U.S. Military Occupation Of Haiti, 1915-1934

U.S. Military Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934

On July 28, 1915, Davilmar Theodore became the seventh Haitian President since 1911 to be killed during his term in office when revolutionaries lynched him on the streets of Port-au-Prince. Soon there after, U.S. Marines landed in Haiti. Their declared mission was to lend Haiti a hand by ending the violence and stabilizing the country politically.Nineteen years later, as Haitians workers struck and civilians protested in the street, and the occupation received strong criticism in the U.S. and abroad, the United States pulled out of Haiti. The country quickly fell back into a state of political and social turmoil, and historians were left to wonder: how did the nineteen-year occupation fail in its mission to improve Haiti and make thecountry more politically stable? What went wrong in Haiti?
In response to this question, scholars have split into two main camps. The first camp of historians claims that overall, the marines had a positive impact in Haiti and were making significant progress, but the occupation was cut short before it could fully solve Haiti’s problems. The second camp argues that the U.S. occupation failed tomake significant progress in Haiti, and, in fact, hurt Haiti because it had partly self-interested motives and because the actions of Americans in Haiti contradicted altruistic claims. One historian falls in between these two camps of scholarship, pointing out contradictions and flaws in the execution of the occupation but still maintaining that overall, it had a positive impact on Haiti.
Of theseexplanations, the least convincing is the group that defends the occupation. These historians operate under the flawed assumption that the United States knows what is best for impoverished nations like Haiti. This assumption leads them to focus more attention on the positive aspects of the occupation and to imagine that, if given more time, the occupation could have been more successful. In theprocess, these historians ignore the many failures of the occupation and fail to provide a believable analysis of Haitian reaction to the occupation. The more even-handed historian, Ludwell L. Montague, presents a somewhat more persuasive account. His acknowledgement of the contradictions and inconsistencies between intentions and reality of the occupation provides a more complete understanding ofthe occupation. Still, he subscribes to the same notion of American superiority and duty in Haiti, and thus, his assessment of the ultimate impact of the occupation is incomplete.
The most convincing account is that the occupation failed because of its guiding principle of U.S. superiority, which angered Haitians and made them less likely to cooperate with the occupation. This argument issuperior because it considers the Haitian perspective to a greater extent than other histories, and confronts the dominant feeling of white-American superiority over blacks that no doubt shaped all interactions between the two nations during the occupation. This camp of scholarship is a reflection of a turn in the historical profession toward revisionist histories and cultural studies since the 1960s.This historiographical account of the U.S. Military Occupation of Haiti will first provide a brief history of the occupation, and then take an in-depth look at the pro-occupation camp, the neutral history, and the anti-occupation camp, in that order.
The occupation of Haiti occurred during a period of U.S. diplomacy that was marked by frequent intervention in the internal affairs of LatinAmerican countries, including Cuba, Panama, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. It also occurred during a period marked by strong racism of white Americans towards blacks. Jim Crow segregation laws were in full effect in the South and instances of white violence toward blacks were fairly common, even in Northern cities like Chicago, where a shocking race riot occurred in 1919. The President...