Dominican Crossroads

H. C. C. Astwood and the Moral Politics of Race-Making in the Age of Emancipation

Author: Christina Cecelia Davidson

Christina Cecelia Davidson explores the extraordinary and complicated life and career of H. C. C. Astwood, who was a preacher, politician, and the first Black man named US consul to the Dominican Republic in the nineteenth century.

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H. C. C. Astwood: minister and missionary, diplomat and politician, enigma in the annals of US history. In Dominican Crossroads, Christina Cecelia Davidson explores Astwood’s extraordinary and complicated life and career. Born in 1844 in the British Caribbean, Astwood later moved to Reconstruction-era New Orleans, where he became a Republican activist and preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. In 1882 he became the first Black man named US consul to the Dominican Republic. Davidson tracks the challenges that Astwood faced as a Black politician in an era of rampant racism and ongoing cross-border debates over Black men’s capacity for citizenship. As a US representative and AME missionary, Astwood epitomized Black masculine respectability. But as Davidson shows, Astwood became a duplicitous, scheming figure who used deception and engaged in racist moral politics to command authority. His methods, Davidson demonstrates, show a bleaker side of Black international politics and illustrate the varied contours of transnational moral discourse as people of all colors vied for power during the ongoing debate over Black rights in Santo Domingo and beyond.

Critic Reviews

“This well-written and insightful book sheds new and penetrating light on Black internationalism.” - Gerald Horne, author of (Confronting Black Jacobins: The United States, the Haitian Revolution, and the Origins of the Dominican Republic) “Christina Cecelia Davidson truly brings to life an acknowledged but often overlooked time period in the history of US-Dominican relations. She introduces us to H. C. C. Astwood: a politically connected Protestant minister and unscrupulous representative of US commercial interests and imperialist expansion into the Dominican Republic. Davidson emphasizes Astwood’s complicities, manipulations, and prejudices, all while underscoring the racist and imperialist infrastructure that informed his perspective on the world and understanding of his role. Showing how Astwood did not fit the stereotype of the politically conscious ‘race man,’ Davidson demonstrates that there was no one way to do ‘Black politics’ during this crucial time in the nineteenth century.” - April J. Mayes, author of (The Mulatto Republic: Class, Race, and Dominican National Identity)