The Dominican Republic is a Caribbean country that occupies the eastern two-thirds of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. The western one-third of Hispaniola is made up of the country of Haiti. To the north lies the North Atlantic Ocean, while the Caribbean Sea lies to the south.
Explored and claimed by Columbus on his first voyage on December 5th, 1492, the island of Quisqueya, which Columbus named La Hispaniola, became a springboard for Spanish conquest of the Caribbean and the American mainland.
Before Columbus, the island was inhabited by the Taínos, an Arawakan-speaking people who had arrived around 10,000 BC. Within a few short years following the arrival of European explorers, the population had been significantly reduced by the Spanish conquerors.
Most of what we know about what happened to the natives came from the writings of Bartolomé de las Casas, who arrived in Hispaniola as a layman who then became a Dominican friar and priest. As historian Dani Anthony writes, Las Casas arrived in Hispaniola in 1502, and soon became a land and slave owner, joining military expeditions against the native peoples and becoming a priest in 1510. However, after Las Casas’ participation in the violent and destructive Spanish invasion of Cuba in 1513, he began to view European interference in native affairs as illegal and amoral.
His most famous book, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, described the atrocities committed by the colonizers against the indigenous peoples.
Bartolomé de las Casas
In 1606, the King of Spain ordered the depopulation of the west part of the island due to high rates of piracy and smuggling.
In 1697, Spain recognized French dominion over the western third of the island, which in 1804 became Haiti. The remainder of the island, by then known as Santo Domingo, sought to gain its own independence in 1821, but was conquered and ruled by the Haitians for 22 years; it finally attained independence as the Dominican Republic in 1844. Today in the Dominican Republic, independence is celebrated every year on February 27 after a month of festivities.
Stock characters are represented in the Carnival. This one is the Diablo Cojuelo, a sataric reflection of evil
There was a brief return to Spanish colonial status before the Dominicans permanently ousted the Spanish during the Dominican War of Restoration of 1863–1865. The United States occupied the country between 1916 and 1924. As Daniel Immerwahr writes in How to Hide an Empire, the goal of the U.S. was to gain temporary control of Dominican finances (thus ensuring repayment of its debt to US banks) and ensure political and financial stability, leaving sovereignty formally intact.
Most Dominicans, however, greatly resented the foreigners, few of whom spoke Spanish or displayed much real concern for the welfare of the republic. A guerrilla movement was fought from 1917 to 1921 against the United States occupation.
After World War I, public opinion in the United States began to run against the occupation. In 1924, control of the republic returned to Dominican hands.
Beginning in 1930 the people suffered from the murderous dictatorship of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, who ruled until his assassination in 1961.
Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, 1952
His 31 years in power, known as the Trujillo Era (Spanish: El Trujillato) to Dominicans, are considered one of the bloodiest eras ever in the Americas. It was also a time of an enforced personality cult, with monuments to Trujillo erected in abundance. Trujillo and his regime were responsible for many deaths, including between 20,000 and 30,000 Haitians in the infamous Parsley massacre, a mass killing that took place in October 1937 against Haitians living in the Dominican Republic’s northwestern frontier and in certain parts of the contiguous Cibao region.
The Dominican government claims it has moved toward representative democracy, although Dominicans themselves aren’t so sure.
Legal Legacy 
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