1821, November 30 – 1822, January: (The Conquest of Santo Domingo: Boyer’s Eastern Gambit): As seen by Boyer, two external obstacles still threatened the sec…

1821, November 30 – 1822, January: (The Conquest of Santo Domingo: Boyer’s Eastern Gambit): As seen by Boyer, two external obstacles still threatened the security of Haiti: a European flag — that of Spain’s Ferdinand VII — again flew over Santo Domingo, which Haitians called “La Partie de l’Est,” and worse still, Haiti’s independence, though won at sword’s point, remained unrecognized by France and therefore by the rest of the world. In late 1821, Santo Domingo was splintered into four factions: one loyal to Spain, the second seeking independence, the third proposing union with Bolívar’s Gran Colombia, and the last — mostly noirs in the North who had for years been cultivated by Henry Christophe — urging union with Haiti. On November 30, 1821, headed by Don José Núñez de Cáceres, a junta declared Santo Domingo free of Spain and proclaimed a constitution under which the new state, “Spanish Haiti,” united itself with Gran Colombia, proposing a treaty of amity with Boyer’s republic. Disregarding the gulf between the slaveholding east’s Hispanic, monarchic, and Catholic institutions and Haiti’s French, African, and Jacobin traditions — with a population breakdown of roughly 50,000 whites, 50,000 mulattos, and 25,000 Blacks — the two parts of the island could hardly have been more different. Boyer sought the advice of Guy-Joseph Bonnet, who conceded on December 27 that annexation had immediate advantages — not least providing employment for idle and potentially seditious senior officers unemployed since the fall of Henry — but warned of the profound cultural incompatibility that lay ahead.