The US Power Elite and the Political Economy of Haiti’s Occupation: Investment, Race, and World Order

The centennial of Wilsonian interventionism was marked in 2015, remembering the US occupation of Haiti in 1915 and Haiti’s resistance to that signal event in its history. This article surveys the issues of economics, race, and realpolitik embedded in the political economy of US interactions with Haiti that heard their crescendo in that occupation, which lasted until 1934. It delivers insights derived from a forensic analysis of Woodrow Wilson’s perception of race and his decision to intervene in Haiti. The attitudes enabling US military leaders to implement a policy of occupation are described through a study of Admiral William Caperton’s role in the US intervention. It also interrogates what constitutes the “state” as it pertains to foreign policy, along with a Gramscian inspection of who benefits (cui bono) from empire. This approach eschews dichotomies of whether or not the US as a whole materially benefited from empire, and instead simply looks at who individually gained, and what were the capacities of these beneficiaries to craft policy. In short, the project answers the questions of why, who, and how the US occupation was undertaken in 1915.

Haiti and the United States, along with the relationship between them, can be understood only through an examination and analysis of culture, economics, geopolitics, and race. The United States had a hemispheric hegemonic agenda that drove it to promote an investment agenda targeted at Haiti. It justified its violation of Haiti’s sovereignty through longstanding, deeply entrenched racial stereotypes and civilizational taxonomies. Taken together, a constellation of perceptions and interests aligned to create an image of Haiti that allowed the US to reconcile its founding ethos as a republic, having the consent of the governed, with its empire formation in the name of liberal interventionism and colonial uplift.