Atlantic Transformations by Dale W. Tomich;

Author:Dale W. Tomich; [Неизв.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2020-10-25T20:00:00+00:00

Figure 8. Coffee bean sheller. (Source: Catálogo Ilustrado de Tredwell y Jones. AGN-RD.)

Immigration and Indenture

Most export agriculture proposals to the Crown involved the prospect of immigration. These plans often detailed schemes of semifree contract labor, moralization schema, and, invariably, white supervision. The Spanish media wrote approvingly of such proposals, suggesting that “freed blacks, African prisoners, Chinese coolies, and Irish settlers” would all be ideal laborers for the colony, under the watchful eyes of Spaniards.75 Specifics varied. A cotton capitalist sought tools and the importation of emancipados to labor on his land; he deferred to the “wisdom of the government” on how to proceed. His own land, already planted, could be “a small example of the richness and fertility of this virgin land,” he urged, adding that “with a little manpower, the land could produce torrents of richness.”76 The proposal of another cotton planters association urged, “the island was a source of inexhaustible riches that only needed the strength of … colonization based on the principles of morality, police, and order” to thrive.77 The proposal suggested that black laborers were adapted to the hot climate and that, under watchful white discipline, they would bring the province prosperity. “One thousand or more apprentices of the African nation … are the only race who can make Antillean soil productive,” the letter writer argued. These “apprentices” would be signed “of their own spontaneous will” to ten- to fifteen-year contracts cultivating cotton and tobacco, “under the same conditions and regulation that Asian colonization has taken place in the neighboring island of Cuba.” To oversee the African indentured, the company promised to bring in one “Spanish head of family … individuals of good customs, morality, and intelligence” for every ten contract laborers. The association could pay for machinery and nominal taxes for each Spanish colonist, he boasted, as long as land was provided for ten years for free.

The details of one individual’s ambitious railroad proposal to connect the Cibao Valley forty miles to the northern coast exemplifies the “racial knowledge” that typified the proposals Spanish authorities received. The railroad industrialist effused antiblack sentiment and fantasies of “coolie” docility. For the hard labor of construction, he called for ten thousand indentured men and women “from Calcutta, Hong Kong, or Cuba,” specifically because of the perception that Asian laborers would stay separate from black Dominicans and would also thus serve as a racial bulwark against Haiti.78 He maintained that these subjects would be more adapted than European emigrants to the climate, and that they might have “convincing moral and political influence” for the entirety of the colonial endeavor, not just the proposed regional railroad. In Cuba, these laborers had “consistently demonstrated that they are not to be confused with the enslaved African race,” one high official insisted, concurring.79

From the very first days of the reoccupation, Spanish officials and private white industrialists called for large-scale white immigration, too, most often to oversee indentured nonwhite laborers. Authorities liked the idea of Spanish immigration particularly. Individual Spanish settlers might apply for support, and authorities passed laws welcoming white settlers identical to Cuba’s.

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