Realism in 19th Century America

In 2019 Tanisha M. Fazal and Paul Poast published an article in Foreign Affairs titled “War is Not Over.” The article argued that war is alive and well despite some arguments to the contrary and that the field of IR has been skewed by World wars I and II.

[…] World Wars I and II have severely skewed our sense of what war is. Scholars and policymakers tend to view these conflicts as emblematic of war. They are not. Most wars are relatively short, lasting less than six months. They tend to result in 50 or fewer battle deaths per day—a number that pales in comparison to the figures produced during World War I (over 5,000 dead per day) and World War II (over 7,000 per day). In fact, if one excludes these two outliers, the rates of battle deaths from the mid-nineteenth century until 1914 are consistent with those in the decades since 1945.

There have, in fact, been a number of great-power wars since 1945. But they are rarely recognized as such because they did not look like the two world wars.

They also note that interstate conflict can come out of intrastate conflict — wars like those in Korea and Vietnam led to the US and China coming to direct combat. One of our cases comes into being in this manner.

As a result of our skewed baseline, there are several conflicts and regions that have been neglected. I mentioned Latin America as one such neglecting before. There have been interstate conflicts in the Western Hemisphere; they have flown under the radar for their lack of great power participants and World War-like chaos. I hope to begin the change in that.

There is also a movement in the history field to take a more hemispheric approach by viewing the entire American continent as one unit, instead of dividing it between the United States (and Canada) on one hand, and Latin America and the Caribbean on the other. Looking at interstate conflicts in the Americas allows for this hemispheric approach, as well as finally adding some variety to the IR field with non-great power warfare.

The Mexican-American War, the Paraguayan War (or War of the Triple Alliance), and the War of the Pacific all touch on these issues. The Mexican-American and Paraguayan Wars bridges cultural gaps; the United States represents the North American, anglo-sphere, while Mexico is Spanish-speaking and in many ways, the heart of Spanish-speaking Latin America. The Paraguayan War includes Portuguese-speaking Brazil along with Spanish-speaking Argentina and Uruguay facing off against Spanish and Guraní-speaking Paraguay. Border changes were significant in each as well, with Mexico losing about half of its territory to the US, Bolivia becoming landlocked, and Paraguay losing significant territory too.

As far as casualties go, in So Far from God, John S.D. Eisenhower states “Of the 104,556 men who served in the army, both regulars and volunteers, 13,768 men died, the highest death rate of any war in our [US] history,” in regard to the Mexican-American War. The Paraguayan War was the bloodiest war in South America’s history, with Paraguay’s losses estimated around 300,000 by some sources.

With conflicts this costly and impactful, there is no reason they shouldn’t be utilized as case studies in International relations to expand the universe of analysis and test hypotheses. So with that said I will analyze these three conflicts using IR realism. All three cast studies allow for excellent examples of internal and external balancing. Internal balancing takes center stage in the Mexican-American War leading to the US’s victory, and also plays an important role in the War of the Pacific with Chile prevailing over its opponents. External balancing is the most important factor in the Paraguayan War, although Paraguay did have internal balancing factors working in its favor.

Mexican-American War

The war between neighbors gives us a clear window into war and how different factors must be taken into account. The war was the result of, and resulted in, the US gaining territory at Mexico’s expense. The US was on a quest to the Pacific and Mexico was in its way. So when James K. Polk came to the White House, he was determined to make good on his goal of extending the borders to the Pacific Ocean.

This was a war fought, for the most part, on Mexican soil. So naturally Mexico enjoyed a home field advantage. The country also had an advantage of numbers. Not only were there more Mexican soldiers on the fields of battle, there was also the added advantage of Mexican civilians. But this seems to be where the favors ended for Mexico. The first Mexican negative and American opportunity was the administration of territories. Alta California and Nuevo Mexico were for all intents and purposes autonomous regions under a Mexican flag. Alta California wasn’t even administered as a single de facto unit, with Pío Pico operating around Los Angeles and José María Castro holding sway over the north at Monterey. These territories were also sparsely populated with the population density of California, in 1846, being one person per twenty-six square miles with the population coming to roughly 25,000 people and only about 10,000 being white.

As a result, Eisenhower notes:

Manifest Destiny, in practical terms, was far from unrealistic, for the territories the United States coveted were nearly empty, and the people living in Texas, New Mexico, and California were already enjoying a state of semiauntonomy within the republic of Mexico. They constituted the portion of the old Spanish Empire where “Spain’s imperial energy had faltered and run down…”

While Mexico was troubled with leadership problems — Santa Anna was exiled and took power again during this period, and there was plenty of infighting among military leadership — the United States was able to field a, not perfect, but effective authority to execute the war. The quality of the leadership was higher for US forces as well. The war is famous for being a sort of training ground for the future leaders of the American Civil War, but Winfield Scott led a brilliant amphibious invasion of Mexico and campaign to occupy Mexico City. Zachary Taylor fought well in Texas and Northern Mexico, stonewalling Mexican forces which resulted in Santa Anna combating the American invasion with diminished manpower.

The United States, according to John S.D. Eisenhower, fielded much better organized, disciplined, and motivated forces than Mexico, “but in some instances, as at Buena Vista, Mexican numerical superiority was so great that decimation of the American force would have been inevitable save for one factor: superior weaponry and the ability to use it.” The United States’s naval power also fits into this internal balancing equation. Using the navy in critical operations in the western theater to capture California and to invade Mexico at Veracruz and support ground forces tipped the scales that much more in its favor and against Mexico, which had no naval capabilities worth speaking of. When it comes to internal balancing, in this instance the United States was masterful. Taking on negative aspects such as fighting on foreign soil with outnumbered forces, the US took on this mission with superior artillery, small arms, and organization, along with leadership that put it in a position to prevail. Mexico failed to keep pace technologically or tactically and strategically and suffered defeat.

Paraguayan War

The Paraguayan War, also known as the War of the Triple Alliance, was fought between Paraguay on one side and an alliance of Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay on the other. Like our previous case, it ended with a total victory by the Triple Alliance. The first thing to notice here is the external balancing. Brazil, Argentina, and Colorado-led Uruguay aligned themselves to take on Paraguay; and Paraguay wasn’t able balance externally, being forced to do battle on its own after the defeat of the Blancos. This alone was enough to be the deciding factor.

War began after the creation of Uruguay and the subsequent civil war between the Blancos and Colorados, with Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay all jockeying for influence in the new state. After the Colorados prevailed, the Paraguayan War kicked off.

The Paraguayan War is a pretty simple example of how balancing, or lack there of, can determine the outcome of a conflict with certainty. And how far misunderstandings can go, leading to complete disasters.

First, let’s take a look at the Triple Alliance, the best example of external balancing during the conflict, and one of our two cases of the phenomenon. Unnatural allies Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay formed an alliance to combat Paraguay. It could be argued that this alone was enough to secure a victory for the allies. Paraguay was in no position to counter this. With the Triple Alliance formed, for all intents and purposes, Paraguay was surrounded. The human resources if the alliance dwarfed those of Paraguay as well. The allies could call on three times the personnel that Paraguay could; during the battle of Corrales, Argentina “outnumbered the Paraguayans by over eight to one…”

The three nations, bringing their powers together, also had use of a sophisticated navy and were able to use a combined land and naval strategy to over power the Paraguayans.

Paraguay, on the other side, was dealt a very limited hand. It was already landlocked and had a smaller population. The smaller nation was able to implement some hit-and-run tactics early on on land and in the rivers, being able to deal some blows to the Brazilian navy and shake the alliance’s forces on land. Another form of internal balancing practiced by Paraguay was with the structure of it’s military. In order to increase the manpower, universal conscription was implemented and Marshal López began to build up his military in preparation of a fight against his much larger neighbors. The Paraguayans were well-trained, loyal, and disciplined. But there was only so much upside to a military that was working with “the most antiquated flintlocks, unrifiled cannons, locally made sabers, and bamboo lances.”

The balancing that did and didn’t take place among the belligerent nations of the Paraguayan War determined the outcome almost before the battles began to take place. This was one of the most devastating conflicts in the Western Hemisphere, sharing that infamous distinction with the American Civil War.

War of the Pacific

The War of the Pacific is a conflict that has been widely overlooked. Sharing a nomenclature with the Pacific theater of World War II has contributed to this, but so has location and participants. The Andean region isn’t exactly as central to the world’s eye as Western Europe or the Middle East. Although William F. Slater devoted significant real-estate in Andean Tragedy: Fighting the War of the Pacific, 1879-1884 to explain the military consequences of the conflict, the balancing displayed during the War of the Pacific is informative. One can see how states behave while dealing with impending conflict.

The war began over contested claims to territories on the Pacific coast of South America that contain nitrates. Peru and Bolivia held de jure control of these provinces and Chile needed access. There were also geopolitical aspects to this conflict that Slater clearly explicates in his prose. The focus here, though, will be what the belligerent states did to strengthen themselves in an attempt to emerge victorious against their opponents.

It must be noted that because the participants didn’t learn the lessons of recent conflicts (American Civil War & Franco-Prussian War) they doomed themselves to repeat the mistakes. Using modern weapons with antiquated tactics spelled disaster for all involved. But to the balancing, the most obvious is Peru and Bolivia’s alliance. This external balancing instantly gave the allies a population advantage. The two states had as much as 100 times the combined population as Chile and as many as three times as many soldiers. But internally, both states struggled. Military composition, arms, and ineffective administration hindered both Peru and Bolivia.

On the other hand, Chile practiced enough self-help to eventually prevail. For starters, Chile had an officer corps that had been educated at its Escuela Militar. To go along with this educated officer corps, Chile also reorganized its army to have larger, more standard-sized infantry units; it also used standardized weapons. The allies lacked all of this, most damaging being the lack of standardized weapons that compounded their supply problems.

Although the naval campaign, from which Chile emerged victorious, neither of the participants really had much worth speaking of. Bolivia effectively had no navy and both Peru and Chile had disorganized naval forces that suffered from under training and heavy desertion rates. Chile arguably had a better officer class, but both employed foreign mercenaries and had navies composed of ships purchased from Great Britain and the US.

Chile prevailed in the War of the Pacific because of the internal balancing it practiced. Better training for its officer corps in both the army and the navy along with weapons standardization and better organization allowed it the overcome the Peru-Bolivia alliance and capture territory on its way to victory.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we can see how balancing affects the outcome of war. All of the victors effectively balanced internally and/or externally. The United States and Chile practiced self-help and prevailed over Mexico and Peru and Bolivia, respectively. On the other hand, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay combined forces and utterly overwhelmed a Paraguay that failed to balance internally.

By beginning to examine oft-overlooked conflicts such as these, new and existing hypotheses can be tested. Variety of cases will also add to the validity of findings. Work is being done, but there are so many possibilities.

Autumnal Notes from the Porch

The takeaway from this year: I read literature. Just about my entire adult life, the heavy majority of my reading has been non-fiction, particularly focused around the political science and history fields. This was a result of first a budding interest, then a subsequent desire to learn as much as possible a grapple with various concepts and understand the world more. And also maybe contribute to the literature in some way and aid in progressing it.

Outside of the novels I was assigned in high school and the very few I read afterwards I never really had a need or desire to explore literature. No time for it. I figured that I could determine good writing from bad writing through the works I was reading, and that was true to an extent. But for the first time I took an initiative and, in a way, fell into literature, fiction this year. The quality of the prose in a good novel is effortless. (The only two authors with comparable non-fiction prose that I’ve had the pleasure of reading are Ron Chernow and Shelby Foote).

The first day of my IR Theory course in grad school we spent a significant amount of time talking about writing. I remember reading the excerpts that were on the syllabus prior to class wondering if I had the write assignments. Nabokov was the first thing listed. Then I got to class and realized that I wasn’t the only person with that thought. But we quickly discovered the purpose. Our professor noted the general bad quality of prose in IR and stressed the need for quite simply “good writing.”

Well, what’s the best way to improve your writing? To read good writing. I started this blog after being engrossed in Albert Camus’s Algerian Chronicles. I believe my prose has become more fluid by osmosis. I’ve read several novels in translation and still I’m simply amazed by the prose of writers like Camus, Dostoevsky, Varlam Shalamov, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

It’s only up from here, I assume anyway. I have an idea for Words from the Ouachita, but there is still work to be done. It’ll open this up a lot. But that’s all for now. Until next time.

Lacking Latin America

Without a doubt there is a lack of Latin America in the International Relations and International Relations Theory fields. In my opinion, I wouldn’t say that Comparative Politics or History suffers from this problem at all. But Latin America is definitely the forgotten continent when it comes to IR. Open most journals and/or books and there will be plenty of content featuring Europe (from 1648 on up), Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Whether the topic is the Napoleonic era, World War I and II, or the Cold War, Europe features prominently. The Middle East and Africa even gets some Cold War action in addition to international jihad, civil war, and balance of power politics featuring the Saudi-Iranian relationship most prominently and a heavy dose of US action since the 9/11 attacks. Asia is usually centered around China and its relationship with the rest of the region. With that said, though, Latin America is still almost a niche in the field. Why so? I’d argue that it is a direct result of the US’s dominance of the western hemisphere.

So what do I mean by that exactly? The United States’s position of dominance has led to everyone turning a blind eye to the region simply because there is virtually no opportunity for outsiders to influence the region in a manner contrary to US interests, since the Cold War anyway. John Mearsheimer talked about regional hegemony in The Tragedy of Great Power Politics which is when a state can dominate its region. So far the US is the only state to do this. It has unrivaled power throughout the Americas and because of the stopping power of water, none of its competitors have posed a true threat of moving in on the continent since the Soviets during the Cuban Missile Crisis. US influence also leaves it with the “duty” to deal with events and crises on the continent. In a way, the Monroe Doctrine became ubiquitous, with other states implicitly abiding by it (the French did invade Mexico while the US was in the midst of its Civil War). Without a true threat of influencing the politics of the region, many have turned away. But that’s not all.

On top of this, Latin America has been relatively free of international wars. While this is a good thing for a population, it leaves the region in relative obscurity. Now Europe and the Middle East don’t lack for international wars. Outside of the Napoleonic and World Wars, there are major conflicts like the Franco-Prussian War and the Crimean War among a slew of others. If you want to take a Middle Eastern slant, there is the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the Iran-Iraq War, the Suez War, and the Six Day War among several others. I didn’t even list the more recent civil conflicts that have expanded into international conflicts (Syria, Libya, Yemen, Iraq). Outside of the War of the Pacific, the Paraguayan War, and the Mexican-American War there hasn’t been many significant international conflicts between states on the continent. The numerous civil wars that have troubled the American nations have largely remained confined within their respective state’s borders, contrary to the experiences in the Middle East. And like it or not, IR is driven by conflict.

What’s that flag?

While these are strikes against the region’s attractiveness for researchers in the field of IR, like I said before, there are no shortage of comparative studies (from single-N to large-N studies) and historical works. I’m actually reading an excellent journalistic account of the Salvadoran Civil War right now titled Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El Salvador written by acclaimed writer Raymond Bonner while he was a correspondent for The New York Times. (I may list some of my favorite reads later). Despite everything I’ve just written, though, there are still great opportunities for IR work to enrich the literature. With Mexico and Brazil both rising and dealing with similar problems there is a relationship ripe for attention. There are also international dynamics to the crime problems affecting the various states on the continent. Maybe greater progress could be made with IR scholars working on these problems in addition to the great work being done by comparativists and criminologists. And for the war-centric studies, there are those wars I mentioned earlier: the Mexican-American, Paraguayan, and Pacific Wars. Outside of some historical accounts, I haven’t seen much IR work on these conflicts. (I did offer my comments on an IR perspective surrounding the events of Haitian and Dominican independence here.)

It’s a wide open field just waiting for the gaps to be filled. Latin America is already tremendously interesting and important to the world, why not give it the attention it deserves? It’s about time the cases used for research are diversified a little anyway. As much as we can and have learned from the Cold War and World War II, there is so much more that has been untouched. And who knows what more a region as beautiful and complicated as Latin America can teach us?

How I Got into Latin America

Michael Reid called it the forgotten continent. In a lot of ways, that seems to be the case. Tap in to some international news in the US and all you’ll see is Middle East and Asia-centric news. Those are the hotspots right now, have been for the past two decades. Being a person interested in foreign affairs, I feel as if I naturally know more about the Middle East and North Africa by virtue of reading. Being in second grade on 9/11, for the majority of my life to read on international affairs has been to read on the Middle East. But while that’s interesting I knew next to nothing about the happenings just south of the border. And that seems to be the standard.

So that raises the question: how did a guy from south Arkansas become so interested in Latin America? The quick answer: playing around in high school led to a genuine interest and from then on, I was just in the right place at the right time.

The spark that led to my fire for Latin America (and the Caribbean for that matter) was taking Spanish my freshman and sophomore years of high school. In typical high school fashion, I didn’t take it serious at all. I treated both classes like a joke (I made sure I passed somehow though). Then when I got to college, a foreign language was a requirement. So I decided I’d take Spanish. The thought was “it’ll be difficult, but at least I can count to ten and tell someone my name.” To my surprise, though, I retained a ton of what I “learned” in the early high school years. Then my second year of college I was lucky enough to get a great Spanish professor that had just come to the school by way of Mississippi.

She nurtured my interest of the language. After I fulfilled my requirements for my major, I voluntarily took more classes. (I actually ended up lacking only one Spanish course ourse to be a double major in political science and Spanish). My interest in the language morphed into an interest of the habladores. A class on the history of Spain (en castellano) and learning little tidbits about countries in other Spanish courses led me to seek out literature on Spanish-speaking countries and people around the world. Then my professor convinced me to take the plunge and study abroad in Costa Rica.

I won’t inundate you with Costa Rica stories (I talked about it before), but I went down there looking like a deer caught in headlights and came back fully bought in on Latin America, particularly Central America. As I read more about the region I became aware that I could indulge my interest in International Affairs and relations, and history, along with the Spanish language in Latin America.

When it came time for graduation, I knew I knew that I wanted to attend grad school, but had no idea where. Luckily I had my professor. Since I wanted to stay stateside for school and wanted to key in on Latin America culturally and academically, she suggested applying to schools in Florida, Texas, and California. Long story short, the University of Miami 🙌🏾 accepted me and I was going to Miami all of a sudden after never considering it even for vacation.

Living in South Florida is the best of both worlds. I was immersed culturally just as much as when I was in Costa Rica. I was also able to get familiar with several groups: Cubans, Colombians, Dominicans, Venezuelans, Puerto Ricans, as well as nicas, ticos, catrachos among others (not to mention the Jamaicans and Trinis and Bahamians that became fast friends). After being frustrated with the Cuban, and other Caribbean (I had picked up on some patois too) dialects, I became very fond of and picked up a lot of Cuban dialect without even realizing it. My interest in coffee and cigars also aided me in fitting right in with everyone. I actually picked up coffee drinking and cigars while in Costa Rica interestingly.

Sharing these interests and my personality allowed me to connect with a ton of people. As I moved around the city, visiting different areas and neighborhoods, I learned so much about Latin America, the Caribbean, and the people. (Turns out there are a lot of similarities between southerners and our neighbors to the south.) After people opened up to me and accepted me, I was given access to different cultural and political perspectives. Whether that was the ubiquitous views of the Cuban exile community, those of recently arrived Cubans and Venezuelans, or even the street level politics of Jamaica, I was given a full spectrum of the Americas so to speak.

This combined with my school work ended up being a perfect combination. I decided to take a deep dive on internal conflict and Central America for research and ended up writing about about Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. During the Cold War era the region was the hotspot on the continent. One could say that the modern version of these countries were forged in the wars of this epoch. I submerged myself in a sea of literature, documentaries, and whatever else I could find to do this research. This was like the culmination of immersing myself in a culture I had come to love. A beautiful combination of my academic and personal interests.

Even now, I’m still connected. Cigars, coffee, history, food, friends all keep me connected. There is nothing better than ceviche. I could go on for days about how much I love it. I’m trying to perfect the art of café cubano to this day. And my deep passion for cigars always keeps me connected to soil and all the people that go into producing the magic fire sticks. That’s today’s session. ¡Hasta luego amigos! Catch me somewhere down south trading stories with some ticos when Americans can travel again.

Society

Every year I look over everything I’ve read throughout the year and I can usual pull out a general theme: 2014 – travel and exploration; 2015 – world history; 2016 – conflicts and political institutions; 2017 – revolutions and Central America; 2018 – left wing politics and love; 2019 – IR Realism and non-state actors. So what can I say about this year?

Society. Looking at my reading during this year, the general theme has been society. In addition to novels, I’ve been reading and listening to podcasts about Civil-Military relations. Also, in contrast to my usual focus on Latin America, I’ve taken more of an American and Russian angle to my “societal” reads.

I must say, this has been a welcome change. I usually read about people by proxy. Whether it’s states or non-stare actors, for the most part I only come into direct contact with people while reading biographies. But reading novels — and to a certain extent, civ-mil relations — I’m grappling with norms, frankly, with a frequency unfamiliar to me. Risa Brooks actually says “It’s time for scholars and practitioners to develop a normative framework for military professionalism that is better suited to the contemporary era…”

To begin with, I’ll speak to the Russian literature. I won’t stress it because I wrote on it before, but the central themes of all the works I’ve covered are loneliness, darkness, and harsh realities of survival. The Russians’ reputation as hardened survivors seems to have merit. And the frigid darkness that I seem to always think of when envisioning Russia comes through simply through the tone of the prose. The standouts have been Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales, and Vasily Grossman’s A Writer at War.

I must also mention Albert Camus. The most noteworthy work of Camus hasn’t been the oft-touted The Stranger or even the newly relevant The Plague, but his collection Algerian Chronicles. In it he makes some of the most compelling arguments against violence on a purely human level, which makes this book as relevant as The Plague in the United States today. As impressive as his prose is, his argument against the violence is equally good. He doesn’t go down the same road as most people do in situations of rebellion; he doesn’t make non-violence and respecting the grievances of the rebels mutually exclusive. Throughout the articles in the book he consistently acknowledges the grievances of the native Algerians while also stating that random people (both French and Algerian) shouldn’t fear losing their lives in random acts of violence against civilians. Some of his ideas should be more seriously considered and worked with intellectually to solve some problems we have today.

Moving on to civ-mil relations, I was first introduced to the field in 2019 when I came across an article by Peter Feaver in International Security titled “The Right to Be Right: Civil-Military Relations and the Iraq Surge Decision.” Feaver argued that President George W. Bush used a hybrid approach to the surge decision instead of either of the ideal types of professional or civilian supremacists. Afterwards I listened to War on the Rocks, Net Assessment, Bombshell, and several other podcasts that featured Feaver, Risa Brooks, Alice Hunt Friend, and other scholars in order to familiarize myself more with this world that I never knew really existed.

Most importantly, Civil-Military Relations needs to be a more accessible field. It is just as important as Comparative Politics and IR Theory, yet it isn’t as mainstream. Civ-mil may be one of the most important, understated, facets of our society right now. The norms are under just as serious a threat as any other institution in the US. With the increasing politicization of the military — whether it be former generals in senior civilian roles, serving with a military aura, or former generals speaking out against civilian leadership as a military professional instead of a private citizen — the norms need to reinforced or redefined for a future with civilian military relations that contribute to America’s society of civilian leadership and authority over the military.

Risa Brooks’s article “Paradoxes of Professionalism: Rethinking Civil-Military Relations in the United States” begins the conversation of redefining norms that have existed for decades. She offers a critique of Samuel P. Huntington’s The Soldier and the State, a book with a goliath-sized influence on the field of civ-mil relations. Huntington’s basic idea was that “[c]ivilian leaders would decide when and how to use force in international relations, and military leaders would plan and execute military operations pursuant to civilians’ goals.” In Huntingtonian thought, there is a clear separation of roles and they are not to be violated. This is also supposed to allow the military to adopt a professionalism that is completely free from electoral politics.

Brooks argues that the Huntingtonian model actually encourages military politicization and leads to the undermining of civilian control. According to the author “the reflexive self-identification of military officers as apolitical can encourage blind spots such that they fail to recognize the political content or impact of their actions.” Huntingtonian norms can also encourage political behaviors among the officer corps “by failing to clearly identify what constitutes such behavior and why it is intrinsically contrary to military professionalism.” The upshot is that military officers will believe that their actions are apolitical because they are apolitical by simple being officers, a natural tautology.

The existing norms can also lead to military ineffectivity. Because in this model militaries focus on tactical and operational objectives instead of strategic objectives, military leaders “may not even seem to absorb strategic failures, as long as metrics on the ground appear favorable.”

In order to maintain a good civilian leadership and authority over the military “[o]fficers need to be politically aware, so that they can distinguish negative and partisan behaviors that are contrary to civilian control from those that are essential to achieving strategic success and ensuring a healthy civil-military relationship.” Otherwise we could see some of the features we see in other countries develop in the United States. In my opinion this is one of the most important, underdiscussed issues in American society today.

It’s an interesting time. And somehow, no matter how far away I thinking I’m taking my mind from the rough and tumble issues of the day, my reading remains relevant.

Chapter 1: Introduction to Civil War and (Re)Building the State

In 2017 I successfully penned and presented my project at UM. It was a wild time and thinking back, I’m not sure how I pulled it off. The idea began to percolate mid way through my first semester and after I was finished with coursework I was determined to research and write a complete thesis in a little over three months. Through some foolhardy determination I was able to meet my goal. With the project I was able to teach myself a lot of things I didn’t know on the subject matter. I was also able to really find a groove on the basics of carrying out qualitative research. By no means would I claim that I made some field changing conclusions, but I think it is a solid project and can be useful on some level. Below you will find what should be the first in a series of slight reworks of the original manuscript: Volume 1.

Since the end of World War II the dynamic of warfare has been shifting from the international sphere to internal, or civil, conflicts. As civil conflicts have become more common, several questions have arisen, among them: How an these, often, bloody conflicts be ended? How can it be made certain that nations emerge from these wars with a strong, stable state that has the ability to avoid a relapse into conflict? Here I want to address a central question: How do the different aspects of a civil war — government prior to war, alliances, type of warfare, war duration, and method of war termination — affect the stability of the post-war state?

By answering this question, the problems plaguing multiple areas around the globe can be addressed in a much better manner. As can be seen in recent examples, including Iraq and Afghanistan among others, civil wars are the trend of conflict around the world to day, and many times although the conflict has been officially concluded, no long term peace is reached. The following work aims to assist in alleviating suffering around the world.

One of the more prominent arguments have been made linking civil wars and states is that of Monica Duffy Toft. In her work she pivoted from what was then conventional wisdom by asserting that, instead of ending civil wars by negotiated settlements, military victories were more conducive to state stability after civil war. She further argued that victories by rebel factions, as opposed to incumbents, lead to more stable post-war states and that those states were more likely to democratize.

Laia Balcells and Stathis N. Kalyvas have analyzed the relationship between warfare and war duration. They concluded that irregular/guerrilla wars endured for a longer period that either conventional or symmetric non-conventional wars. Symmetric non-conventional wars are the shortest of the three variants despite common assumptions.

Although these arguments are solid cornerstones within the literature, they simply do not go far enough. Toft’s argument is incomplete in that it only looks at one factor in the stability of states after experiencing civil war. Although parsimony has been lauded in theory building, some outcomes need more than one variable when explaining outcomes in order to grasp the full concept, hence the proposition to build upon the existing work of Toft in order to better understand how states achieve stability after civil wars.

Balcells and Kalyvas’s findings establish an important link between warfare type and war duration, but does not explicitly link these variables with the state’s stability after the conclusion of war. They do hint at a correlation between civil wars and the state in the conclusion of their co-authored article. They state that irregular wars occurring in stronger states “may serve to (perversely, from the rebels perspective) reinforce ultimately the states they challenge.” Conversely, conventional and symmetric non-conventional wars “tend to challenge states that are already weak or are on the cusp of failing” further degrading them, putting a spin on Charles Tilly’s famous argument by stating that civil wars make states.

Here I argue that the mechanisms of civil war– pre-war government, alliances, type of warfare, duration, and method of war termination — work together in a causal process resulting in the level of stability in post-war states. A causal pathway beginning with the pre-war government/regime leading to the post-war state is my proposition. The government prior to warfare determines how alliances are formed; those alliances go on to shape, and strengthen or weaken, the post-war state. On the other hand, the pre-war government also determines the type of warfare. The type of warfare, in turn, affects the length of war, which impacts the way in which the conflict is ended. From the method of termination, the causal path moves directly to the post-war state, working with the victorious alliance(s) in the (re)construction of the state.

I want to shift the focus of civil wars from the usual focus of the state and outbreak to the conclusion of war and the state after war. The state is often taken for granted and this is arguable one of the most significant shortcomings of a significant portion of academic work as well as policy making today. This will not only add an understanding of how the different aspects of civil war function together and influence one another, but also assist in understanding how states are (re)constructed after the traumatic experience of civil war.

Next, I will lay the ground work. Terms will be defined and the scope of my argument will be established. There will also be a brief review of the relevant literature. Subsequently, I present my hypotheses, then discuss the method and cases I will utilize in this study. Following this, the empirical work will be presented. A brief discussion of the empirical findings will proceed next, leading into the conclusion of the thesis which will include the policy implications of this work.

Groundwork

Civil War

Civil war is defined as “a violent conflict within a country fought by organized groups that aim to take power at the center or in a region, or to change government policies.” The desire of a particular region of people to separate themselves from the existing state is also a possible characteristic of civil war. Additionally, political scientists usually use a threshold of at least 1,000 killed during the course of the conflict to deem the violence a civil war as opposed to terrorism or simply internal political strife. With this definition, some conflicts that are commonly known as revolutions can be included in the universe of analysis.

Civil war has become a third (or developing) world phenomenon. Warfare has shifted from being characterized as interstate in type and located in the territory of world powers (Europe, North America, China, and Japan) to intrastate conflict, located in the periphery (Latin America, Asia, and Africa). According to T. David Mason, Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, and Alyssa K. Prorok, there are three types of civil wars, “categorized according to the goals of the rebels”: ideological revolutionary, ethnic revolutionary, and ethnic secessionist. Ideological revolutionary civil wars are driven by

issues that divide rebels from [the] government [that] usually concern matters of governance and extreme inequality in the distribution of land, wealth, income, and political power.

The conflicts are class-based and support is usually “mobilized around shared class identity and community ties among landless and land-poor peasants.”

Ethnic revolutions are similar to ideological conflicts in that the goal is to overthrow and replace the incumbent government, but emphasis is placed upon ethnicity instead of class as a principle identity among rebels. Many times though, “ethnicity and class coincide in ethnic revolutions,” with one ethnic group dominating the government and the economy with the other ethnic group(s) “relegated to subordinate status in the economy and political arena.” Ethnic secessionist conflicts, on the other hand, concern issues of ethnicity and land. “[R]ebels seek no to replace the incumbent regime, but to secede from it and create a new sovereign nation-state out of a portion of the territory of the existing one.”

Next, I will provide a few definitions of terms that are similar to civil war, but are not synonymous for further clarification. Revolution, closely related to civil wars, are defined as “observed mass mobilization and institutional change, and a driving ideology carrying a vision of social justice.” It is the “forcible overthrow of a government through mass mobilization (whether military or civilian or both) in the name of social justice, to create new political institutions.” Many revolutions and civil wars can manifest in the same situation, but this is not always the case. The two are often not the same.

State failure, a characteristic closely linked to civil wars, refers to “the implosion of the state” in short. In this, the state becomes an instrument of predation against its citizens because “politicians employ political power to levy resources from those who lack it.” Instead of utilizing the state apparatus to “enhance security, those in power use the state to promote their own interests,” leaving those outside of the state structure vulnerable and insecure. “[A] loss of the monopoly over the means of coercion” also characterizes state failure. Violence usually accompanies state failure, with “[p]olitical parties [becoming] political militias as elites transform them into military bands.” Sierra Leone, Somalia, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan stand as examples of state failure. Furthermore, terrorism refers to the application of indiscriminate violence against civilian targets; often present in, but not signifying civil war.

Pre-War Government

There are three government types considered here: full dictatorship, transitioning/semi-democracy or democracy, and full democracy. Full dictatorships can be of the personalistic or military variants or a combination of both. Democracies are systems of “governance in which rulers are held accountable for their actions in the public realm by citizens, acting indirectly through the competition and cooperation of their elected representatives.” Semi-democracies are regimes with a “mix of institutional characteristics, some democratic and others distinctively authoritarian.” I argue that previous type of government indirectly influences how the government is re-made or modified following civil war.

Type of Warfare

According to Stathis N. Kalyvas a type of warfare may be defined as “one variety of organized violence emphasizing particular armed forces, weapons, tactics, and targets.” According to Kalyvas nd Balcells, there are “three types of warfare that characterize civil wars”: conventional, irregular, and symmetric non-conventional warfare.

Conventional warfare can be thought of as traditional or standard warfare. It “entails face-to-face confrontations between regular armies across clear frontlines.” In this type of warfare both belligerents face each other in set battles. A “commonly shared perception of a balance of power between the two sides” is also necessary for conventional warfare to be possible. “In the absence of some kind of mutual consent (which entails some reasonable belief in future victory), no conventional battle can take place.” Among the most prominent examples of conventionally fought civil wars are the American Civil War (1861-65) and the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Conventional civil wars feature “conventional armies facing off along well-defined fronts,” and “have been highly unusual.”

Irregular warfare, on the other hand, “requires a choice by the strategically weaker side ‘to assume the tactical offensive in selective forms, times, and places.’” This occurs when one belligerent refuses to accept the basic rules of warfare. Irregular warfare may be alternatively labeled guerrilla war or insurgency. Irregular wars often transition into wars of attrition with the rebels attempting to outlast the state forces while simultaneously draining it of all its resources. Irregular/guerrilla wars can be summed up by what a Vietnamese communist told an American official in 1975: “One side is not strong enough to win and the other is not weak enough to lose.”

Another definition comes from Bard E. O’Neill, with him defining irregular warfare as:

a struggle between a nonruling group and the ruling authorities, in which the former consciously employs political resources (organizational skills, propaganda, and/or demonstrations) and the instruments of violence to establish a legitimacy for some aspect of the present political system which it considers illegitimate.

It is also characterized as a “form of warfare based on mobile tactics used by small lightly armed groups who aim to harass their opponent rather than to defeat him in battle.” Irregular wars also tend to develop in the geographic peripheries, but this is not a required feature of this method of warfare.

The third type of warfare identified by Kalyvas is that known as symmetric non-conventional warfare. This type of warfare is symmetrical in that it features irregular forces on each side, but non-conventional because all belligerent parties are irregular forces. Where conventional civil wars occur when “an existing army splits, either because of a failed coup… or because a unit of the federal or quasi-federal state… attempts to secede,” and irregular wars “emerge incrementally and often slowly from a state’s periphery,” symmetric non-conventional civil wars emerge out of, or accompany processes of state collapse. Somalia and Libya are among the most well-known examples of this method of warfare.

War Termination

Civil wars are notoriously difficult to end. Since 1945, the average duration of civil wars has been ten years, “with half lasting more than seven years.” Toft has identified three methods of terminating civil wars: outright victories by either incumbents or rebels, and negotiated settlements. The option(s) that include(s) outright victory by either the incumbents or rebels is known as the “give war a chance” option. It advocates “allowing belligerents to continue fighting until one side achieves a military victory.” This view developed out of opposition to those who advocated for negotiated settlements. According to this view, negotiated settlements have proven ineffective generally, with conflicts ended by this method more likely to recur than those ending in an outright victory by one of the belligerents.

Ending civil wars by negotiated settlements has been favored by policy makers since the end of World War II. “The core recommendation of this policy is to employ third-party resources — primarily in the form of economic incentives and good offices — to halt the violence and preserve the combatants.” Proponents of this make the assumption that “the sooner the violence is halted, the greater the collective benefit.”

A military victory can be signified by total destruction of a fighting force and/or its fighting capabilities, or a total surrender. A negotiated settlement is reached over negotiations by the involved belligerents, where mutually satisfactory terms are reached.

The State

The state is something that is often taken for granted — especially in the developed world — because states have been the principal organization of societies for such a long time. Max Weber established the most widely accepted definition of a state: “an organization deploying a legitimate monopoly of violence over a defined piece of territory,” or the “centralized source of authority that held an effective monopoly of military power over a defined piece of territory…” This state as a form of social organization is often referred to as a modern state, a term used here. China is regarded as the first civilization to develop a modern state, something it achieved nearly one thousand years prior to the emergence of such societal organization in Europe.

Several characteristics separate modern states from other methods of societal organization: 1) they possess a centralized source of authority; 2) that source of authority is backed by a monopoly of legitimate means of coercion, in the form of an army and/or police; 3) the authority of the state is territorial rather than kin based; 4) they are more stratified and unequal than other societies, with the ruler and his administrative state often separating themselves from the rest of society; and 5) they are legitimized by much more elaborate religious beliefs.

A form of state standing in opposition to the modern state is the patrimonial state. Where the modern state is impersonal, in a patrimonial state “the polity is considered a type of personal property of the ruler and the state administration is essentially an extension of the ruler’s household.” These have largely fallen out of use though, in favor of an updated, more modern method of state organization: the neopatrimonial state.

Neopatrimonial states have “the outward form of a modern state, with a constitution, presidents and prime ministers, a legal system, and pretensions of impersonality, but the actual operation of the government remains at core a matter of sharing state resources with friends and family.” These states have an underlying weakness that exists not because of lack of physical coercion, but because of its lack of legitimate authority and its inability to “deliver basic public services like health and education outside of cities” and to “maintain law and order an adjudicate disputes, or to manage macroeconomic policy.”

Neopatrimonial states are also notorious for their inability to monopolize force over their own territory, resulting in a weak state in many cases.

Underneath the surface of states, there are institutions. “Institutions are ‘stable, valued, recurring patterns of behavior’ that persist beyond the tenure of individual leaders.” Essentially, they are “persistent rules that shape, limit, and channel human behavior.” Returning to the earlier theme of difficulty in establishing states, political institutions develop slowly and painfully over time “as human societies strive to organize themselves to master their environments.”

There are two types of institutions: inclusive and extractive. Inclusive political institutions “make power broadly distributed in society and constrain its arbitrary exercise.” These institutions make it more difficult for some actors to “usurp power and undermine the foundations” of said institutions. Inclusive economic institutions are, in turn, constructed on “foundations laid by inclusive political institutions.”

While inclusive institutions foster economic growth, extractive ones prevent it. These institutions tend to empower and enrich a few at the expense of the masses. According to Acemoglu and Robinson, extractive institutions usually lead to “stagnation and poverty.”

The post-civil war state represents the state that is present after the conclusion of the civil war. The state is judged according to its ability to avoid succumbing to further war and the type of government and quality of institutions established in the post-war period.

Literature Review

Concerning pre-war regimes, generally, it is argued that “semidemocracies [or anocracies] are more prone to political violence than are either pure democracies or pure dictatorships.” Similarly, state failure is linked to transitioning democracies, while full democracies and full dictatorships appear to be more stable and less likely to succumb to state failure, or internal violence in general for that matter. This could be indicative of post-war state stability. If the post-civil war state becomes a democracy or dictatorship, it should be more stable, but if it is left somewhere between the two extremes — anocracy or transitioning democracy — war should be more likely to recur.

Fotini Christia has conducted work on alliance formation in civil wars. In Alliance Formation in Civil Wars, she delves into the “forces that determine [the] choices and outcomes” of alliances in civil wars. She argues that “alliance formation is tactical, motivated by a concern with victory and the maximization of wartime returns as anticipated in the political power sharing of the postconflict state.” In this book, she focuses on the interaction between the macro level (i.e. societal cleavages) and the micro level (i.e. individual incentives) and finds that the “key actors vis-à-vis warring group alliance formation and fractionalization are often local elites, operating at a ‘meso-level’ that links the national-level cleavages within individual motivations.” Christia also reveals new insights on “the motivations of warring actors during the conflict” which highlights the way in which “concerns about survival and division of postwar political control drive” alliances and fractionalization.

Michael J. Boyle has contributed to the literature on the link between post-war states and violence. In Violence after War he argues that there are two causal pathways that explain the onset of strategic violence in post-conflict states: the direct and indirect pathways. In the direct pathway

the existing combatants [from the concluded conflict] begin to employ strategic violence to spoil or renegotiate a peace settlement, to repress the losing side, or to expand the conflict to neighboring states as a way of achieving wider regional ambitions.

In the indirect pathway former combatants realize that they cannot “enforce compliance with their factions or splinters over the terms of the peace settlement.” The groups that result from the split vie for power and resources leading to strategic violence.

Strategic violence, also known as political violence, is “a violent act aimed at transforming the balance of power and resources within the state.” This is contrasted with expressive violence, which is “motivated by emotions, such as anger, rage, or grief,” and instrumental violence that is “driven by a cool calculation of means and ends and is directed toward criminal, personal, or other nonpolitical goals.”

Although strategic violence is political in nature, it is not synonymous with war which leads it to be overlooked many times. When “war” is absent, many presume that the violence is simple crime.

Even with this work conducted on civil wars, there is still a hole in the literature. No one has yet to examine the relation of civil wars in their totality and their relationship to the post-civil war state. I aim to fill this gap in the civil war literature.

Next I will introduce my hypotheses and detail how the causal mechanisms fit together in the proposed causal process.

Hypotheses

Here, I propose a causal process that hypothesizes a link from the initial independent variable (pre-war government) to the dependent variable (post-civil war state). Alliances, type of warfare, duration, and method of war termination all serve as variables within the causal process linking the pre-war government to the post-civil war state.

In my causal process, each variable influences the next in the causal sequence, as I aim to  establish causation. The chain flows in two directions, one following the path of pre-war government, type of warfare, duration, and war termination, concluding with the post-civil war state; the other from the pre-war government through alliances and directly to the post-war state.

Pre-war government begins the causal process. Government types include full dictatorship, full democracy, semi-democracy, or transitioning democracy. These government types will lead to the emergence of irregular, or guerrilla, warfare because of the concentration of power within the governmental regime. Democracies and semi-democracies will experience conventional war following the outbreak of civil war, while transitioning democracies will experience conventional or symmetric non-conventional warfare. If the semi-democracy has some semblance of state authority, there will be conventional war, but if there is a breakdown in state authority — as in the case of transitioning democracies leading to state failure — there will be symmetric non-conventional warfare.

The pre-war government will also determine the alliances formed that take part in the civil war. Ideology represents an intervening variable here, intervening between the pre-civil war government and alliances. Ideological considerations cause certain groups to align with one another in a situation that they believe will be ideologically fruitful in the long run. Power considerations also play an intervening role, with groups also wishing to swing the balance of power against certain factions and choosing to put ideology to the side in order to gain power in a civil war situation.

The first route continues from type of warfare to duration. Types of warfare, again, include conventional, irregular, and symmetric non-conventional warfare. Irregular wars are hypothesized to endure the longest of the three types and symmetric non-conventional, the shortest. Conventional wars fall in the midrange of this spectrum. Duration in turn affects the method of termination, with negotiated settlements being linked to longer conflicts and military victories being more likely to be achieved in shorter conflicts.

Method of termination, finally, directly affects the post-war state. In general, military victories are associated with more stable post-civil war states. Rebel victories, specifically, are linked to more democratic post-civil war states, while incumbent victories tend to lead to more authoritarian post-conflict states. This occurs because the incumbent regime, in an effort to prevent further internal disturbances, will attempt to strengthen its position, which in the end actually increases the chances for war recurrence, but no to the same levels as that of a negotiated settlement.

Returning to the other route of the causal sequence, alliances directly affect the post-civil war state because the ideologies of the various factions — in the case of a military victory — or the factions that take part in negotiations to reach a settlement, influence how the post-war state is (re)constructed. Depending on the ideologies of the factions, the post-conflict state can be made (or remade) in a number of ways.

Essentially, I am proposing a series of contingent hypotheses. First, the pre-conflict government determines the distribution of power which determines what alliances are formed and what type of warfare emerges. Ideology also has a role to play in determining what alliances are formed as well, with ideology working in conjunction with power distribution to create logical alliances between different factions.

Next, type of warfare determines the length of war, with irregular wars enduring for the longest amount of time, followed by conventional wars, and symmetric non-conventional wars. So, as type of warfare is determined by pre-war government type, and the lenght of war by type of warfare, pre-war government in essence determines the war duration, although indirectly.

Longer wars are more likely to end by negotiated settlements, while shorter wars are more likely to be concluded by military victories. I hypothesize that military victories by rebels will lead to the formations of the most stable post-conflict state, with those formed by incumbents also being stable, but to a lesser degree. States (re)established by settlements present unstable post-war states.

The dependent variable will be dichotomous: stable or unstable. States that manage to avoid war for at least ten years will be considered stable. Those that experience a return to war will be categorized as unstable. The other characteristics will be extraneous and evaluated independently, adding a qualitative evaluation of the dependent variable.

Starting with pre-conflict government, moving on to alliances — from alliances, through the ideology of the victors (in the case of military victories) and all belligerents (in negotiated settlements) — the state is affected directly; linking the pre-war state to the post-war state. Working in combination with the method of war termination, the alliances that either claim victory,or reach a settlement through negotiations influence the (re)construction of the state with those victorious alliances having the ability to shape the state in their own image with little resistance. With negotiated settlements, the power sharing leads to the state being beholden to different ideas about advancement, not affording the same opportunity as those with outright victors.

Methods and Case Studies

In order to tease out the causal mechanisms of my argument I will utilize comparative historical analysis, supplemented with process tracing. Comparative historical analysis is “defined by a concern with causal analysis, an emphasis on processes over time, and the use of system and conceptualized comparison.” The purpose of comparative historical analysis is to discover and test hypotheses by engaging theory with history.” In turn, this method of analysis can “inspire new theoretical formulations and stimulate new interpretations of historical cases.” Comparative historical analysis also allows for the uncovering of causal complexity among the interacting variable.

Here, I aim to answer a “big” question: How do the mechanisms of civil wars affect the post-civil war state? This research question is “about large-scale outcomes” that are important to specialists and the layman alike.

In employing process tracing, I utilize three instances of civil wars that have already been concluded: the Costa Rican Civil War (1948), the Sandinista Revolution (1978-79), and the Salvadoran Civil War (1980-92). Although these conflicts are not usually thought of in the same light (particularly that of Costa Rica) there are reasons for my comparison of these events. All three were ideological civil wars that took place during the Cold War. The nations in which they took place also share historical, cultural, and demographic similarities, as well as being located in the same region, in effect controlling for the factors. With these factors controlled, I can focus on the variance of the variables in the proposed causal process.

This also allows a certain level of external validity. Because the cases share the same temporal era, culture, reasons for war, etc., these factors will not pose a threat to validity and future tests of conflicts in different regions, cultures, and reason for warring, etc. would not be affected by the differences.

Costa Rica

Nicaragua

El Salvador

Nationalism and Power in the Caribbean

The Dominican and Haitian relationship is one fraught with conflict. Despite the period of unification, there are unresolved tensions that seem to stretch from the establishment of the colonies that became Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Although this is the existing — and widely accepted — theory of the relationship, the opposite is the case; the majority of the people of Española viewed themselves as part of the same nation, only coming to view themselves as separate peoples in more recent times and as a result of elite machinations, and much later.

With a little scratch beneath the surface this becomes clear. Today there is plenty of published work that displays this fact. Historians like Anne Eller, Ada Ferrer, etc. have all written on the topic. To further expand the literature, I began with the Dominican Declaration of Independence — the document that declared the Dominican Republic a nation separate from Haiti. What was the language this document used? Did it reflect the division we all know so well today? There is also evidence that a fraternal relationship between the two nations lasted deep into the nineteenth century.

Closely studying this epoch also raises other questions. As a student of international relations, Española in the nineteenth century was an important piece in international politics. Spain sought to boost its power on the international stage and bring itself into the conversation of great powers once again. Britain, France, Haiti, and the United States also had power ideas for the island as well, each for different reasons. While Britain aimed to limit slavery and Spanish power, France was attempting to regain a foothold in the Americas and the United States wanted to expand and secure its dominance of the hemisphere. Haiti, on the other hand, was angling for its survival as an independent nation free of slavery.

As a historical case study we can observe the development of nationalism and power politics by examining nineteenth century Española. In this essay we’ll first delve into the development of Haitian and Dominican nationalisms and the creations of both nation-states. Second we’ll analyze the power politics that occurred around the island and how the different states jockeyed for power in the creation and maintenance of the two nation-states on the island.

One Island, Two Nations

Haiti and the Dominican Republic are the only Caribbean nations that share an island — with Haiti occupying the western third of Española and the Dominican Republic the eastern two thirds. The “eternal” or “fatal conflict is often attributed to Dominican anti-black racism and a clash of cultures — with Haiti embodying African and French cultural traditions and the Dominican Republic carrying on the cultural legacy of Spain. It is also explained as the legacy of the Haitian “invasion” and “occupation” of the western side of the island (1822-1844), or simply the inevitable outcome of history. Many of these supposed causes have been addressed in the scholarly literature.

Michele Wucker characterized the relationship between the two nations of Española as a cockfight. She argues that the violence associated with this sport — which is popular in both countries — can also be observed in their national cultures. From an American perspective, “[o]bserving Haitians and Dominicans… is not unlike being a spectator at a blood sport,” as like cockfighting, politics “is a battle of strategy, endurance, and aggression played out on a national stage.” According to Wucker, cockfighting symbolizes both community and division, celebrating combat and the brotherhood created by the sport. She contends that like a cock fight, the Dominican-Haitian struggle is a competition for domination of territory, with the island of Española as an arena for the two competing nations that “share a history of violence that has been compounded by their confinement.”

In “Not a Cockfight,” Samuel Martínez targets Wucker’s work. He aims to dismantle two misconceptions: 1) that “the citizens of Haiti and the Dominican Republic are consumed with animosity toward their island neighbors,” and 2) that “the two nations are engaged in some sort of contest for control over the island.” He argues that culture and history are not the central sources of tension between the neighboring countries, but that anti-Haitian feelings within the Dominican Republic have their roots in “elite-produced anti-Haitian propaganda,” that was reinforced by “resentment built through decades of labor market competition with cheaper and more easily disciplined immigrant workers.”

There is also an argument that is referred to as the “prototypical narrative of 1822-1844,” which Anne Eller summarizes as:

Haiti’s president for life, Jean Pierre Boyer, is repudiated as an autocrat, the flight of a number of elite Dominican families is bemoaned and the moment of 1844 independence is reifiednot only as a consolidation of national telos, but as a genesis of a lasting anti-Haitian resentment ever thereafter.

Eller’s research proves that this narrative is false. Even after separation from Haiti there was still collaboration between Haitians and Dominicans especially during the Domincan War of Restoration (1863-1865).

The Dominican Republic is the only nation in the only nation in the Americas to celebrate its independence not from a European colonial nation, but from another former colony: Haiti. This makes the process of achieving independence a focal point of the current tensions between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Another question arises: Could the respective processes by which Haiti and the Dominican Republic gained their independence be a driving force in the relations between the neighbors?

The fact that the animosity between the two nations seems to be fairly one-sided takes prominence as well: there is no equivalent to the Domincan anti-haitianismo in Haiti. What are the causes of this disparity?

Consequently, I propose that analyzing the Dominican 1821 and 1844 Declarations of Independence with reference to the history of the island’s unification (1822-1844) can uncover a new dynamic in the origins of the relationship between Haitains and Dominicans. The period from 1822-1844 is traditionally cited as the source of tensions between the populations; a period that manifested their ascribed racial and cultural differences.

Looking at this period in comparison with the process of Haitian independence, and with reference to the Haitian Declaration of Independence and early constitutions will demonstrate how the Haitians perceived their own actions and how they viewed Dominicans on the eve of the so-called “occupation.” Analyzing the Domincan process of independence from Haiti — concentrating on the 1844 Declaration of Independence — will reveal how Dominican nationalists viewed the same event and how the epoch reached its conclusion. This will also shine light on identity issues and other points of conflict that arise on Española throughout time and how the work of a small, subversive group of elites led to the development of these anti-Haitian feelings.

First, the process of Haitian independence will be taken up, with emphasis placed on the 1804 Haitian Declaration of Independence. After achieving independence, Haiti became a beacon of freedom and emancipation for subjugated people across the hemisphere. This affected how Haiti, as a state, was perceived by Haitians, as well as by the future Dominicans of Santo Domingo. There are also other aspects of Haiti’s founding that can be linked to its relations to the future Dominican Republic.

Next, my focus will shift to the eastern side of the island, centering on the first two independence movements of the Dominicans, with a close analysis of the 1844 Declaration of Independence. Here I find that neither of these movements suggests the antagonism that has existed, and been back-projected, in the post-1844 era, nor do they bear out the metaphor of two cocks locked in a fight for dominance of the island. The language of the Declaration, in fact, was not aggressive or anti-Haitian at its core, but amiable and simply called for separation and independence from Haiti for the proposed Dominican Republic.

Finally, I will conclude this discussion on identity, discussing how the foundations of anti-haitianismo were laid in 1844 by a small group of usurpers and the irony of the current state of relations.

The Beacon of Freedom

“The law, he [Pétion] said, was clear: slavery could never exist in Haiti, so the men could not — by law — be slaves.”

On January 1, 1804 Haiti declared its national independence, making it the second independent nation in the western hemisphere and the only republic ever founded by former slaves. Independence was the end result of a movement, now referred to as the Haitian Revolution, which began in August 1791. From this point forward, Haiti became a focal point of debates over slavery throughout the Atlantic world.

Haiti was vehemently opposed to the institution of slavery, and was “fully committed to maintaining emancipation permanently in [its] territory.” Examples of this intolerance for slavery can be seen in the Declaration of Independenceand early constitutions. The Haitians did not fight for independence until after a decade following the initial 1791 slave revolt against France because of the threat of re-enslavement. “We must, with one last act of national authority, forever assure the empire of liberty in the country of our birth; we must take any hope of re-enslaving us away from the inhuman government that for so long kept us in the most humiliating torpor. In the end we must live independent or die.”

Furthermore, after independence this commitment to emancipation and abolition continued. The Haitian Constitution of 1816 included an article — Article 44 — that stated “All Africans and Indians, and the descendants of their blood, born in the colonies or in foreign countries, who come to reside in the Republic will be recognized as Haitians…” This literally made Haiti a beacon of freedom and sanctuary for enslaved peoples in the region, with some escaping masters to sail to Haiti and slave owners asserting that Haitian coasts would become “a place of protection and refuge… for the encouragement of slaves to run off with the shipping.”

This anti-slavery ideology is one of three motivations for Haiti extending its domain over the entire island. The eastern side of the island had a population composed of about 38,000 freed slaves, “most of them mulatto artisans and day laborers,” and approximately 30,000 black slaves. The white population numbered only about 35,000. Contrary to what occurred in Saint-Domingue/Haiti, the mulattos did not constitute an elevated class in Santo Domingo because of the nature of Spain’s colonial system and as a result blacks and mulattos made “common cause.” Because of this, after 1804, Haitians wished to free those enslaved in Santo Domingo. Haiti was invited by blacks and mulattos to enter Santo Domingo in 1821, in fact, and this brings us to the second reason for unification: Haiti saw the entire island as its territory.

Although Haiti’s self-proclaimed status as a refuge for those enslaved seemed contradictory to the Haitian sentiments expressed in the Declaration and other documents, it does not appear so in the case of the unification of Española. Haiti’s Declaration of Independence states:

Let us ensure, however, that a missionary spirit does not destroy our work; let us allow our neighbors to breathe in peace; may they live quietly under the laws that they have made for themselves, and let us not, as revolutionary firebrands, declare ourselves lawgivers of the Caribbean, nor let our glory consist in troubling the peace of the neighboring islands.

This appears to negate all efforts to spread its liberation ideology, but Haitians had viewed the entire island as their territory since 1801 after Spain ceded the colony to France in 1795 under the Treaty of Basel and Toussaint Louverture effectively ruled it. The French Republic viewed the polity as “one and indivisible,” and that was codified Article 9 of the treaty. In 1801 Toussaint established a constitution for the island and the “first article of Title I of the Constitution…” claimed territorial unification of the whole island, something that would be “reproduced in all subsequent Haitian constitutions until 1843.” So Haiti seizing control of Santo Domingo was not an invasion in the eyes of Haiti or the Haitian people; rather, it was taking control of land that had been theirs since before Haitian independence.

Although I am proposing that Haiti’s rule over the island was not a simple invasion and occupation, I am not implying that complaints against Haiti’s rule in Santo Domingo were unfounded. Both the east and the west had grievances against Boyer during this twenty-two year period of unification and in some cases collaborated in opposition to Boyer. There were definitely problems with Haiti’s governance during this period that led to the birth of the Dominican Republic, including issues of: race, land, language, and governance.

Race is an important factor in Haitian-Dominican relations as it was used to “describe national origin and political allegiances” in Haiti. While Haiti viewed itself unquestionably as a black nation (with a small, powerful mulatto class), Santo Domingo’s racial identity was more ambiguous with a majority African or “mixed Creole” population. Dominicans’ concept of blackness is very different from that of the Haitians. Blackness in Santo Domingo became associated with slavery and Haiti, and as a result, “Dominicans have, for the most part, deneied their blackness.” Outsiders also sometimes considered Dominicans, racially, something other than black. But identities are complex and black and mulatto Dominicans who were enslaved and freed definitely supported the takeover by Boyer and the Haitians as a coming of rights and equality.

In addition to this, Haitians viewed whites as foreign because of the nature of their history. Laws categorized all Haitians as black and declared that only nationals could own property in Haiti, effectively prohibiting whites from land ownership. This disparity caused problems that eventually contributed to the independence movement in 1844. Disputes over land titles in combination with other problems of governance caused people in the east to eventually conspire to separate from Haiti.

In many respects, Haitian governance of the unified island was poor. The Boyer government became increasingly authoritarian, with power becoming increasingly concentrated in his position. As opposition against Boyer grew in the early 1840s, he proved “incapable of tolerating political dissension within the Chamber of Deputies,” dismissing the most outspoken legislators. Haiti was “a sort of republican monarchy, sustained by the bayonet.” Because of this trend, liberals on both sides of the island began to oppose the autocratic tendencies of the state.

There were also problems between Haiti and Dominicans culturally. President Boyer “did not attempt to assimilate residents of the eastern part of the island through coercive means, but rather he sought to co-opt y gradually incorporating them into the Haitian republic” The Haitian state desired to create a “nation with a homogeneous sense of ethnic identity,” but was not strong enough to accomplish this. A language barrier is also frequently mentioned as a problem between the two nations. During the unification Haiti made many efforts to lessen the linguistic gap between Haitians and Dominicans including creating a committee for “the privileges of ‘Spanish Haitians,’” where they elected members to the National Assembly and provided translations. The real problems came from questions of land ownership, mentioned before, and taxes.

Haitians also levied taxes against Dominicans in an effort to pay the indemnity to France in order to maintain national independence. Dominicans “bristled at being saddled with the payment of such an astronomical sum” that they did not consider their responsibility. Discontent with Haitian rule “arose primarily after 1836, when a major global economic downturn made the weight of taxes imposed by the Haitian government seem less bearable to the residents of the East.” These issues of land ownership, governance, and taxes led to the independence movement of 1844 that resulted in the separation of Haiti and the new nation known as the Dominican Republic.

The Frustrated Older Brother

“Very true is that if the eastern part belongs to any domination other than that of its own children, it would be to France or Spain, and not Haiti, because the easterners have more rights to dominate the westerners, than the other way around, if we go back to the early years of the discovery of the immortal Columbus.”

The Dominican independence movements of 1821 and 1844 suggest how Haitian-Dominican relations could have developed in ways other than what the island has seen. The documents that were produced by the two movements and that served as their respective declarations of independence provide points of analysis that suggest that relations between the neighboring countries were not rooted in Dominican hate of Haiti’s culture, race, and language. However, there were seeds in the language utilized that, in the wrong hands, could be used to promote what has become known as anti-haitianismo. Now the documents will be placed in their proper historical context and analyzed.

In 1821 there was an independence movement that resulted in the brief, first independence of Santo Domingo from Spain as Spanish Haiti. This period, known as la independencia efímera (the ephemeral independence), lasted only two months and nine days.

In 1809, after almost a decade of French rule, Dominicans “expelled the French, and invited Spain to resume control of the province.” From then until 1821, Spain ruled, establishing a period known as España Boba (Stupid Spain). This period was the source of the 1821 independence movement that was led by José Núñez de Cáceres. That year, Núñez de Cáceres declared the independence of Spanish Haiti with the intention to merge with Simón Bolívar’s Gran Colombia. The España Boba period also relates to the unification of the island in 1822 in that it re-established “old race- and class-based policies of the past.” This return to past Spanish policies pushed a large number of people to favor unification with Haiti, which eventually caused Núñez de Cáceres to peacefully capitulate.

There are two striking points of emphasis in the 1821 document: neglect of the colony by the imperial Spanish power and the small size of and limited inclusion of the masses into the movement drafting the declaration. In contrast to the great number of signatories of the later movement, La Trinitaria, this movement only produced eight signatories. The movement’s lack of inclusiveness and conservatism led directly to its failure to retain independence. In response to this lack of inclusion, a group composed of “black slaves, freed blacks, mulattos, and some agricultural livestock sectors in the northern part of the country” that advocated for unification with Haiti assembled.

The 1821 movement also placed much emphasis on the poor governance of Spain after its return to power. This, in combination with the examples of Haiti, as well as what had happened on the American mainland, helped provide motivation for the movement. To the people of Santo Domingo, although the colony was the first in Spain’s new world empire, it had become the “last one in advancement and progress which constitutes the peoples’ well being.

The problem with the movement surfaces in other aspects of the text. The 1821 declaration is very much the work of a conservative elite. There is a display of a strong connection to Spain that demonstrates that the ideas behind this came from Spanish creoles.

Being loyal to Spain, bearing with subdued patience Spain’s contempt, not living, not moving, not belonging to us, but to Spain, was everything and the only thing on which we built our happiness, the fame of our virtues, and the recompense of the most distinguished services.

This would make one think that the demographic composition of the colony was more similar to the United States at the time of its independence than that of other Caribbean islands. But quite the opposite proved to be the case.

In fact, after Toussaint Louverture took control of the entire island much of the Spanish population fled. Jonathan Brown, contributor to The Dominican Reader noted that with the change of governance

… almost all the large Spanish planters gathered together their effects and left the island. Great numbers sailed for Cuba — others for the Spanish colonies upon the continent of America — and none of the ancient white population were soon after to be found in the Spanish territory, except the lower class of citizens in towns and the herdsmen of the country.

At this time, freed people were more numerous than those enslaved.

Furthermore, the population along the frontier with Haiti, or Saint-Domingue earlier, had frequent contact. A class of peasants emerged along the border area during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century called the monteros. The monteros were a “byproduct of the affluence of the interior contraband economy and the lack of effective control of the mountainous hinterlands.” This relates to the complaints that the independence movement had against the Spanish metropole for its poor governance.

Escaped slaves — maroons — also abounded in this region. They often worked with the monteros. In a famous example, a maroon community named Le Maniel was populated by escaped French slaves and led by others coming from the Spanish part of the island. In another case, during the Boca Nigua Revolt (1796) on the larget sugar plantation in Santo Domingo, there was contact between people of Saint-Domingue in the west and the salves of Santo Domingo in the east. Although this uprising is not thought to be directly connected to the Haitian Revolution, it brings to light the interconnectedness of the black population across the island. David Patrick Geggus states that several of the slaves on the plantation “had French names and may have been fugitives from Saint Domingue or, more likely, had been purchased there.” He further reveals that “French records show that the plantation manager did business in Cap Francais.” The leaders of the revolt also wanted to learn “how the slaves had rebelled in Saint Domingue,” and asked black soldiers on the plantation to take them to Saint-Domingue.

The influence of Haiti and its revolution can also be seen in the name of the independent state that the 1821 movement declared: Spanish Haiti or the Spanish part of Haiti. This demonstrates that Haiti had taken a very prominent position among the inhabitants of the island, suggesting an informal unification under Haitians auspices even before 1822. Although the group pushed for inclusion in Bolívar’s Gran Colombia, it is clear, although indirectly, that there was some shared identity with Haiti in the name alone.

The 1821 independence movement ended in capitulation to Haitian President Jean Pierre Boyer because it lacked the popular support needed to carry through its declaration. With such a small coalition, and no effort to reach out to the much larger population, it was doomed to failure. The black and mulatto Dominicans allied with the incoming Haitians in the end, ushering in the period of unification. The issue of slavery was important to this alliance. The 1821 declaration mentions slavery, but it is with respect to the elites being constrained by the metropole — this is, Spanish tyranny was characterized as a form of slavery. To the leaders of the independence movement, slavery and oppression refer to a lack of rights, dignity, and “energy of freedom,” as well as the lack of equality on the world stage of independent states. The ruling hand of Spain caused Dominicans to live “enslaved and dependent by habit,” placing the movement ideologically in line with the Spanish liberal thinking of the time.

The majority of the population, on the other hand, was worried about the abiding fact of chattel slavery, not the oppression of a colonial power. They remembered Toussaint Louverture abolishing slavery, and when the Haitians were poised to return, Boyer’s promise to abolish slavery again, after its reinstatement by the Spanish, was an attractive proposition, and with this, the people of Santo Domingo welcomed the Haitians into their territory along with emancipation.

The unification of Española lasted for twenty-two years before coming to an end. The manifesto that has become known as the Dominican Declaration of Independence was issued on January 16, 1844. I will place the document in its proper historical context and look to elements in the document to explain the outcome that seemed likely, but failed to come to fruition because of another small group of conservatives. I argue that had La Trinitaria been able to see its vision through, anti-haitianismo would have never taken hold. In conclusion, though, I contend that there are elements within the declaration that individuals with anti-Haitian motives could use to defend their positions.

La Trinitaria was a conspiracy that began in July 1838. It originated among a small, upper-class group, but grew to include “people from other classes and racial strata.” They were influenced by activities in Haiti where people were organizing against Boyer. The goals of La Trinitaria were “to organize Dominican resistance and to separate the eastern part of the island from Haiti.” The group collaborated with Haitians on occasion, specifically with the Society of the Rights of Man and the Citizen against Boyer. There was reason to work across the border; the entire island was suffering under the yoke of Boyer.

Both parties bore grievances. The political economy, property laws, and agricultural policy imposed by the Boyer government caused dissent among both Dominicans and Haitians. The indemnity that Haiti was forced to pay to France in return for official recognition was gravely unpopular on both sides as well. Dominicans also had their own grievances independent of those the Haitians expressed: their religious festivals were limited, cockfighting was stopped, and they had cultural and language differences.

In 1843, the Dominican movement gained a boost with the overthrow of Boyer. Dominicans also broke ties with their Haitian collaborators in that year, and on February 27, 1844 the Dominican War of Independence was launched.

Despite many people looking back to the Dominican break with Haiti as the beginning of anti-haitianismo, the language of the declaration did not express wonton hostility. In fact, the declaration clearly states that when a group of people decides to separate itself from an existing state, it “shall frankly declare [its separation and independence] and with good will so as not to give rise to the belief that its cause is either ambition or the spirit of novelty.” This was a clear assertion of Dominicans calling for their independence not as an act of anti-haitianismo, but as a positive fulfillment of the wish of the Dominican people. There is another assertion of peaceful existence between the two neighboring countries after the independence of the Dominican Republic near the end of the manifesto:

With firm resolution let us demonstrate that we are dignified defenders of liberty: let us sacrifice hatred and person interests before the altars of the fatherland: let the feeling of public interest be the motive that decides us in favor of the just cause of liberty and that of separation: with that, we do not diminish the happiness of the western Republic, we make our own.

Again, the drafters of this document made a concerted effort to harbor neither ill intentions nor hostile sentiments toward Haiti after independence, insisting on gaining its independence not in opposition to Haiti, but as a positive advance for Dominicans.

Although a constructive break with and tranquil existence alongside Haiti was proposed by those of Lal Trinitaria the reality of the situation developed along a different trajectory. During the war there were three additional independence movements: a pro-Spanish group whose leaders “asked the Spanish government to send troops to evict the Haitians and offered their services to help in the venture;” another seeking British assistance; and a third “made up of individuals who had held administrative posts within the Haitian government,” and who believed that they could rid the territory of Haitain domination with the help of France “in return for some political, commercial, and territorial privileges,” with Buenaventura Báez as its most visible leader. Ranchers led by brothers Ramón and Pedro Santana from the El Seibo region were also important actors, and the Santanas eventually allied with the pro-French group known as afrancesados.

After the initial coup of February 27, 1844 that deposed Haitian authorities in Santo Domingo, Haiti reacted strongly, principally because losing the eastern province would deprive the Haitian government of valuable resources that could be used to pay the indemnity to France. Pedro Santana was named military chief and was the beginning of the end of La Trinitaria.

Juan Pablo Duarte, principal leader of La Trinitaria, joined Pedro Santana in Baní in March 1844 and the two began to feud over military strategy. The junta that had been formed to govern the new Dominican Republic sided with Santana, believing him to be the better general, and left Duarte and La Trinitaria with no military support. The composition of the junta itself provides proof that La Trinitaria had lost their prominent position after the initial launch of the war. The junta was led by the conservative Tomás de Bobadilla. Further complicating the relations between La Trinitaria and conservatives were their diverging opinions on assistance from foreign forces in securing independence. Conservatives, mainly afrancesados, sought an alliance with France and the establishment of a French protectorate while La Trinitaria vehemently opposed all limits to the sovereignty of their newly founded republic.

In the end, Santana and the conservative factions outmaneuvered La Trinitaria. Santana eventually jailed Duarte, Ramón Mella, and other prominent liberals, and followed the imprisonment with exile quickly thereafter. After much political infighting, Santana, a powerful caudillo, was able to take the upper hand with the support of his loyal followers. The political back-and-forth became violent at times and on August 22, 1844 “Duarte, Mella, Sánchez, and [five other high-ranking] Trinitarios” were declared traitors and exiled for life. These leaders were exiled to different locations (Germany, England, the United States, and Venezuela) to ensure that they could not conspire to return to the island.

With the triumph of Santana and the conservative forces within the country, the revolution that aimed to secure Dominican independence had come to an end. These leaders would not use the momentum of La Trinitaria to guide the new nation, but would instead take the nascent country in a direction of their own, laying the foundations of anti-haitianismo and guiding the country back to a colonial status.

Dominicans were separated from Haitians by the claim of Spanish identity from the time of the Declaration of Independence In 1844 until Santana’s proclamation of annexation to Spain in 1861. The Spanish were elevated as a great people at the expense of Haiti, increasing identification with Spain and against Haiti.

In the declaration of 1844 Dominicans refer to themselves as Dominican Spaniards. The declaration even states that after twenty-two years of Haitian domination and abuse, “the only Spanish thing that remained in us [Dominicans]” is “the native tongue.” 

Moreover, in 1861 Santana remineds Dominicans of their “national glories, inherited from the grand and noble race to which we owe our origin.” According to Santana, Dominicans also “conserve with purity the religion, language, beliefs, and customs” of the nation that has “bequeathed to us so much,” and it is the same one that has “opened its arms to us like a loving mother who recovers her son she thought lost in the shipwreck in which his brothers perished.” This was an idea pushed by those in power, because Anne Eller notes that after independence from Haiti residence “might have considered themselves at various points ‘Haitian-Spanish,’ ‘Dominican-Spanish,’ or even ‘not Spanish nor French nor Haitian.’”

Power Politics in the Caribbean 

International politics was central to the events of the island during this period. Military considerations played a significant role in the initial unification and also the Dominican Republic’s subsequent annexation to Spain and Restoration War.

In its independence Haiti “struggled to gain allies and respect in a world still largely controlled by European empires.” Haiti faced such hostility and resistance that there was “doubt about its very capacity to exist.” The “rage and fear that many slaveholders felt regarding black revolutionaries” and the desire to see the new nation fail increased the national security concerns of Haiti. The French actually viewed Haiti’s independence as only a temporary setback.

Securing the island of Española in its entirety was viewed as a strengthening measure against possible invaders, similar to Christophe’s building of the famous for La Citadelle Laferrière and pouring large amounts of money into military expenditures. So when “Spanish Haiti” declared its separation from Spain in 1821, President Jean-Pierre Boyer feared that “an independent Santo Domingo might become a launching pad for new attempts by the French to reconquer Haiti,” and decided the surest way to deter this was to occupy the eastern side of the island and “proclaim it part of his dominion.”

Haiti’s national security concerns resurfaced with annexation too. According to a newspaper in Jamaica, Spanish annexation presaged “nothing less than the annihilation of the Haitian nationality.” There was speculation that Spain might even subsume the entire island. “Spain’s actions spread fear for Haiti’s territorial integrity and the prospect of reenslavment in Dominican soil.” So once again, Haiti was maneuvering for its survival as a state.

Later, annexation to Spain and the War of Restoration were both justified in terms of national security. In addition to the several cultural justifications Spain and Pedro Santa utilized to justify returning the country to a colonial status, the threat of Haiti was one of the most prominent. Haiti’s wish to secure itself was used as justification for annexation in order for the Dominican Republic to secure itself against Haiti. According to Anne Eller, both Santana and Báez utilized anti-Haitian rhetoric to justify annexation of the Domincian Republic because they knew that Haiti “was Civilizations’s favorite enemy.”

On the other hand, the British and French lobbied for reunification of the island to “forestall U.S. influence, collect debt, or simply because it did not please their sensibilities that two ‘negro states’ be divided.” France also refused to recognize the Dominican Republic for years and lobbied both Haiti and the Dominican Republic for the aforementioned indemnity. Spain’s concern over a potential United States treaty with the Dominican Republic, spurred it into signing a treaty of recognition 1855.

The first time a protectorate was proposed where “military and foreign policy matters would be under Spanish control,” was in response to potential United States intervention on this island.There was also the argument that “Forfeiture of sovereignty might actually ‘secure … independence’ by bringing political order and preventing U.S. aggression…” “Yankee imperialism” was one of the most urgent matters for Spain. The natural resources and the strategic Samaná Bay rendered the young nation an important stronghold against “growing U.S. interests.” There was also the possibility of the state being swallowed by Haiti. It was claimed that Haitain provocation was the “root of Dominican instability” and annexation would restore order. And attaining this territory would feed Spain’s growing nationalism — along with the African War in Morocco — and allow Spain to shift the balance of power in the region.

Despite the U.S. never becoming involved in the conflict, it was a key player. It was dealing with its own civil war from 1861-65, but the Monroe Doctrine was still in effect. With the doctrine, the U.S. claimed its hegemony in the hemisphere and Spain was giving direct challenge to this by reentering the hemisphere by adding Santo Domingo to its domain once again. Spain was aware of the internal problems in the U.S. and took the opportunity to annex the fledgling state while America was distracted. 

The Dominican War of Restoration essentially became a proxy war. While Dominican rebels fought to overthrow the annexationist government, they were supported by Haitian fighters, while the annexationists were supported by Spain and the colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico. Because of ships in the harbors of Port-au-Prince and internal political dynamics, Haiti never officially joined the fight, but “Black Dominicans forged ‘the tightest of bonds’” with Haitians. The threat of reenslavement forced Dominican rebels and Haitians to align themselves. They viewed their interests as the same, with a Haitian stating:

We cannot understand how the Spanish government can believe for one moment the Haitian people could stay indefinitely indifferent to an issue that, as they accurately perceive, interests them as much as Dominicans.

The provisional government of the Domincan rebels even called for a treaty alliance with Haiti, followed by a call for federation. Although this did not come to fruition based on Haiti’s realpolitik, “Semicovert Dominican-Haitian military alliances… could not be stanched. Haitian border officials and Dominican rebels who had gathered in the center-island area collaborated often.”

Internationally there were several mechanisms at play. Spain attempted to boost its power on the world stage by annexing its former colony and adding to its holdings in the Americas. It ultimately sought to regain its lost empire. It capitalized on the opportunity afforded by the civil war in the United States, which had began to accumulate power to actually enforce its Monroe Doctrine — asserting its hegemony over the hemisphere.

Haiti was potentially playing for its survival as a sovereign state and was attempting to shore up its borders. The common Dominicans were trying to rid themselves of the yoke of their nation’s elites and ward off the potential return of slavery that had been abolished decades prior, while the elites were looking to ensure their survival by aligning themselves with Spain in order to stave off possible Haitian advances.

In the end, the Dominican rebels prevailed in their guerrilla war against Spain and won their independence yet again. This would not prove to be the end of the story of identity on the island, nor would it be the last time that the island played an important role in the region. There have been coups, civil wars, American interventions, and the island of Española still suffers from identity issues today. The story of the island is still being written and the masses may yet be heard with new work uncovering lost stories of alliance.

The Big Question: Why Do Nations Fail?

Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson’s Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty is an important work in economic history and a major contribution in an effort to answer the all-important and encompassing question: Why do nations succeed or fail? In order to answer that question, the authors trace the economic histories of different nations, including Mexico, the United States, England/Great Britain, the Soviet Union, China, and many others. By following these economic histories the authors are able to peel away the different theories espoused by different scholars concerning the level of prosperity a particular nation enjoys. The take note of the cultural, geographic, and institutional theories, the latter being the centerpiece of their argument. Acemoglu and Robinson discover that political and economic institutions determine the fate of a nation.

In the first chapter the authors use the example of border towns Nogales, Arizona (United States) and Nogales, Sonora (Mexico). The two cities are essentially one, sharing the same ethnic make-up, geography, and culture; but crossing the border exposes one to two completely different levels of prosperity. With the two towns sharing common ethnic groups cultures, and location the authors immediately determine that these factors cannot explain the variation in development between the two. Digging deeper, they propose that the political and economic institutions of a nation determine that. In the United States, there are more inclusive institutions (liberal democracy; free, competitive markets; property rights; incentives to innovate; etc.) while in Mexico these institutions are lacking, or at least not as developed as they are within the United States.

Turning to Europe, the authors detail how Western and Eastern Europe developed on divergent paths. The divergences within Western Europe among England and Spain and France are also examine. They argue that there are differences in development because of institutional drift. These drifts are initiated by small, minute differences between the institutions within different nations and over time the small differences become exaggerated and widen into chasms. Feudalism was present in both Western and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, but when the Black Plague engulfed the continent, states in the two regions reacted differently: the west embraced more open institutions and the east doubled down on their extractive one. An example of this is how serfdom and slavery were eliminated in Western Europe, but survived in the eastern portion of the continent for several centuries.

The differences between England/Great Britain and the rest of Western Europe is similar in principle to the differences between Western and Eastern Europe. Because of institutional drift England was able to put in place the political and economic institutions that promoted sustained economic growth that eventually led to the Industrial Revolution occurring there and not in Spain or France.

This book seems to expand upon previous ideas. In its in-depth look at the history of England, it works in conjunction with Barrington Moore, Jr.’s Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. In Social Origins Moore, using comparative historical analysis, examined England in order to determine why it became a capitalist democracy. He came to the conclusion that the violence of the English Civil War, along with the strong, independent bourgeoisie; strong parliament; and relatively weaker monarch caused England to go in a direction that eventually led to capitalist democracy. Acemoglu and Robinson use England as one of their main case studies to prove their hypothesis and built upon the base laid by Barrington Moore, Jr. The authors explain how the Baron’s War against John, the English Civil War against Charles I, and the Glorious Revolution against James II all contributed to the inclusive political and economic institutions that led to England being the country where the Industrial Revolution took place, as well as its subsequent sustained growth.

The Soviet Union is used as an example of state failure. The extractive institutions put into place by Stalin eventually led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Everything from the gulag system to the collectivized farms were contributing factors. The fact that political power was concentrated with the Communist Party versus dispersing power among the population played its role in the failure as well.

Throughout the book, Acemoglu and Robinson use different countries (cities as well) as case studies to trace the economic history and demonstrate how institutions explain the success or failure of a nation, and not culture, geography, ethnicity, etc. The cases of the two Nogaleses and the two Koreas (North and South) stand out as two superb examples that break dwon the cultural, ethnic, and geographic/climate arguments. The authors follow in the steps of Barrington Moore, Jr. and Theda Skocpol by utilizing comparative historical analysis. Their study would have been assisted by including some type of quantitative methods to supplement their qualitative work, as Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley did in Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America. Criticism can be brought against their study of South Africa as well. Their argument for the establishment of extractive institutions is endogenous with institutions causing the racial/ethnic abuses, and those same racial/ethnic differences causing the extractive institutions.

overall, this is a beautifully written example of comparative historical analysis following in the footsteps of earlier giants of the field. Through their analyses, the importance of institutions is successfully convey. By utilizing cases like North and South Korea and Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora the authors disprove other arguments fairly quickly Then by examining the history of economic development of other nations, they are able to demonstrate how inclusive and extractive institutions are created and built, as well as how their effects can be reversed and overturned. True to the words in the preface, “This book is about the huge differences in incomes and standards of living that separate the rich countries of the world, such as the United States, Great Britain, and Germany, from the poor, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa, Central America, and South Asia.”

An American Revolution?

“… for where was the profit in winning a war if then you lost the peace?” — Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative, Volume 3 Red River to Appomattox

    Southerners called the Civil War the “Second American Revolution,” and others have been apt to call the conflict a revolution, notably Barrington Moore, Jr. in his seminal work Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Bruce Levine even went as far as to allude to the American Civil War as a social revolution. Needless to say, the American Civil War was not a revolution, let alone a social revolution; a conclusion that Shelby Foote reaches by the conclusion of his groundbreaking series.  By Theda Skocpol’s definition of social revolutions — a “combination of thoroughgoing structural transformation and massive class upheavals” — I would argue that the United States has never experienced a social revolution and the war between states presents no exceptions.

    The United States has had two major opportunities to have true social revolutions: the American Revolution and the Civil War; both failed. Concentrating on the Civil War era, America fell short of a social revolution because, as Shelby Foote declared, the North won the war, but lost the peace. Although the Union defeated the Confederacy on the battlefield, and measures were taken to ensure the end of slavery and the political equality of all males, all of this forward progress was eventually reversed after the failure of Reconstruction. Noted biographer Ron Chernow has said that understanding the Civil War and not Reconstruction is like walking out at the midpoint of a broadway play.

    In the case of Levine — like Moore before him — he makes the case that the south’s loss in the Civil War led to a change in the social structure in the region. Prior to the war, “Southern farms and plantations yielded handsome profits to their owners, who were some of the wealthiest people in the country.” In addition to this, “southern elite had controlled all three branches of the federal government during most of its existence.” The claim is made that “the Civil War and its aftermath ‘uprooted institutions that were centuries old, changed the politics of a people, transformed the social life of half the country.’” Contrary to this claim, the only institution that was abolished was slavery, and only in name at that. If Reconstruction had in fact been successful, de jure and de facto slavery would have come to an end.

    Although Reconstruction began with much promise, the promise was broken by the end of the era. Flatly stated, the project failed. Southern politicians made their way back to the fore, reimposing familiar features into their society. “Black southerners after Reconstruction were forced to retreat back toward slavery,” although they were never forced back into bondage.

    Eventually, “home rule” was restored to the South. “Homerule, as both sides knew [and everyone now knows], meant white supremacy.” This meant that all the progress that black Americans had made was consistently rolled back.

In today’s society, Americans are still living with the Civil War, a war more than 150 years in our past. Recent events surrounding Confederate statues have brought the war back to center-stage, revealing that the old wounds of the tragic war are not healed at all. This simple fact illustrates that the Civil War was never absolutely settled, and that there was certainly no revolution. America is still waiting to see its first revolution…. And it might take a social revolution to finally settle the issues that boiled over into the deadliest conflict in the nation’s history.

Review of False Dawn

In False Dawn: Protest, Democracy, and Violence in the New Middle East, Steven A. Cook outlines the paths taken by Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Turkey after the series of protests experienced throughout the region between 2010 and 2013. This is an excellent example of a comparative analysis not weighed down by political science jaron.

Using Theda Skocpol’s definition of revolutions, Cook asserts that the uprisings of the Arab Spring and the Gezi Park protests were not social revolutions, the ones occurring in the three North African cases being political revolutions. Instead of ushering in a new era of democracy and more equal societies, these events actually further entrenched authoritarian rule and led to the de-liberalization of Turkey.

This is a comparative analysis supplemented with process tracing. The methods are not explicated here, but the author takes a qualitative angle to answer the questions posed, eschewing quantitative methods. The process tracing gives thsi work an added dimension, bringing a historical perspective to the book. The  history of the region allows culture to be examined as well. The fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I allowed secular nationalists to come to power, namely Nasser and Ataturk, and from autocracies. Institutional drift brought the countries to their tipping points, and this carried over to the post-Arab Spring period. In Egypt, those institutions persisted, leading to the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi to come to power through elections and take steps to establish an even stronger autocratic regime before being overthrown by the military and the military re-entrenching itself. Turkey followed a similar path that led to the de-liberalization of the country. While Libya lacked any institutions thanks to the tenure of Muammar al-Qaddafi.

Identity and dignity come up often as points of import throughout the book. Arabs had been subjected to regimes that stripped them of their dignity for decades. The struggle to find a satisfying identity has led to debates over religion’s role in society among other cultural aspects. This is also tied to the emergence of the Islamic State. The self-proclaimed caliphate has provided an alternative in the vacuum brought about by the uprisings.

Cook is strong in his advice to U.S. policymakers. He makes it clear that this is a complicated matter and that, contrary to Washington’s beliefs, the United States does not have much power to determine the direction of events in the region now.

This book would take a huge leap if the methodology utilized was clearly explained in a short section in an introduction. It is more of a sophisticated area study,  but the addition of a clear methodology would make this a prize in the comparative politics field. I would also like to see how some other major players factor into this story. For example, how do Iran and Saudi Arabia affect the complicated regional dynamics? I believe the author gave a brief, crisp description of the Islamic State’s role, but left me wanting a similar treatment for Iran, especially.

Overall this is an excellent read. It is very informative and the prose flows clearly. Steven A. Cook gives readers an in-depth tour through the recent events in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Turkey explaining what exactly has happened in the case studies — as well as the region as a whole — and also gives readers some additional historical background to explain exactly how the region got to this point. This is a rigorous comparative analysis that also allows people who are simply interested in the Middle East to read, enjoy, and learn about the region.