Plummer: HAITI AND THE GREAT
POWERS,1902-1915
Notes
by Bob Corbett, May 1990
- For review: Hard to keep overview in sight, though impressive use of
official documents not usually quoted.
- 1900 Haiti was mercantile ( mercantilist ) with cosmopolitan leaders.
- The American strategy was to terminate multilaterlism. It failed to do
so.
- P. 9. "The independent market economy in the Caribbean developed
before the end of slavery as a response to the failure of European
mercantilism to address the needs of island residents. It operated from
the very beginning as a counter economy and opposed the Caribbean
development policies initiated by metropolitan authorities."
- P. 39. "The contradictions in Haitian life ceased to be latent as the
international order gradually changed in the second half of the nineteenth
century. Industrial states pulled ahead of agrarian states in the struggle
for development and began to organize their more backward neighbors as
sources of supply."
- Seabrook St. John Craige and other tellers of "lurid" tales.
- P. 71-72. see excellent quote there which attacks these tales as, for
the most part, becoming regarded as true simply because they were passed
down so long. An excellent critique of Sir Spencer St. John.
- P. 93 underdevelopment A decent argument on how Haiti was forced into
it.
- P. 104 Crete-a-Pierrot ship Story of how Admiral Killick blew it up
rather than surrender to the Germans.
- P. 195 She makes the case that the U.S. claims against Germany were
not a real issue.
- On U.S. Haitian relations:
P. 244 "The Americans, however, made claims to a moral stewardship in
Haiti and insisted that all Haitian regimes remain unquestionably
stable. That responsibility, as we have seen, was rarely distinguished
from repression and support for dictatorial presidents has been a
consistent feature of Haitian-American relations."
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