In this book, _lvarez-L-pez details the history of revolution in the Dominican Republic, which was an infant independent nation struggling to preserve its political independence from Haiti and from the expansionist policies of northern European countries and the United States. In 1861, the Dominican Republic was annexed to Spain. The Spanish empire expansionist policy sought to preserve Cuba and Puerto Rico, and the acquisition of the Dominican Republic strengthened Spain's hold on the Antilles Empire. Spain's policies strengthened the political objectives of the Dominican ruling class, which were political stability and control of the political power under a Caucasian empire. While both these objectives were achieved, the new colonial experiment was a total failure. The exclusion of the native ruling class, over taxation, economic exploitation, coercive imposition of the Catholic Church customs, prejudice against blacks and mulattos led to war, ending with the defeat of the Spanish Empire. This defeat opened a revolutionary cycle in the Spanish Caribbean.

A Spanish friar documents the brutal treatment of Caribbean natives at the hands of colonial authorities in the sixteenth century. After traveling to the New World, Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas witnessed conquistadors wreak unimaginable horrors upon the Indigenous people of the Caribbean. He later dedicated his life to fighting for their protection. Following numerous failed attempts to reason with authorities in Spain, he chose to document everything he had seen over a span of fifty years and to give it to Spain’s Prince Philip II. In A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, Las Casas catalogues the atrocities he observed the Spanish colonial authorities inflict upon the native people. He discusses the brutal torture, mass genocide, and enslavement. He passionately pleas for an end to this treatment and for the native peoples to be given basic human rights.

Padrón reveals the evolution of Spain’s imagining of the New World as a space in continuity with Asia. Narratives of Europe’s westward expansion often tell of how the Americas came to be known as a distinct landmass, separate from Asia and uniquely positioned as new ground ripe for transatlantic colonialism. But this geographic vision of the Americas was not shared by all Europeans. While some imperialists imagined North and Central America as undiscovered land, the Spanish pushed to define the New World as part of a larger and eminently flexible geography that they called las Indias, and that by right, belonged to the Crown of Castile and León. Las Indias included all of the New World as well as East and Southeast Asia, although Spain’s understanding of the relationship between the two areas changed as the realities of the Pacific Rim came into sharper focus. At first, the Spanish insisted that North and Central America were an extension of the continent of Asia. Eventually, they came to understand East and Southeast Asia as a transpacific extension of their empire in America called las Indias del poniente, or the Indies of the Setting Sun. The Indies of the Setting Sun charts the Spanish vision of a transpacific imperial expanse, beginning with Balboa’s discovery of the South Sea and ending almost a hundred years later with Spain’s final push for control of the Pacific. Padrón traces a series of attempts—both cartographic and discursive—to map the space from Mexico to Malacca, revealing the geopolitical imaginations at play in the quest for control of the New World and Asia.

Engaging conventional arguments that the persistence of plantations is the cause of economic underdevelopment in the Caribbean, this book focuses on the discontinuities in the development of plantation economies in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic in the early twentieth century. Cesar Ayala analyzes and compares the explosive growth of sugar production in the three nations following the War of 1898--when the U.S. acquired Cuba and Puerto Rico--to show how closely the development of the Spanish Caribbean's modern economic and social class systems is linked to the history of the U.S. sugar industry during its greatest period of expansion and consolidation. Ayala examines patterns of investment and principal groups of investors, interactions between U.S. capitalists and native planters, contrasts between new and old regions of sugar monoculture, the historical formation of the working class on sugar plantations, and patterns of labor migration. In contrast to most studies of the Spanish Caribbean, which focus on only one country, his account places the history of U.S. colonialism in the region, and the history of plantation agriculture across the region, in comparative perspective.

Explores the history, context, and consequences of the major changes that marked the Caribbean between Columbus' initial landing and the Great Depression. This book investigates indigenous commercial ventures and institutions, the rise of the plantation economy in the 16th century, and the impact of slavery.