled and cattle roamed vast ranches. For most, life was a simple, arduous affair governed by the seasons and the local Catholic priest. The central government was a distant, often predatory entity, its presence felt mainly through forced military conscription and taxes.

For the next decade and a half, the presidency became a revolving door for two dominant figures: Pedro Santana and Buenaventura Báez. They were bitter rivals, yet mirror images of each other—caudillos who commanded personal loyalties and saw the national treasury as their personal bank account. They ousted each other from power in a dizzying series of coups and counter-coups. To fund their armies and lavish lifestyles, they took out ruinous loans from European financiers, plunging the nation into insurmountable debt. With each change in leadership, the constitution was rewritten, political opponents were exiled or executed, and the promise of 1844 faded further into memory.

Haunted by the constant threat of a Haitian invasion and convinced of his people's inability to maintain sovereignty, Santana made a desperate, unthinkable decision. He believed the only way to secure peace and his own power was to shelter under the wing of a foreign empire. After secret negotiations, he offered the country back to its original colonial master: Spain. On March 18, 1861, Dominicans awoke to a nightmare. Their flag was lowered, and the red and gold of Spain was raised over the forts of Santo Domingo. The First Republic was dead. Santana, the nation's first president, was now its Spanish-appointed Governor-General.

The Spanish return was not a happy reunion. Madrid treated the territory not as a restored province but as a backwater colony. Arrogant Spanish bureaucrats displaced Dominican officials, the Spanish army lorded over the populace, and new taxes and customs regulations strangled the vital tobacco trade, enraging the farmers of the Cibao. The Spanish, fresh from a more racially stratified society, looked down upon the Dominican population's large mulatto majority. The protector had become an occupier.

Resentment simmered, then boiled over. On August 16, 1863, a small band of patriots led by Santiago Rodríguez Masagó climbed a hill in Capotillo, near the northern border, and raised the Dominican flag once more. This was the 'Grito de Capotillo', the cry that launched the War of Restoration. It was not a war of grand, pitched battles, but a brutal, attritional guerrilla conflict. Dominican 'mambises', led by brilliant commanders like Gregorio Luperón, used their intimate knowledge of the unforgiving terrain to their advantage, fighting a war of ambush and attrition.

The Spanish, with their disciplined formations and superior firepower, were masters of the open field but were helpless in the jungle and mountains. An even deadlier enemy stalked their ranks: yellow fever. The tropical disease felled thousands of Spanish soldiers, wreaking more havoc than any Dominican blade or bullet. The war was incredibly costly for Spain, both in blood and treasure, and wildly unpopular back home. After two years of relentless fighting, facing a determined populace and decimated by disease, Madrid cut its losses. In July 1865, the last Spanish troops departed. The Dominican Republic had, incredibly, won its independence for a second time.

The nation was free, but the cost was immense. The land was scorched, the economy was in ruins, and the treasury was non-existent. The heroes of the Restoration soon fell to infighting, and the specter of the caudillo, temporarily banished, returned to haunt the political stage. The nation had been born in fire, betrayed from within, and then reborn through a crucible of war. The First Republic was a turbulent, tragic, yet heroic chapter, a 21-year struggle that forged the very soul of the Dominican identity, proving that the desire for sovereignty, once tasted, could never again be extinguished.