Redeeming Santo Domingo: North Atlantic Missionaries and the Racial Conversion of a Nation

This article examines North Atlantic views of Protestant missions and race in the Dominican Republic between 1905 and 1911, a brief period of political stability in the years leading up to the U.S. Occupation (1916-1924). Although Protestant missions during this period remained small in scale on the...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Davidson, Christina Cecelia (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Cambridge Univ. Press [2020]
In: Church history
Year: 2020, Volume: 89, Issue: 1, Pages: 74-100
Further subjects:B Missionaries
B Race
B Dominican Republic
B Protestantism
B Caribbean
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Volltext (doi)
Description
Summary:This article examines North Atlantic views of Protestant missions and race in the Dominican Republic between 1905 and 1911, a brief period of political stability in the years leading up to the U.S. Occupation (1916-1924). Although Protestant missions during this period remained small in scale on the Catholic island, the views of British and American missionaries evidence how international perceptions of Dominicans transformed in the early twentieth century. Thus, this article makes two key interventions within the literature on Caribbean race and religion. First, it shows how outsiders’ ideas about the Dominican Republic's racial composition aimed to change the Dominican Republic from a “black” country into a racially ambiguous “Latin” one on the international stage. Second, in using North Atlantic missionaries’ perspectives to track this shift, it argues that black-led Protestant congregations represented a possible alternative future that both elite Dominicans and white North Atlantic missionaries rejected.
ISSN:1755-2613
Contains:Enthalten in: Church history
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/S0009640720000013