From the 1930s to the ’60s, the Trujillo regime severely restricted the press’s freedom of expression, but subsequent constitutional guarantees generally have been upheld. The most influential of the island’s several daily newspapers are published in Santo Domingo and include El Caribe, founded in 1948, and Listín diario, founded in 1889. Other important daily and weekly publications include La información, El nacional, and Rumbo. A variety of newspapers and periodicals are also imported from the United States. Compared with other developing countries, the Dominican Republic has a high per capita rate of newspaper circulation. There are several television stations and dozens of radio stations. Among the main broadcasters, which are concentrated in Santo Domingo, is the government-owned Radiotelevisión Dominicana. Usage of the Internet had increased rapidly by the beginning of the 21st century.

The colonial era

Hispaniola was the first area in the New World to receive the full imprint of Spanish colonial policy. The oldest cathedral, monastery, and hospital in the Americas were established on the island, and the first university was chartered in Santo Domingo in 1538. The earliest experiments in Spanish imperial rule were conducted there as well. Class and caste lines were rigidly drawn, and the Roman Catholic Church served as the strong right arm of temporal authority. A cruel, exploitative slave-based society and economy came into being.

During the first half century of Spanish rule, Hispaniola flourished: its rich mines and lush lands yielded abundant wealth, and it served as the administrative centre for Spain’s burgeoning American empire. However, European diseases and brutal treatment decimated the Indian population, and the Spanish crown soon turned to more lucrative conquests in Mexico and Peru, where gold and silver were more easily available. The more ambitious Spaniards emigrated.

For the better part of the next three centuries, Hispaniola remained a neglected, poverty-ridden backwater of the Spanish empire. Successive raids by British, Dutch, and French marauders and buccaneers further devastated the island. Eventually, the Spanish crown recognized France’s claims to the western third of Hispaniola, a region that was renamed Saint-Domingue (later Haiti); a prosperous sugar-producing colony based on Black slavery grew up there. The Spanish colony also experienced a modest economic boom in the 18th century as a by-product of Saint-Domingue’s prosperity, but its population reached only about 100,000—about one-fifth that of the French colony.

Power struggles and nationalism

In 1795 Spain ceded the eastern two-thirds of Hispaniola to France as a result of its defeat in the wars that had been raging in Europe. Under French control the economy and vitality of the colony declined further. Meanwhile, a slave uprising had begun in Saint-Domingue, inflamed by the desire of mulatto freedmen for political rights, the inhuman conditions under which Black slaves were forced to labour, and the revolutionary currents then sweeping France. Led by Toussaint-Louverture, the Haitians not only succeeded in throwing off French rule but soon overran parts of the previously Spanish eastern end of the island as well, instilling terror in the white ruling class. For a time French, British, and various Haitian armies all vied for control of Hispaniola. The Haitians evicted the main French army from the western part of the island, but Dominican colonists and British forces, in turn, drove the Haitians from the eastern part. In 1809 the colony was reunited with Spain. But in 1821 a group of Dominicans deposed the Spanish governor and declared independence, following the lead of the countries on the mainland. They named the fledgling nation the Independent State of Spanish Haiti.