Hispaniola has a complicated history in the British Empire. After the Napoleonic Wars, the British administered both sides of the island as a single colony. The tensions on the island after the disasterous slave uprisings there were kept close to the surface for a generation or more. British colonial governors kept an uneasy peace there. Slavery remained until the 1830s, though there were many more free people, but the slave-owners of Hispaniola were as often
gens de couleur or mixed race as they were pure European, and some were even free blacks. The upper classes that remained after the chaos of the war were French speaking in the west of the island and Spanish speaking in the east, but in general the slaves spoke their own creole. Over the decades, however, things would shift. English would, ironically, become the lingua franca of the next generation to share the island, and English terms would being to infuse the slave creole. Many of the free people of color of the island converted to Anglican and taught their children English, wanting to sever their relation with the hypocritical French who had fought for
their freedom while fighting to keep people enslaved on the island. Some too of the upper classes would take on British ways as a means of advancement in the new order, and to fit in with the influx of British through the 1810s - 1820s. Still others, especially among the Spanish speaking easterners, clung to their language and their Catholic faith, or even left for Spain or the new Latin nations of New World.
During the Slaver Uprising, most members of Hispaniola acquiesced to the British mandate of emancipation and reaped the benefits of loyalty (many remembered the stories of their parents and grandparents of the last time freedom had been promised than denied on their island). By the time of the Uprising, Hispaniola had regained much of its profitabilit;, again a jewel of the Caribbean. While the Hispaniolans sent representatives to the first meeting on a proposed union of British Colonies in the New World, none of the factions that held the balance of power on Hispaniola felt that it was in their benefit to join with the rest of the British colonies, and decided to seek their own way. Most of the upper class whites of the island wished to remain a colonial territory under direct supervision from London, which they saw as a protection against possible unrest among the various factions of mulattos, spaniards, and free blacks, themselves divided by class. On the other hand, as the experiment with responsible government in the new Dominion of Southern America moved forward, seemingly with success, the proud Hispaniolans began to wonder if they were to be left behind, and more progressive elements in the various camps formed a loose coalition to seek not to join the Dominion of Southern America, but to have responsible government granted to Hispaniola in its own right. In 1858, London agreed to allow the experiment, and the second dominion of the British Empire, the Dominion of Hispaniola, was inaugurated.