Dollar diplomacy by force: nation-building and resistance in the Dominican Republic

Abstract

The US military occupation of the Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924—lacking any basis in international law, without even the façade of a puppet government as in neighbouring Haiti, and initially undertaken when the world (including the State Department) was distracted by the war in Europe—has understandably been of keen interest to historians because the US authorities' promotion of governmental centralization over the hitherto predominant forces of regionalism, and of a strong military institution as a means to overcome perceived chronic political instability, is deemed to have paved the way for the long dictatorship of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo (1930–61). Apart from general country histories, most works treat separately the period prior to 1916, which witnessed ever more flagrant US infringements of Dominican sovereignty—traditionally categorized under the rubric of ‘Dollar Diplomacy’—and the actual years of marine occupation; Bruce Calder's The impact of intervention: the Dominican Republic during the US occupation of 1916–1924 (University of Texas Press, 1984) and Alan McPherson's comparative study, The invaded: how Latin Americans and their allies fought and ended US occupations (Oxford University Press, 2014), for instance, both launch precipitously into the period of US occupation, offering too little by way of historical background. Ellen Tillman's book, by contrast, spans the temporal divide: three chapters are dedicated to the years of growing US impositions, while four chapters deal more comprehensively with the different phases of the military government. The book is also notable for the author's prodigious research in US and Dominican archives, in particular the records of the US-imposed Customs Receivership, the US Marine Corps, and the US military administration (lodged in Santo Domingo); indeed, most of the references in the copious endnotes refer to archival sources. This has enabled her to provide a greater degree of pertinent detail on the subject than has been so far available in the secondary literature.