Dominican Republic Influence

The island of Hispaniola, of which the Dominican Republic forms the eastern half was initially inhabited by Arawak natives from the Orinoco delta region of South America before the Spanish arrived in 1492 as part of Columbus’s first expedition to the Americas. In the ensuing conquest the native people of the island were all but destroyed by war and disease and in 1510 the Spanish began importing slaves from Africa to deal with the growing labour shortage in the country’s increasingly important sugar plantations. In 18212 the Spanish portion of the island declared itself independent but was subsequently occupied for 22 years by Haitian forces, during which time slavery was officially abolished. Following the end of Haitian occupation the Dominican Republic was ruled by a number of liberal and conservative governments as well as a brief renewed period of Spanish rule between 1861 and 1865. Over time the country gradually became incorporated into the US sphere of influence who occupied the country from 1916 to 1924. From 1930 to 1961 the Dominican Republic was under the rule of the brutal, US-backed dictator Rafael Trujillo, who was assassinated in 1961, prompted a period of instability in which in 1963 the popularly elected leftist President Juan Bosch was overthrown in a military coup and in 1965 US Marines deployed to prevent his return. …show more content…
Since then the Dominican Republic has seen relative stability and sustained, though highly uneven, economic groups under a series of governments of both President Bosh’s Democratic Liberation Party and of the right-wing Social Christian Reformist