Dominican Crossroads is a masterfully written book that makes an empirically rich and much-needed re-evaluation of race and race-making within the context of nineteenth-century US Black internationalism, emancipatory struggles and imperialist expansion throughout the Americas. In placing ‘the city of Santo Domingo [as] … a metaphorical crossroads in a hemispheric debate over Black men’s capacity for citizenship and political authority’ (p. 2), Christina Davidson sheds new light on this tremendously significant yet deeply under-explored period in history when the impact of the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) was still spreading fear of Black uprisings throughout European, US and white Creole elite circles.

An exceptional storyteller, Davidson introduces readers to the tumultuous life and career of the minister, political activist, diplomat and preacher H. C. C. Astwood. Born in the Turks Islands in 1844, a decade after British emancipation and at a time when plantation slavery was beginning to crumble across the Americas (slavery was later abolished in the United States (1865), Puerto Rico (1873), Cuba (1886) and Brazil (1888)), Davidson shrewdly depicts Astwood – a mixed-race man of limited wealth and political power – as a complicated, ambitious hustler. In the face of white supremacy and great hostility, Astwood promoted US commercial and imperial interests while deftly manoeuvring his own way – albeit not always successfully – through the politics of empire. Using the construct of the Dominican tíguere (a trickster/swindler) to address these character traits, the author brilliantly illustrates how Astwood orchestrated unconventional methods to further his own religious and political ambitions, gain influence and benefit financially in the process.

Part I, ‘Beginnings’, traces the life of Astwood as he migrates between the four Caribbean ports of Gran Turk, Puerto Plata, Samaná and New Orleans. The historical backdrop to this is a time of significant turmoil and geopolitical crisis: British Caribbean emancipation, Spain’s annexation of the Dominican Republic (1861), the US Civil War (1861–5), Jamaica’s Morant Bay Rebellion (1865), and the Dominican War of Restoration (1863–5) are just some examples that Davidson weaves into the background of her story. The book also evidences the strong influence that Turks islanders had when they settled in the northern Dominican port towns of Puerto Plata and Samaná, as well as the role that Black Protestantism played in forging transnational ties between the Caribbean and the US South. Astwood moves to New Orleans at a critical moment during the Reconstruction era, where he preaches at the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church and interacts with political organisations, religious groups and newspapers. As we learn, his relationship with the church would go on to play a major factor in aligning him with the Republican Party, thus leading him back to the Dominican Republic where he is subsequently posted to the capital of Santo Domingo as the first US Black consul.

In Part II,‘Black Political Authority’, Astwood arrives back in the Caribbean in 1882. While there, he builds relationships with two important Puerto Plata-born political leaders of the time: the Black revolutionary and Dominican president Gregorio Luperón (1879–80) and the dictator Ulises Heureaux (1882–4), nicknamed Lilís, with whom he builds a close friendship. The United States’ most prominent Black activist, Frederick Douglass, is later stationed as a US diplomat on the island in neighbouring Haiti in 1889. In her Introduction, however, Davidson makes clear that both Douglass and his son dismissed Astwood as ‘an “unmitigated trickster” and perhaps even “a villain of the deepest dye”’(p. 5). At the time, the diplomatic positioning of the Dominican Republic as inferior to that of Haiti meant that Astwood had little to no political influence or status over his US counterparts stationed on the west of the island. Nevertheless, racial politics heavily influenced diplomatic decision-making, and, from a US political perspective, both countries remained largely indistinguishable from one another; ‘Black’, ungovernable and uncivil in the eyes of US government officials. This panorama then goes a long way to explaining why Astwood acted at times in contradictory and duplicitous ways, unleashing his inner tíguere to navigate a complex landscape at the hands of the Dominican elites and in the US corridors of power. Davidson, for example, uses the case of the killing of John J. Platt, a largely unknown white American citizen, as a rationale for opportunistic shenanigans that allows him to acquire indemnity for the man’s widow while also securing a place of increased political standing for himself in the upper echelons of power in Washington, Santo Domingo and Port-au-Prince.

In Part III, ‘Social Morality’, Davidson skilfully examines the teachings of the nineteenth-century positivist intellectual Eugenio María de Hostos and his theorising of the term moral social. She also traces Astwood’s career decisions and personal trajectory, including his closeness to the AME and the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows in New Orleans. Davidson illustrates how ‘US Consul Astwood used transnational understandings of social morality and performances of Black respectability to exude a sense of moral authority in Catholic Santo Domingo’ (p. 161). Such assertions importantly highlight the social and religious organising that formed part of the ‘cultural organs’ of Dominican society (p. 160) yet flew largely under the nose of the pro-European, anti-Haitian Catholic Church, which typically overlooked and demerited the contributions of the Afro-American Dominican community more generally.

In Chapter 6, Davidson enticingly explores the controversies surrounding the Columbus bones scandal, an international controversy that ultimately resulted in Astwood’s dismissal as US consul in 1888–9. Seizing what he sees as an opportunity for financial gain and heightened prestige, Astwood petitions to lease the remains of Christopher Columbus and showcase them to audiences across the United States. His proposal nevertheless was met with ridicule and outrage in the Dominican press, seriously harming his credibility as a diplomat. Davidson’s observation that ‘whereas the bodies of saints entered the market after death, the bodies of African slaves lost value at the point of death’ (p. 199) is particularly chilling. The backlash Astwood faced for his role in this affair, and the reactions it provoked, provides readers and students alike with a rich historical insight into attitudes and prejudices of the time. In 1892, Astwood finally leaves Santo Domingo in disgrace with his subsequent applications for a future diplomatic posting rejected.

Dominican Crossroads makes a vital contribution to the often-overlooked field of Dominican studies, placing this important Latin American nation at the very heart of a crucial intersection in Black Atlantic history. The book would therefore be an important addition to the field of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Afro-religious studies, US diplomatic history and countless other disciplines, effortlessly criss-crossing historical, intellectual, disciplinary, transnational and linguistic boundaries. The book, which will undoubtedly become a valuable resource for many, firmly positions Davidson alongside some of the intellectual giants of her field: Dixa Ramírez-D’Oleo, Lorgia García-Peña, Mimi Sheller, Anne Eller, Raj Chetty, and others. Dominican Crossroads therefore is an exceptional publication and a riveting read, offering a rare insight into nineteenth-century race-making in the Dominican Republic, the Caribbean, the United States and beyond.