Dollar Diplomacy by Force: Nation-Building and Resistance in the Dominican Republic

Abstract

American audiences in the twenty-first century are surely familiar with nation building via military means. Just like the contemporary engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, early twentieth-century U.S. occupations in the Caribbean region sometimes produced conditions far worse than before intervention. Ellen D. Tillman shows how this trend unfolded in the Dominican Republic, site of a U.S. occupation from 1916 to 1924. While aims to remake Dominican politics and society in the United States' image fell short, this period of intervention facilitated the rise of Rafael Trujillo, the infamous dictator who would rule for more than thirty years. The specter of Trujillo, however, remains in the background of Tillman's study. Instead, she examines how U.S. influence and local resistance fostered compromises that changed the Dominican Republic from a country long divided by region to one much more centralized—a development that would later enable Trujillo. The first three chapters chronicle deepening U.S. involvement in Dominican affairs during the early twentieth century. Closer commercial ties through the sugar industry compelled U.S. officials to subject the Dominican Republic to closer scrutiny, and the federal government remained concerned about chronic small-scale rebellions, weak central authority, and potential European interventions. Ultimately, the struggling Dominican government's failure to uphold a 1907 customs agreement—allowing the United States to control receivership to balance payments and erase state debts—provided justification for the U.S. military occupation.