Haiti and the United States: The Psychological Moment

Abstract

In a prescient remark made at turn of century, US Secretary of State Elihu Root said that establishing the right sort of with must await the moment. Indeed, as Brenda Gayle Plummer notes, much of Haitian-US relationship has turned on matters of perception. For many in United tales of voodoo, political violence, and stark deprivation have made appear to be a doomed land, beyond comprehension and help. Haitians, meanwhile, have often seen United States as persistently racist, grossly materialist, and lacking in spiritual values. In Haiti and United States, Plummer pays special attention to role of social and cultural factors in two countries views of each other and manner in which relations have developed as a result of those perceptions. The disparities between two republics, she notes, are all more remarkable in that their experiences of anticolonial rebellion and nationhood coverged in some striking ways. Despite parallels, however, varying cultural and racial identities of and United States and sociohistorical context in which those identities have been construed forced them to confront challenges of slavery, republicanism, democracy, and economic development quite differently. Stressing importance of domestic policy and character of civil society in formation of foreign policy, Plummer illuminates various factors that figured in relationship between two countries throughout 19th century. She discusses aspirations of Haiti's founders in building a self-governing black society, Haitian responses to transatlantic abolition movement, development of Haiti's creole culture, and country's shrewd negotiations with United States over commercial and strategic issues. The late 1800s, Plummer shows, proved a turning point in Haitian-US relations as Washington's assumption of regional hegemony changed balance of power for a long committed to a multilateralist diplomacy. In 20th century, tensions between traditional and reformist elements in Haitian society erupted in a crisis that brought US intervention and long-term military occupation. Plummer examines consequences of this intervention as they were incorporated into later interactions between United States and and shows how these troubled relations contributed to rise of repressive Duvalier regime. The recent fall of that regime, Plummer suggests, now presents psychological moment to which Elihu Root referred so many years ago.