1844-02-27: (The Dominican Republic Declares Independence From Haiti, Ending Twenty-Two Years of Haitian Occupation and Creating a Border Conflict That Would…

1844-02-27: (The Dominican Republic Declares Independence From Haiti, Ending Twenty-Two Years of Haitian Occupation and Creating a Border Conflict That Would Define Relations Between the Two Nations Sharing Hispaniola for the Next Two Centuries): On February 27, 1844, revolutionaries in Santo Domingo led by Juan Pablo Duarte, Francisco del Rosario Sánchez, and Matías Ramón Mella declared the independence of the Dominican Republic from Haiti, ending twenty-two years of Haitian rule. The declaration was the culmination of resentment that had been building since Boyer’s invasion of 1822: resentment of Haitian-imposed land reform, of compulsory military service, of the suppression of Dominican cultural and religious institutions, and of rule by a government that many Dominicans perceived as alien despite sharing the same island. Rivière-Hérard led twenty-five thousand soldiers east to crush the rebellion but was defeated by Dominican forces and forced to retreat. The failure sealed his political fate. The Dominican declaration created a permanent fracture on the island of Hispaniola, a border between two nations whose histories were entangled but whose peoples had been taught by colonialism to see each other as fundamentally different. Haiti would attempt to reconquer the east repeatedly over the next fifteen years, and fail every time.