U.S. cultural hegemony and the shifting positionality of Frederick Douglass

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores nineteenth-century U.S. foreign policy towards Hispaniola, particularly Haiti, and investigates Frederick Douglass' controversial stance on U.S. expansion on the island. Indeed, U.S. interest in the island started to take shape after years of non-recognition of Haiti and demonization of its revolution. After the Civil War, the U.S. government reassessed its policy towards the island and entered into negotiations to annex the Dominican Republic and a significant Haitian territory. Drawing on Gramsci's concept of cultural hegemony, this paper examines how the U.S. intertwined its narrative of exceptionalism with racial ideology to legitimize its nineteenth-century expansionist zeal. Of particular interest is Douglass' evolving response to U.S. hemispheric expansionism. The leading abolitionist, who firmly opposed U.S. interventions in the antebellum period, altered his views and strikingly aligned himself with Gilded Age expansionist schemes. This discussion traces the reasons for Douglass' shifting positionality towards U.S. cultural hegemony. It brings to light Douglass's aspirations to de-Other Haiti and put an end to its hemispheric exclusion and isolation. Therefore, Douglass' espousal of U.S. interventionist policy was contingent on the extent to which this expansionist policy advanced racial integration and diasporic egalitarianism.