White Dominican (Dominican Republic)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
he
White Dominican
María Montez
Manuel Díez Cabral
Total population

1790: 40,000 (32% of the Dominican Republic population)[2]
1846: 80,000 (48.5%)[3]
1920: 223,000 (24.9%)[4]

1960: 490,000 (16%)[5]
Regions with significant populations
Distrito Nacional, El Seibo, Espaillat, Hermanas Mirabal, La Vega, Monseñor Nouel, and Santiago.
Languages
Dominican Spanish
Religion
Predominantly Roman Catholicism
minority Protestantism
Related ethnic groups

Dominican people, Jewish Dominican, African Dominican, Japanese Dominican, Chinese Dominican, Cocolos, African Dominican people of U.S. descent
White people, Ethnic groups in Europe, White Latin American, White Mexican, White Puerto Rican, White Haitian, White Hispanic and Latino Americans

Dominican American, Dominican Puerto Rican

White Dominicans are an ethnicity of the Dominican Republic with full or predominant European, Middle-Eastern and North African ancestry. Most white Dominicans are descendants from the Spanish and French settlers’ lineage in the Hispaniola island during colonial times, and many others from white Levantines,[6] Italians,[7][8] Dutchmen,[7][8] Germans,[7] Hungarians, and from neighbouring white Puerto Ricans,[9] Cubans,[7][8] Americans,[7][8] and other nationalities that migrated between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.[7][8]

White Dominicans represent the largest ethnic minority in the country, but it is not possible to quantify their numbers because the National Institute of Statistics (INE) does not collect racial data because of the race taboo and "political correctness" that originated after Rafael L. Trujillo’s dictatorship, and the genocide of tens of thousands of black Haitians.[5] Today the majority of Dominicans claim a "multi-ethnic" identity, regardless of race. Nevertheless, in a survey made in 2011 by Latinobarómetro, an annual public opinion survey that involves 18 Latin American countries made by the homonymous private non-profit organization based in Chile, 11% of the Dominicans surveyed identified themselves as white.[10]

History

Conquest and colonization

The origin of the Caucasoid race in the Dominican Republic dates back to the founding of La Isabela, the first European settlement in the Americas, by Bartholomew Columbus in 1493. The presence of precious metals such as gold boosted migration of thousands of Spanish to Hispaniola that were seeking easy wealth. They tried to enslave the Native American Indian inhabitants, but many of these died of diseases, and those that survived did not make good slaves.

In 1510, there were 10,000 Spanish in the colony of Santo Domingo, and it rose to over 20,000 in 1520. But following the depleting of the gold mines, the island began to depopulate, as most poor Spanish colonists embarked to the newly conquered Mexico or to Venezuela (which was aggravated by the conquest of Peru in 1533). This was followed by a limited Spanish migration toward Hispaniola, composed overwhelmingly by males. In order to counteract the depopulation and impoverishment of the colony, the Spanish Monarchy allowed the importation of African slaves to hew sugar cane.

The shortage of Spanish females lead to miscegenation, what drove the creation of a caste system, in which Spanish were are top, mixed-race people at middle, and Amerindians and Africans at bottom. Endogamy will became a norm within the higher classes, in order to maintain their status and remain racially pure especially, specially because only pure whites were able to inherit majorats. As a result, Santo Domingo, like the rest of Hispanic America, became a pigmentocracy.

Spanish and French rule

French colony of Saint-Domingue in the West and Spanish colony of Santo Domingo in the East of Hispaniola island.

In the early seventeenth century, the Spanish government ordered the evacuation of the northern and western coast of the island, and forcing the relocation to areas close to the city of Santo Domingo, to prevent the pirates from other European nations. This ended up being counterproductive to Spain, because in 1625 the pirates and buccaneers began to establish settlements on the island of Tortuga and in a strip north of Hispaniola surrounding Port-de-Paix. France dominated the buccaneers in the late 16th century and initiated the establishment of a colony that would enrich fast and rapidly expand throughout the western coast of Hispaniola. In 1777 France and Spain signed a border treaty, in which the western and northwestern coast of Hispaniola would be French and the rest of the island would be Spanish. By 1780 Saint-Domingue was the richest colony in the world, even than all the British Thirteen Colonies and the West Indies together. The French established an economy based on the production and export of sugar sustained on the forced labor of black slaves imported from west and central Africa. Slavery of blacks was characterized as one of the most ruthless in which terror and severe punishments were applied to slaves.[11]

By 1789, the population was composed as follows: [12][13][14]

  • 40,000 Grand-blancs (literally "Great whites" in French) and Petit-blancs (lit. "Little whites" in French)
  • 28,000 Sang-Melés (French for: "Mixed blood") or Free people.
  • 452,000 slaves

The white population were 8% of Saint-Domingue’s population, but they owned 70% of the wealth and 75% of the slaves in the colony. The mulatto population were 5% of the population and had the 30% of the wealth. The slaves were 87% of the population.[14]

When French Revolution started, the ideas of equality among men spread in Saint-Domingue, blacks, the majotity of them born in Africa as Jean-Jacques Dessalines, rebelled against the white masters and began a genocide against the Europeans. Just in 1791, more than a thousand of whites were murdered.[14] In order to preserve their lives, whites fled Saint-Domingue (current Haiti); the wealthy grand-blancs returned to France or went to French Louisiana, but the petit-blancs who did not have many resources were compelled to move to the Eastern side of Hispaniola, although many of them went to Cuba and Venezuela.

Notably, there were many sang-melés that escaped from Saint-Domingue, they established on the neighboring islands of Puerto Rico and Cuba.

This French migration toward the current Dominican Republic bring to the country many last names like Beltrand (and its variants Beltrán and Beltré), Bisonó, Beauregard, Candelier, Ciprián, Coradín, Ferrant, Gautreaux, LaChapelle, Lavandier, Leclerc, Marichal, Morel, Oliver, Poueriet, Saint-Hilaire, and Yaclamic.[15][16][17]

In the eighteenth century, especially between 1733 and 1785, the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo was the subject of a mass migration of Spaniards, most of whom came from the Canary Islands.[18] During this period, Neyba (1733), San Juan de la Maguana (1733), Puerto Plata (1736), Dajabón (1743), Montecristi (1751), Santa Bárbara de Xamaná (1756), San Rafael de la Angostura (1761), Sabana de la Mar (1761), Las Caobas (1763), Baní (1764), Las Matas de Farfán (1767), San Miguel de la Atalaya (1768), Moca (1773), Juana Núñez (1775), San José de los Llanos (1779), San Pedro de Macorís (1779), and San Carlos de Tenerife (1785), were founded.[18] Due to this migration, it decreased the amount of coloreds and blacks: the black population dropped to 12%, the mulatto population to 8%, and the quadroons to 31%.[3] After that, the local white population began to migrate (especially towards Puerto Rico, Curaçao and Venezuela), first with the Haitian rule, and later with the constant political and economic instability after Dominican independence. Historically, migration to Puerto Rico was constant (except between 1898 and the 1930s, when there was a wave of Puerto Rican migrants to the Dominican Republic) and it boosted in the 20th century because of the oppressive regimes of Trujillo and Balaguer.[9]

Post-independence migration

The majority of the 19th century and the first three quarters of the 20th century migrants settled in Santo Domingo, Santiago, Moca and Puerto Plata.

During the nineteenth century Puerto Plata was the most important port in the country (and even became provisional capital) and hosted the European and North American migration to the Dominican Republic. The majority were Germans traders and tobacco producers, most of these German were from Hamburg and Bremen. There were also Englishmen, Dutch, Spaniards (mainly from Catalonia), Cubans (at least 4,000 immigrated during the Ten Years' War) and Italians. After the Restoration War there was an inflow of U.S. and French. The most prominent migrants’ surnames that went to this city were Arzeno, Balaguer, Batlle, Bonarelli, Brugal, Capriles, Demorizi, Ferrari, Imbert, Lithgow, Lockward, McKinney, Paiewonsky, Prud’homme, Puig, Rainiere, Villanueva, Vinelli and Zeller. In 1871, half of Puerto Plata’s population was foreigner; and in both the 1888 and 1897 censuses, 30% was of foreign born.[7][8]

Lebanese migration

It is estimated that 80,000 Dominicans are descendants of Lebanese migrants. The Bourdier family are French & Lebanese. As well as Nadal/Nadar families. [6]

Puerto Rican migration

In 1920, the Census registered more than 6,000 Puerto Ricans living in the country.

Recent immigration

Whiteness and social status

Portrait of Queen Isabella of Castile. In Spain, the nobility had distinctive physical features which distinguished them from the rest of the Spanish. The Visigoths where a Gothic tribe that migrated to Spain from what is now Sweden, during the collapse of the Roman Empire.[1]

Limpieza de sangre (Spanish: [limˈpjeθa ðe ˈsaŋɡɾe], meaning literally "cleanliness of blood") was very important in Mediæval Spain, [19] and this system was replicated on the New World. The highest social class was the Visigothic nobility of Nordic origin, commonly known as people of «sangre azul» (Spanish for: "blue blood"), because their skin was so pale that their veins looked blue through it, in comparison with that of a commoner who had olive skin. Those who proved that they were descendants of Visigoths were allowed to use the style of Don and were considered hidalgos. Hidalgos nobles were the most benefited of those Spanish who emigrated to America because they received royal properties (such as cattle, lands, and slaves) and tax exemptions. These people achieved a privileged position, and most of them avoided mixing with natives or Africans. This led to certain family names to be related both to whiteness, as with a better social-economic position; these family names were Angulo, Aybar, Bardecí, Bastidas, Benavides, Caballero, Cabral, Camarena, Campusano, Caro, Coca, Coronado, Dávila, De Castro, De la Concha, De la Rocha, Del Monte, Fernández de Castro, Fernández de Fuenmayor, Fernández de Oviedo, Frómesta, Garay, Guzmán, Heredia, Jiménez (and its variant Jimenes), Jover, Landeche, Lara, Leoz y Echálaz, Maldonado, Mieses, Monasterios, Mosquera, Nieto, Ovalle, Palomares, Paredes, Pérez, Pimentel, Quesada, Serrano, Solano, Vega, and Villoria.[20]

The Spanish of the highest rank who migrated to America in the sixteenth century was the noblewoman Doña María Álvarez de Toledo y Rojas, grandaughter of the 1st Duke of Alba, niece of the 2nd Duke of Alba, and grandniece of King Ferdinand of Aragon; she was married to Diego Columbus, Admiral and Viceroy of the Indies.[20]

Further immigration from the 17th and 18th centuries made subsequently that newly rich families emerged among them, which are: Mirabal, Polanco, Santana, Tavárez (and its variants Tavares and Taveras), and Troncoso.
And others from the 19th and 20th centuries: Arzeno,[8][21] Báez, Barceló, Beras, Bermúdez, Bonetti, Brugal, Corripio, Esteva, Goico, Haché, Lama, Morel, Munné, Paiewonski, Piantini, Rochet, Vicini, and Vitienes.

Today, the upper class in the Dominican Republic is overwhelmingly of European origin.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "All these are roads taken by Nordic tribes: by the Phrygians to Troy and Asia Minor; by the Nordic Hellenes to Greece; by the Nordic Italics (Romans) to Italy; by the Nordic Kelts to France and Spain. To these lands these tribes bring their Indo-European languages, and as the ruling class force them on to the subject, mainly Mediterranean, lower orders.",.Günther, Hans F K (1927). "The Racial Elements of European History". Methuen. p. chaper 8, part one. Retrieved 2007-07-18. 
  2. ↑ Helen Chapin Metz, ed. (December 1999). "The first colony". Dominican Republic and Haiti : country studies. Washington, DC: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress. ISBN 0844410446. Retrieved 3 August 2013. Lay summary. "As a result of the stimulus provided by the trade reforms, the population of the colony of Santo Domingo increased from about 6,000 in 1737 to approximately 125,000 in 1790. Of this number, about 40,000 were white landowners, about 25,000 were black or mulatto freedmen, and some 60,000 were slaves. The composition of Santo Domingo's population contrasted sharply with that of the neighboring French colony of Saint-Domingue, where some 30,000 whites and 27,000 freedmen extracted labor from at least 500,000 black slaves. To the Spanish colonists, Saint- Domingue represented a powder keg, the eventual explosion of which would echo throughout the island." 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Franco Pichardo, Franklin J. (2009). Historia del Pueblo Dominicano (in Spanish). Santo Domingo: Ediciones Taller. p. 217. 
  4. ↑ Frank Moya Pons (1999). Breve Historia Contemporánea de la República Dominicana (in Spanish). Fondo De Cultura Economica USA. p. 62. "Según los datos del primer censo nacional, la población dominicana estaba compuesta por un 24.9% de blancos, (...) en 1920 había 223 144 blancos (...)" 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Frank Moya Pons (2010). Historia de la República Dominicana (in Spanish) 2. Santo Domingo: CSIC. pp. 50–51. 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 González Hernández, Julio Amable (11 August 2012). "Registro de Inmigrantes de El Líbano" (htm). Cápsulas Genealógicas en Areíto (in Spanish). Santo Domingo: Instituto Dominicano de Genealogía. Retrieved 28 May 2013. "(...) Se calcula que en República Dominicana existen unos 80,000 descendientes de esos inmigrantes que una vez dejaron sus tierras para buscar una vida mejor." 
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 Zeller, Neicy Milagros (1977). "Puerto Plata en el siglo XIX". Estudios Dominicanos (in Spanish). eme eme. Retrieved 21 June 2013. 
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 Ventura Almonte, Juan. "Presencia de ciudadanos ilustres en Puerto Plata en el siglo XIX" (pdf) (in Spanish). Academia Dominicana de la Historia. Retrieved 21 June 2013. 
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Margarita Estrada, Pascal Labazée, ed. (2007). "La migración dominicana hacia Puerto Rico: una perspectiva transnacional". Globalización y localidad: espacios, actores, movilidades e identidades (in Spanish). Mexico City: La Casa Chata. p. 400. ISBN 978-968-496-595-9. Retrieved 28 May 2013. "(...) Los historiadores han documentado la creciente presencia puertorriqueña en la República Dominicana durante el primer tercio del siglo XX. En 1920, el censo dominicano contó 6069 puertorriqueños residentes en la República Dominicana. Como resultado, los inmigrantes de segunda generación generalmente se identificaron como dominicanos, no como puertorriqueños. Los casos más célebres son los expresidentes Joaquín Balaguer y Juan Bosch, ambos de ascendencia dominicana y puertorriqueña. La madre de Pedro Mir, uno de los poetas contemporáneos más distinguidos de la República Dominicana, era puertorriqueña. El prominente escritor puertorriqueño, José Luis González, nació en Santo Domingo de padres puertorriqueños, pero se mudó a San Juan de niño." 
  10. ↑ Informe Latinobarómetro 2011, page 58
  11. ↑ Robert Heinl, Written in Blood: The History of the Haitian People (University Press of America: Lantham, Md., 1996)
  12. ↑ Leyburn, James. El pueblo haitiano. 
  13. ↑ James, C.L.R. "The Black Jacobins" (in English). p. 55. 
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 Dr. Mu-Kien Adriana Sang (1999). Dr. Mu-Kien Adriana Sang, ed. Historia Dominicana: Ayer y Hoy (in Spanish). SUSAETA Ediciones Dominicanas. pp. 78—79, 81. 
  15. ↑ Aurich Martínez, Jail Lenín (22 September 2007). "Los Model de El Seibo (1 de 4)". Instituto Dominicano de Genealogía. Retrieved 23 May 2013. "Tras la firma del Tratado de Basilea en 1795, la Corona española cedió la parte Este de la isla La Española a Francia. Se iniciaría así una importante inmigración de colonos franceses, en toda la geografía de la antigua colonia española de Santo Domingo, siendo focos importantes de estos asentamientos los poblados de Higüey y El Seibo. En este último poblado se asentaron varios inmigrantes franceses. Uno de estos fue el galo Juan Morel Doñac, (...)" 
  16. ↑ Díaz Jáquez, Leonardo (February 2010). "Origen del Apellido Saint-Hilaire en Suelo Dominicano." (htm). Charlas Genealógicas (in Spanish). Instituto Dominicano de Genealogía. Retrieved 21 June 2013. 
  17. ↑ Luciano, Lily (3 March 2009). "Apellidos franceses en la Península de Samaná". Hoy (in Spanish). Retrieved 21 June 2013. 
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Emilio Cordero Michel, Roberto Cassá. "La Huella Hispánica en la Sociedad Dominicana" [The Spanish trace in the Dominican Society]. 2013 (in Spanish). Historia Dominicana (The authors belong to the Dominican Academy of History). Archived from the original on 21 June 2013. Retrieved 21 June 2013. 
  19. ↑ "The Visigoths in Spain" (aspx). Spain Then and Now. Retrieved 14 June 2013. 
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Instituto Dominicano de Genealogía (5 January 2013). "Origen de la Genealogía Dominicana" (pdf). Areíto (in Spanish). Hoy. p. 4. Retrieved 14 June 2013. 
  21. ↑ "Una trayectoria de familia". Listín Diario (in Spanish) (Santo Domingo). 26 May 2013. Retrieved 14 June 2013. 
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.