A Missionary Nation: Race, Religion, and Spain's Age of Liberal Imperialism, 1841-1881 by Scott Eastman

Author:Scott Eastman [Eastman, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS001030 History / Africa / North, Spain & Portugal, North, HIS045000 History / Europe / Spain & Portugal, General, Europe, history, Africa, Caribbean & West Indies, HIS041000 History / Caribbean & West Indies / General
ISBN: 9781496204165
Google: fvw8EAAAQBAJ
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Published: 2021-10-15T23:49:49.615812+00:00

Buceta was demoted in September and given command of the reserves.52

Turnover within the Spanish military took place at an alarming rate, and few successful campaigns impeded rebel actions. Carlos de Vargas took control in Santo Domingo for Rivero on October 23 after having sent a classified communiqué to Madrid asserting that pacification could not take place without reinforcements.53 The official replacing Serrano in Cuba, General Domingo Dulce, bitterly criticized the entire venture as a campaign dominated by terror: “The people neither desire not want to be ruled by their former metropole. . . . Because the Dominican nation was not able to oppose the 1861 declaration, they protested with a savage war” sustained ever since. This “forced annexation,” he intoned, must cease.54

Other challenges included illicit arms smuggling, as in the case of two Dominican men who purportedly procured weapons and gunpowder from Nassau, Bahamas, in late 1863. The Spanish blamed the Americans and Germans for aiding the shipment, disguised as a commercial vessel loaded with wheat headed to Cap-Haïtien through the Turks Islands. Spain increased its naval presence in the area, as its forces cruised the coast between Puerto Plata, Monte Cristi, and the Haitian border to try to intercept such smuggling operations.55 In spite of attempts at a blockade of the entirety of the Dominican coast in October, and again in November, one reporter opined that “there is very little hope of ultimate success.”56 British officials scoffed at news of a major Spanish naval operation: “Nothing which can be regarded as an effectual Blockade of all the Ports of Santo Domingo has in fact been established by . . . Spain; that there are no more than three Spanish vessels of War at three places immediately off the Port of Santo Domingo . . . the whole coast, and every Port is under the command of the insurgents.”57

Spanish diplomats countered bad press with a bit of dissimulation and rosy assessments of counterinsurgency victories. One riposte, reprinted in the London Gazette, responded to British pronouncements: “The Blockade in question is maintained at the present moment by twenty-three vessels of war, frigates, and schooners, a number of which, besides being sufficient for the purpose, could be increased by the squadron anchored at Cuba. On the other hand, the insurrection is now limited to the province of Seybo, the coasts of which are so strictly watched that all vessels endeavouring to aid the rebels have been captured.”58 Álvarez argued that the chaos sowed by the insurgents would be their undoing: “The revolutionary Government is unable to prevent the excesses” of the various guerrilla factions, headed by men like Chivo, that “continued to rob and assassinate unarmed civilians.” “If military operations were conducted with vigor,” he predicted, the Cibao would no longer be engulfed in a state of anarchy, and Santiago would be back in the hands of the Spanish army. Yet he was aware that the ongoing instability could provide an opening for the Americans to intervene were their civil war to finally come to an end.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.