Abstract
As the United States was gradually completing its territorial expansion to the Pacific Ocean in the 1890s its search for new economic opportunities focused upon the Caribbean area. Because of its regional diversity, shaped by different ambiences, cultures, and reactions to imperialistic impositions, attempts at unification in the Caribbean were highly unrealistic and made the involvement of the United States there much easier. Ideological notions, such as those of “mission,” “the survival of the fittest,” and especially the so-called “God-given right of the United States to spread civilization to supposedly backward peoples,” provided the rationale for an imperialistic enterprise. Other influential policymakers quickly spread Captain Alfred T. Mahan’s doctrine of greatness through “sea power” as a realistic policy, which would lead to eminence rather than to stagnation and decay.1
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A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1890); and The Interest of America in Sea Power: Present and Future (Boston: Little, Brown, 1898); Richard D. Challener, Admirals, Generals, and American Foreign Policy 1898–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), pp. 12–14; Lester D. Langley, The United States and the Caribbean, 1900–1970 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980), pp. 3–14; Hans J. Morgenthau, “The Mainsprings of American Foreign Policy: The National Interest vs. Moral Abstractions,” American Political Science Review, XLIV (1950), 833; Dexter Perkins, The American Approach to Foreign Policy (Uppsala, 1951; rpt. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), pp. 30–82.
Dana G. Munro, The United States and the Caribbean Area (Boston: World Peace Foundation, 1934); Julius W. Pratt, America’s Colonial Experiment (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1950); J. Fred Rippy, The Caribbean Danger Zone (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1940), pp. 3–114; Samuel Flagg Bemis, The Latin American Policy of the United States (1943; rpt. New York: W. W. Norton, 1967); Edwin Lieuwen, U.S. Policy in Latin America (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965), pp. 29–38; Louis A. Perez, Jr, “Intervention, Hegemony, and Dependency: The United States In the Circum-Caribbean, 1898–1980,” Pacific Historical Review, LI (1982), 165; Samuel F. Wells, Jr, Robert H. Ferrell, and David F. Trask, The Ordeal of World Power (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), pp. 1–76; Ludwell Lee Montague, Haiti and the United States, 1714–1938 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1940), quotation p. 181; Charles Stockton, “The American Inter-Oceanic Canal: A Study of the Commercial, Naval and Political Conditions,” United States Naval Institute Proceedings, XXVI (1899), 752.
Lloyd Mecham, A Survey of United States-Latin American Relations (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), pp. 66–70; Lieuwen, pp. 38–45; Langley, pp. 15–62; Whitney T. Perkins, Constraint of Empire (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1981), pp. 1–4, 21–35, 40–8; Julius W. Pratt, Challenge and Rejection (New York: Macmillan, 1967), pp. 3–36, 70–83; Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition (1948; rpt. New York: Random House, 1974), pp. 266–307; Challener, pp. 288–315.
Woodrow Wilson, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1913 and Address delivered before the Southern Commercial Congress at Mobile, Alabama, October 27, 1913, in Woodrow Wilson Papers, Microfilm 17739, Reel 477 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1973). See also: Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters, IV (New York: Doubleday, 1931); Arthur S. Link, Wilson the Diplomatist (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1957); Wilson: The New Freedom (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), pp. 319–416; Wilson: The Struggle for Neutrality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), pp. 495–550; The Higher Realism of Woodrow Wilson (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1971), pp. 72–87; George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy, 1900–1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), pp. 91–103; Lloyd C. Gardner, “American Foreign Policy 1900–1921: A Second Look at the Realist Critique of American Diplomacy,” in Towards a New Past, ed. Barton J. Bernstein (New York: Pantheon House, 1968), pp. 202–31; Joseph S. Tulchin, The Aftermath of War: World War I and U.S. Policy Toward Latin America (New York: New York University Press, 1971); Samuel F. Wells, Jr, “New Perspectives on Wilsonian Diplomacy: the Secular Evangelism of American Political Economy: A Review Essay,” in Perspectives in American History, VI, ed. Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn (Cambridge: Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, Harvard University, 1972), pp. 387–419; Pratt, Challenge, pp. 84–101; Hofstadter, pp. 308–67.
Challener, pp. 7, 24, 64; H. C. Taylor, “Memorandum on General Staff for the U.S. Navy,” United States Naval Institute Proceedings, XXVI (1900), 441; Dana G. Munro, Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy in the Caribbean, 1900–1921 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), pp. 20–3; William Everett Kane, Civil Strife in Latin America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1972), pp. 30–95; Dexter Perkins, The Evolution of American Foreign Policy, 2nd edn. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948), pp. 47–52; Arthur P. Whitaker, The Western Hemisphere Idea: Its Rise and Decline (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1954), pp. 108–31; Hans Schmidt, The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915–1934 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1971), pp. 5–7.
Challener, pp. 36–42, 81–8; Ebenezer D. Bassett (first black Minister to Haiti), “Should Haiti be Annexed to the United States?” Voice of the Negro (May, 1904), 191–8; Rayford W. Logan, The Diplomatic Relations of the United States with Haiti, 1776–1891 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941), p. 321; Jean Price-Mars, rev. of The Diplomatic Relations of the United States with Haiti, 1776–1891, by Rayford W. Logan, Revue de Société d’Histoire et de Géographie d’Haiti, 12, No. 43 (October, 1941), 51–5.
The defeat of the French armies in Haiti, as well as the strength of British sea power, destroyed Napoleonic ambitions to establish a French empire based in Louisiana for further world conquests. In consequence President Jefferson was able to purchase the Louisiana Territory in 1803. Samuel Flagg Bemis, A Diplomatic History of the United States, 5th edn. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1936), pp. 126–37; Jean Price-Mars, “Toussaint-Louverture,” in Silhouettes de Nègres et de Nègrophiles (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1960), pp. 11–84; and La Contribution haitienne à la lutte des Amériques pour les libertés humaines (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie de l’Etat, 1942); James G. Leyburn, The Haitian People, rev. edn. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), pp. 14–31.
Loring D. Dewey, Correspondence Relative to the Emigration to Hayti of the Free People of Colour in the United States Together with the Instructions to the Agent Sent out by President Boyer (New York: Mahlon Day, 1824); James Theodore Holly, A Vindication of the Capacity of the Negro Race for Self-Government … (New Haven: W. H. Stanley, 1857); Logan, pp. 216–17, 307–10; Montague, pp. 29–90; Michael D. Olien, “United States Colonization Programs for Blacks in Latin America During the 19th Century,” in Afro-American Ethnohistory in Latin America and the Caribbean, Vol. I, ed. N. E. Whitten (Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association/Latin American Group, 1976), pp. 7–16; Charles H. Wesley, “Lincoln’s Plan for Colonizing the Emancipated Negroes,” Journal of Negro History, IV (1919), 7; Jacques N. Léger, Haiti: son histoire et ses détracteurs (New York: Neale Publishing, 1907; rpt. English trans, Westport, Negro Universities Press, 1970), pp. 167–9, 178–91; Jean Price-Mars, “Les Relations diplomatiques entre les Etats-Unis et Haiti (1717– 1804),” Revue de la Société d’Histoire et de Géographie d’Haiti, 15, No. 53 (April 1944), 1–14; and “La Coopération haitienne dans la lutte des peuples américaines pour la conquète de leur indépendance,” Revue de la Société d’Histoire et de Géographie d’Haiti, 14, No. 51 (October, 1943), 1–11; Albert de Vidas, “The Foreign Relations of Haiti in Hemispheric Affairs from Independence to Occupation, 1804–1915,” Diss. New York University 1971; Edward P. Crapol, “American Political Abolitionists and the Campaign for Recognition of Haitian Sovereignty, 1833–1845,” Paper presented at the 5th annual meeting of the Caribbean Studies Association, May 7–10, 1980, Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles; Mary Treudley, “The United States and Santo Domingo, 1789–1866,” Journal of Race Development, 1 (1916–17), 83–145, 220–74.
Joseph Justin, Les Reformes nécessaires: questions haitiennes d’actualité (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie Edmond Chenet, 1915), p. 61.
Ibid., p. 62. See also Michael-Rolph Trouillot, HAITI: STATE Against NATION: The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990), pp. 50–8.
Brenda Gayle Plummer, “Race, Nationality, and Trade in the Caribbean: The Syrians in Haiti, 1903–1934,” The International History Review, III, 4 (October 1981), 517–39.
Montague, pp. 163–203; Leyburn, pp. 250–62; Schmidt, 32–41; Arthur C. Millspaugh, Haiti under American Control, 1915–1930 (Boston: World Peace Foundation, 1931) pp. 12–24; Lyonel Paquin, The Haitians (Brooklyn: Multi-Type, 1983), pp. 58–61; Robert I. Rotberg with Christopher K. Clague, Haiti: The Politics of Squalor (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), pp. 65– 105; Munro, Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy in the Caribbean, pp. 112–16, 245–59; Speech of Honorable Elihu Root, Secretary of State, at the National Convention for the Extension of the Foreign Commerce of the United States, Washington, D.C., January 14, 1907, Box 220, Speeches, 1894–1933, and Elihu Root to Dr Albert Shaw, January 3, 1908, Box 188, part 2, no. 343, in the Elihu Root Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Edward L. Beach, U.S.N., “Admiral Caperton in Haiti,” Record Group 45, Naval Records Collection of the Office of Naval Records and Library, Subject File ZWA-7, “Haiti,” National Archives, Washington, D.C., p. 724 (typescript); Pierre V. Benoit, 1804–1954: Cent cinqante ans de commerce extérieur d’Haiti (Port-au-Prince: Institut Haitien de Statistique, 1954); Joseph Chatelain, La Banque Nationale (Port-au-Prince, 1954); Alain Turnier, Les Etats-Unis et le marché haitien (Washington, D.C., 1955); Leslie F. Manigat, Haiti of the Sixties, Object of International Concern (Washington, D.C.: Washington Center of Foreign Policy Research, 1964), pp. 1–32; and “La Substitution de la prépondérance américaine à la prépondérance française en Haiti au début du XXe siècle: la conjoncture de 1910–1911,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, XIV (1967), 321, with English trans. by Antonia Fivel-Demoret, “Haiti: The Shift from French Hegemony to the American Sphere of Influence at the Beginning of the 20th Century: The ‘Conjoncture’ of 1910–1911,” in The Caribbean Yearbook of International Relations, ed. Leslie F. Manigat (Leyden: Sijthoff & Nordhoff, 1975), pp. 188–214; Vilfort Beauvoir, Le Contrôle financier du gouvernement des Etats-Unis d’Amérique sur la République d’Haiti (Paris: Librairie du Recueil Sirey, 1930); Brenda Gayle Plummer, Haiti and the Great Powers, 1902–1915 (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), pp. 169–71.
Jean Price-Mars, Jean-Pierre Boyer Bazelais et le drame de Miragoane (Port-au-Prince: Impr. de l’Etat, 1948), pp. 29–30. According to Michael-Rolph Trouillot, Price-Mars often referred to the nuances and exchange value of “color” as the “particularités of the social condition.” See Trouillot, pp. 120–2.
Joseph Justin, Les Relations extérieures d’Haiti (Paris: Albert Savine, 1895), pp. 81, 133.
David Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour and National Independence in Haiti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 141.
Montague, pp. 189–95; Manigat, La Substitution, pp. 353–5; Anténor Firmin, M. Roosevelt, Président des Etats-Unis et la République d’Haiti (New York: Hamilton Banknote Engraving and Printing Company, 1905); Jean Price-Mars, Anténor Firmin (Port-au-Prince: Imp. Seminaire Adventiste, n.d., posthumous), pp. 364–6; Minister of Haiti to the Secretary of State, December 22, 1914, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1914 (Washington, D.C.: 1922) p. 371, hereafter referred to as Foreign Relations’, Chatelain, pp. 102–6; Brenda Gayle Plummer, “Black and White in the Caribbean: Haitian-American Relations, 1902–1934,” Diss. Cornell University 1981, pp. 376–81. See also by Plummer, Haiti and the Great Powers, 1902–1915, pp. 209–10.
Schmidt, pp. 46–63; Millspaugh, pp. 25–33; Harold P. Davis, Black Democracy (1928; revised edn. 1936; rpt. New York: Biblio & Tannen, 1967), pp. 145–60; Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier, pp. 142–5; Edward Stephen Kaplan, “The Latin American Policy of William Jennings Bryan, 1913–1915,” Diss. New York University, 1970; Selig Adler, “Bryan and Wilsonian Caribbean Penetration,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 20 (1940), 198; Bemis, Latin American Policy, pp. 185–99; Pratt, Challenge, pp. 84–101.
Jean Price-Mars, “Haiti et la question de race,” in La Vocation de l’Elite (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie Edmund Chenet, 1919), pp. 163–209; Magdaline W. Shannon, trans., So Spoke the Uncle, by Jean Price-Mars (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1983), pp. 9–11; Jean Finot, Le Préjugé des races (Paris: F. Alean, 1905); Gustave Le Bon, Lois psychologiques de l’évolution des peuples (Paris: Alean, 1894).
The lectures were published in collective form in La Vocation de l’Elite. See also Jean Fouchard, “L’Ecole Nationaliste Price-Mars,” in Emmanuel C. Paul and Jean Fouchard, eds., Témoignages sur la vie et l’oeuvre du Dr. Jean Price Mars: 1876–1956 (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie de l’Etat, 1956), pp. 177–81.
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© 1996 Magdaline W. Shannon
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Shannon, M.W. (1996). The American Occupation of Haiti. In: Jean Price-Mars, the Haitian Elite and the American Occupation, 1915–1935. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24964-0_1
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