Leon D. Pamphile.Contrary Destinies: A Century of America’s Occupation, Deoccupation, and Reoccupation of Haiti.

Abstract

Leon D. Pamphile’s Contrary Destinies: A Century of America’s Occupation, Deoccupation, and Reoccupation of Haiti is ambitious in scope: it surveys the relationship over the last one hundred years between Haiti and the U.S. It is a significant work, partly because of its ambition and partly because of its refreshing perspective. This is Haitian history through the eyes of a Haitian scholar. Contrary Destinies is part of a recovery and rebuilding project that mirrors the more important one under way on the streets and in the buildings of Port au Prince—the revitalization of Haitian history. The book’s brisk pace and tendency to gloss over some pivotal moments, even as it dives into others, makes it feel like the beginning of a conversation on the relationship between the U.S. and Haiti in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries rather than the last word. The last century was one of sweeping change in American policy to its neighbors in the Western Hemisphere. Pamphile provides a short prehistory to the 1915 occupation, beginning with late-nineteenth-century U.S. efforts to obtain Caribbean naval bases and/or coaling stations in order to shore up its naval control over the Caribbean. The author then moves the reader quickly forward in time to set up the conditions that brought about the 1915 U.S. occupation. These conditions included the burgeoning German influence, especially the increasing number of merchants who lived and worked out of Haiti, and the continuing political and social instability on the island that saw more than six presidents in four years. He misses an opportunity to discuss the Haitian intervention in the context of other U.S. imperial activities and thus leaves the impression that Haiti was unique in attracting U.S. forces to its shores.