Before Columbus, Hispaniola was inhabited by the Taínos, an Arawak group that had migrated up from the Amazon basin and maintained an advance culture on the island for centuries. This all came to an end in 1492, when Christopher Columbus "discovered" the New World. After stopping off at the Bahamian island of San Salvador, Columbus landed in what is today the Dominican Republic, where he encountered the Taínos. Attempting to circle around the island, his ship the Santa Maria grounded against a coral reef on December 25, 1492, forcing him to set up a small fort there - which he named La Navidad, leaving 25 men there before heading back with his remaining ships.

Upon returning in late 1493, Columbus found his fort burned and the settlers killed. He established his first small colony further east - La Isabela , today the village of El Castillo - where he set up a trading settlement to trade cheap European goods in return for large quantities of gold. La Isabela soon fell apart. Settlers died in the hundreds from malaria and yellow fever, and one disgruntled colonist hijacked a ship and headed back to Spain to complain. Columbus followed him back in 1496, and during his absence the colony was abandoned, with most Spaniards re-settling at Santo Domingo along the mouth of the Ozama River. When Columbus returned in 1498, the colonists refused to obey his orders, and in 1500 he was sent back to Spain in chains.

Spain's King Ferdinand replaced Columbus with Nicolás de Ovando , with instructions to impose order on the unruly outpost. Ovando instigated the monumental construction in today's Zona Colonial and engaged in the systematic destruction of Taíno society, apportioning all Taínos to Spanish settlers as slaves and forcing their conversion to Christianity. Lacking resistance to Old World diseases and subjected to countless acts of random violence, the Taínos were quickly exterminated through overwork, suicide and disease.

To make up for the steep decline of forced labor, the Spaniards began embarking on slaving expeditions throughout the Caribbean and Central America in 1505, laying the foundation for future Spanish colonies. By 1515 the Spaniards had wiped out enough Native Americans that they began looking to slave labor from Africa, setting in motion the African slave trade. Santo Domingo's power slowly eroded as Spain branched out across the Americas, and by the end of the sixteenth century was little more than a colonial backwater. The French began encroaching in 1629, settling the island of Tortuga and branching out from there onto the western side of Hispaniola. When the French colony's slaves revolted in the early nineteenth century, they had little trouble invading and occupying Spanish Hispaniola, ruling it for 21 years. Only in 1843 were the Spanish colonists able to boot the invaders out, and for the first time establish the Dominican Republic as an independent country.

But this independence did not last long. A series of warlords known as caudillos tore the country apart in their quest for money and power, and in 1861 strongman Pedro Santana sold the island back to Spain. The Spaniards didn't last long, though; almost immediately a new revolutionary movement was formed, and the occupiers were forced to withdraw in 1865. A renewed period of extended civil warfare between caudillos ensued until the United States intervened in 1914. The Americans stayed for over eight years, successfully reorganizing the nation's financing but instituting a repressive national police. When the US left, this new police force took control, and its leader Rafael Leonidas Trujillo maintained absolute totalitarian control over the Dominican Republic for three decades. In the late 1950s, though, Cuba's Fidel Castro took an interest in overthrowing the dictator, and concerns about a possible Communist takeover prompted the CIA to train a group of Dominican dissidents, who assassinated Trujillo in a dramatic car chase on May 30, 1961.

Upon Trujillo's death, Vice President Joaquín Balaguer rose to power, and continued his totalitarian practices. Balaguer was deposed in a popular 1965 uprising, but the US military again intervened and soon placed him back in control. Only in 1978 was he forced to hold free and fair elections - and was promptly thrown out of office, only to win it back in 1986 after an extended economic crisis. Balaguer managed to edge out his rivals again in 1990, but left the presidential race in 1994 when it was obvious that he would not beat Leonel Fernández , who ran a slick, centrist American-style campaign and edged the competition out by a few thousand votes. 1998 saw the first back-to-back free and fair elections in the Dominican Republic's history, as Fernández gave way to political opponent and current Dominican President Hipolito Mejia. The Dominican Republic has also enjoyed the highest economic growth rate in the entire hemisphere (though this has slackened of late), and the outlook today for the nation is better than it has been in centuries.

Dominican Republic
     travel guide

Dominican Republic
Where to go
When to go
Getting there
Entry requirements
Money and costs
Getting around
Food and drink
Communications
Crime and safety
Brief history
Best of DR
Info and maps
Diving, surfing
Festivals, holidays

Explore Dominican Republic

Barahona
Barahona
The City
East of Barahona
San Cristóbal
San José de Ocóa
West of Barahona


Bayahibe
Bayahibe
Travel info

Boca Chica                 
Boca de Yuma
 

Cabarete
Cabarete
Windsurfing
Restaurants
Sports outfitters

Cibao
Cibao
Explore Cibao 
Cordillera Central

Explore Cordillera Central
Jarabocoa
Jarabocoa
Arrival & accommodation
Restaurants,  
     tour operators

La Vega
La Vega
Pico Duarte, Cordillera Central's Nat'l Parks


San José de las Matas

Santiago
Arrival and getting around
Places to eat
Nightlife



El Castillo and La Isabela

El Limón

  Hato Mayor and
     Sabana de la Mar

 Juan Dolio

La Romana and Casa de Campo
Practicalities

Las Galeras
Eating options