The National City Bank of New York and Haiti, 1909 – 1922

Abstract

This essay examines the expansion of the National City Bank of New York into Haiti between the years 1909 and 1922 to demonstrate that, while National City's interest in Haiti often overlapped with the US State Department's strategic goals for the Caribbean region, this interest also emerged in the context of National City's early-twentieth century internal managerial reforms that saw the bank diversify its operations and, in an attempt to evade domestic regulatory restrictions, create new institutional forms to expedite the accumulation of capital both in the United States and abroad. The essay also recovers the biography of the little-known but controversial figure of Roger Leslie Farnham, a National City Bank vice president who is often seen as instrumental in the development of US intervention in Haiti, as a means of re-situating his historical role in fomenting the intervention while arguing that through him, we can understand how National City's encounters with Haiti were shaped by racial capitalism.