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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Bob Corbett
corbetre@webster.edu