Ellen D. Tillman. Dollar Diplomacy by Force: Nation-Building and Resistance in the Dominican Republic. North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. 288 pp. $29.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-4696-2695-6.
Reviewed by Heather M. Salazar (Ohio University)
Published on H-War (December, 2018)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey (Air University)
Ellen Tillman’s Dollar Diplomacy by Force: Nation-Building and Resistance in the Dominican Republic is a significant contribution to economic and military historical scholarship of the United States in the Caribbean. While the book is clearly a military history of the US occupation of the Dominican Republic, economic investments by bankers and US citizens seeking wealth play a significant role in establishing an American presence on the island before official military control. As the Dominicans fell delinquent to their European creditors at the beginning of the twentieth century, they sought assistance from the US to “initiate a long-term arbitration board that would collect customs revenues and oversee payment of debts” (p. 35). In doing so the Dominican government accepted an American financial agent who became responsible for overseeing customs revenue and debt repayment and provided financial advice to the government, thus beginning direct US influence on Dominican society. Through this analysis of American military and economic integration into the Dominican Republic, Tillman adds to the historiography by exploring the role and motivations of the local populations in their interactions with the United States.
Tillman argues that “the Dominican experiment became a laboratory for colonial experiments by the US Navy and was instrumental in defining early ‘dollar diplomacy,’” which altered how America conducted foreign policy (p. 2). The goal of dollar diplomacy, promoted by both the Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft administrations, was for the United States, as the “natural protector of Caribbean nations,” to guarantee political and economic stability in the region to prevent the need for military intervention (p. 29). Taft believed that this would help protect and secure American commercial and financial interests in the region and stabilize political situations that could threaten US national security. Initially, Dominican elites welcomed the economic investments as they sought to modernize their country and make inroads to the world market. Unfortunately, over time, the investors lost their welcome, creating a societal divide and branding “any political leader who accepted and used US help or cooperated with the United States … as a traitor” (p. 50). Tillman explains that Dominicans felt they had lost control of their island as all decisions were made based upon the level of American support and involvement. As the societal divide on the island grew, chaos ensued, ultimately descending into civil war.
American military officers believed that a strongman approach to maintaining order would be effective, but their means proved insufficient, resulting in the need for full US economic and military control. With the large presence of US Navy and Marine Corps personnel already on the island, US Naval officers were placed in charge of planning and implementing full occupation of the Dominican Republic. But this did not come as easily as hoped. In chapters 3 and 4 of Dollar Diplomacy, Tillman focuses on the struggle for control over the Dominican Republic. She argues that naval officers espoused complete control as the only means to end violence, yet in reality “the clashes of understanding and interests meant a mutually agitating interplay between increasing use of military force to subdue and control the situation and growing—sometimes violent—anti-US resistances” (p. 54). The US Navy’s creation of a constabulary further agitated Dominicans, who did not view its authority as legitimate; however, at this time, no international governing body existed to effectively challenge US aggression. Not only was legitimacy an issue in the Dominicans’ eyes; the Americans struggled with the ability and willingness of locals to serve in the constabulary. Problems with recruitment, supplies, education, and training all plagued the US’s attempt to establish a force that would be capable of taking over the Dominican Republic’s security after the American withdrawal.
Dollar Diplomacy’s final chapters chronicle various levels of resistance thrown against US occupation forces. Though some locals cooperated with the Americans and served in regional constabulary companies, a great many resisted based on their distrust of the US control over their way of life, government, military, and regional cultures and identities. US officials were cautious of arming locals for fear of their allegiance to anti-American resistance groups. By 1920, Dominicans united to form a more vocal resistance through the creation of the Unión Nacional Dominicana (UND). With the publication and spread of newspapers, the UND directly targeted US officials, the constabulary, and Dominicans who supported the occupation. They turned US efforts to modernize the Dominican Republic against the occupiers, employing their new roads and telephones to “unify distinct anti-occupation movements even while international and national attention to the occupation created a safer, more open space to resist” (p. 167). Tillman concludes the book with a seventh chapter that examines the withdrawal of US troops from the island and the uneasy transition back to domestic rule. Though problems of withdrawal are not new to scholars, there are clear similarities to those facing US forces later in the twentieth and into the twenty-first century.
Overall, Tillman’s Dollar Diplomacy is a great addition to a growing historical body of scholarship that includes Mary Renda’s Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of US Imperialism, 1915-1940 (2001) and Eric Roorda’s The Dictator Next Door: The Good Neighbor Policy and the Trujillo Regime in the Dominican Republic (1998). All three books emphasize America’s search for imperial dominance within the Caribbean and especially on the shared island of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Chronologically, Tillman’s book fits perfectly between Renda’s and Roorda’s and creates a comprehensive collection of the US military interests in the Caribbean to include imperial economic and military development toward creating societies friendly toward the United States.
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Citation:
Heather M. Salazar. Review of Tillman, Ellen D., Dollar Diplomacy by Force: Nation-Building and Resistance in the Dominican Republic.
H-War, H-Net Reviews.
December, 2018.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=51107
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