This award-winning book provides a unique window on how America began to intervene in world affairs. In exploring what might be called the prehistory of Dollar Diplomacy, Cyrus Veeser brings together developments in New York, Washington, Santo Domingo, Brussels, and London. Theodore Roosevelt plays a leading role in the story as do State Department officials, Caribbean rulers, Democratic party leaders, bankers, economists, international lawyers, sugar planters, and European bondholders, among others.
The book recounts a little-known incident: the takeover by the Santo Domingo Improvement Company (SDIC) of the foreign debt, national railroad, and national bank of the Dominican Republic. The inevitable conflict between private interest and public policy led President Roosevelt to launch a sweeping new policy that became known as the Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. The corollary gave the U. S. the right to intervene anywhere in Latin American that "wrongdoing or impotence" (in T. R.'s words) threatened "civilized society." The "wrongdoer" in this case was the SDIC. Imposing government control over corporations was launched and became a hallmark of domestic policy. By proposing an economic remedy to a political problem, the book anticipates policies embodied in the Marshall Plan, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank.
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: Economic Power and American Expansion,1892 to 1907
- 1 The Gilded Age Goes Abroad: The San Domingo Improvement Company and the Political Economy of the 1890s
- 2 Remapping the Caribbean: U.S. Caribbean Interests and the Mission of the SDIC
- 3 Peasants in the World Economy: The Dominican Republic in the Late 1800s
- 4 Dictating Development: Ulises Heureaux and the SDIC Remake the Dominican Republic
- 5 The Cash Nexus: Economic Crisis and the Collapse of the Heureaux-SDIC Regime
- 6 Old Wine in New Skins: The U.S. Government Champions the SDIC,1899–1904
- 7 A Reign of Law Among Nations: John Bassett Moore and the Vindication of the SDIC, 1904
- 8 A World Safe for Capitalism: Stabilizing the Dominican Republic, 1901–1905
- 9 From the Gilded Age to Dollar Diplomacy: The SDIC and the Roosevelt Corollary,1904–1907
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
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