The US Occupation of Haiti

We here at the blog have recently completed a re-read of Hans Schmidt's classic study of the US Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934. While later studies have added a cultural dimension to American imperialism in the Caribbean republic, and others have centered Haiti and Haitian resistance to the military occupation, Schmidt's monograph remains a go-to study for understanding the conditions that precipitated, endured, and continued for the Black Republic.

 This study elucidates why the US was interested in securing financial and economic control of Haiti, inter-imperial rivalry in the Caribbean region, the context of racism and racial ideology, and the lack of development and long-term positive results of the American Occupation. Despite all the rhetoric of Wilson and subsequent US presidents, the military occupation never invested in practical and meaningful democratic or educational reforms. Of course, one reads Schmidt and gets the impression there was a degree of paternal protection of Haiti on the part of the Marine high commissioner, Russell, and attempts to minimize an invasion of US latifundia agricultural enterprises, which never materialized anyway. 

It is interesting to see how Schmidt did not discuss land dispossession and the impact of US companies like HASCO or sisal in the north as having the types of devastating consequences Haitians of the time and afterwards would describe. Although one could not omit the negative impact of corvee-styled forced labor used by the Marines against the Haitian peasantry, nor can one forget the rise of Haitian emigration to the plantations of the Dominican Republic and Cuba during the Occupation. However, we get the impression from Schmidt that the American rulers of Haiti really did want to limit the possible negative impact of US companies in the countryside. We here at the blog will have to return to the question of the Occupation's economic and social impact on the Haitian countryside.