Best dominican republic history books according to redditors

As a follow-up or, more accurately, a specifying question, I am particularly interested in his claim that "Columbus's gold exports also resulted in the paralysis of the gold economy of the Gold Coast in Africa. This led to the rise of African slaves as the dominant commodity in that region, which inadvertently makes Columbus the father of the transatlantic slave trade."


Now, I had read about all the allegations leveled against Columbus in the rest of the comic before. I am by no means an expert on that area of history, or even particularly knowledgeable in it, but Michele Wucker's Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola provides a fairly thorough rundown of Columbus' gubernatorial exploits in the first few chapters. Unfortunately I do not have access to that source material currently, so I am unable to provide any direct quotations to answer the original question here, but it would be a good source for one who wants a more academic take on the events covered in the comic.


However, I do not recall Wucker or any of the other authors I have read making the comic's claims about the causal impact Columbus' actions had on the birth of the slave trade. Looking online, I found only a few less-than-reputable looking websites that essentially repeated the same claim. Is it a stretch to make that sort of connection between Columbus and the slave trade? Did his actions really have that big of an impact on the West African gold economy?

Actually, thedeejus is accurate about the culture of the DR and the desperation to escape -- with baseball seeming like the best path out. It's well-documented in an engrossing book, The Eastern Stars: How Baseball Changed the Dominican Town of San Pedro de Macoris

Fantastic. I love audiobooks while running. I listened to a good part of Stephen King's 11/22/63 during an ultra last year which was great, and I've been listening to them during training runs for a few years now.

My favorites to listen to while running:
Scott Jurek's Eat and Run. It is kind of fun to listen to a runner talk about running while you are running.

AWOL on the Appalachain Trail. Really great book about a journalist's experience in thru-hiking the AT.

Robert Kurson's Pirate Hunters really surprised me. Nonfiction book about treasure/wreck diving. I was mildly interested the topic before I started listening to the book but now it is a favorite subject of mine.

The Martian. I can't say enough about the audiobook - the story is great and the audiobook makes the experience so much greater.

The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler, of course. Great, atomospheric noir. One of the first audiobooks I ever purchased. Engaging and makes you forget the miles.

Teško je izdvojiti ali zadnje što sam čitao je Breatheology i Pirate Hunters

great video, that's something I would like to try one day!
I read this book recently, called "Pirate Hunters", blew my mind. It's a real account of a duo of treasure hunter scuba divers searching for lost pirate ships, check it out:

https://www.amazon.com/Pirate-Hunters-Treasure-Obsession-Legendary/dp/0812973690

A few weeks ago I was reading [The Dominican Republic Reader: History, Culture, Politics] (https://www.amazon.com/Dominican-Republic-Reader-History-Politics/dp/0822357003) and I was surprised how during the times of slavery even people that were considered liberal and progressive were in favor of it as a way of developing the economy. These were the times before the industrial revolution, and economic prosperity meant huge plantations with thousands of slaves.

That is how the French colony of Saint-Domingue (today's Haiti) generated much of the wealth of the French empire and Brazil imported five millions slaves for the same purpose. Today we see that as an evil enterprise, but during those times it was business as usual. They really didn't see the slaves as human beings.

This sounds a little revisionist. Classic text on the slave revolt in San Domingo (wasn't Haiti then) is here. The primary reason the country never prospered was then and remains internal strife akin to what we see following many revolutions today, an inability to develop an effective and functioning government. I'm sure embargos then would have made things much worse. Colonial nations then were incredibly threatened by the potential for slave revolts as their economies depended on slaves.