Abstract

The analysis of the Dominican peasantry must begin with the period of the Spanish colony. In that period of history, we find the foundations of modern rural society in the Dominican Republic. After the Spanish incursion wiped out the island's native population during the first decades of the sixteenth century, the Spanish colonizers faced the enormous task of creating a new society. Far from being built through a premeditated and conscious process, the society that emerged in Hispaniola was the result of a curious mixture of colonial ideology, ad hoc decisions by public officials, and multiform local initiatives.