Customer Reviews

Impact of Intervention: The Dominican Republic During the U.S. Occupation of 1916-1924

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It's pretty depressing that this book is number 1,773,851 on the Amazon sales list. Let's see: Invade and occupy a country to bring it stability and democracy, provoke a stubborn insurgency, antagonize the populace, find it difficult to complete ambitious infrastructure plans, alienate your allies. Where have I heard this before? Let's hope the epilogue-- a 31-year rule by a brutal despot-- doesn't repeat as well. This is a superb treatment of the US occupation of the Dominican Republic that began in 1916; it's thorough, fair, and well-written. If more citizens--and more policy makers--read books such as this, America would be a humbler, wiser, and stronger country. Why has the Uiversity of Texas Press stopped printing it?

"A comprehensive and tolerant study, devoid of jargon. . . . Calder,
a historian at the University of Illinois at Chicago, fairly describes
the mixed results of the occupation. . . . Some readers may disagree
with Mr. Calder's assessment of the occupation's long-term
costs--Dominican hostility to the United States and, less directly,
the Trujillo regime that began in 1930--but this is nevertheless an
excellent study." --The New York Times Book Review

This book gives readers a lot of details about the events before and during the intervention in the Dominican Republic by the US Marines from 1916 to 1924. It shows the disagreements of the State Department with measures that the military authorities in the island considered appropriate for the economic stability of the country. It also shows the need to import foreign civilian executives mostly from Puerto Rico and the Philippines to administer the various departments of the government in lieu of Dominicans who did not cooperate with the military authorities. The attitude of superiority of the imported executives plus the already behavior of the military produced a sour response from Dominicans. This did not help to build bridges between the population and the interventionists. In fact, it produced fights where Dominicans took the worse part. The book describes also the support the occupiers got from some sectors of the population. Naming the fighters in the Eastern part of the island as guerrillas instead of bandoleers positions the former more as patriots though some were really members of bands. The prohibition to carry arms to the civilian population, the highways built, the telegraph system and the elimination of the local army and navy placed the republic in the hands of General Trujillo who lasted 31 years in power heading a cruel dictatoship. You can agree or not with the positive measures of the intervention and the negative ones but no doubt Calder gives you enough information so you can make up your mind with the necessary information. Excellent research made by the author. There should be a Spanish translation so it can reach most Dominican readers.

Updated and enlarged Paperback edition with a new introduction.
Just published
Reviews of the hardcover edition:

"A comprehensive and tolerant study, devoid of jargon. . . . Calder,a historian at the University of Illinois at Chicago, fairly describes the mixed results of the occupation. . . . Some readers may disagree with Mr. Calder's assessment of the occupation's long-term costs-Dominican hostility to the United States and, less directly, the Trujillo regime that began in 1930-but this is nevertheless an excellent study." -The New York Times Book Review
"A work of exceptional historical analysis. . . . Calder is to be commended for his forthright analysis of the American occupation." -American Historical Review
"A particularly good summary of U.S. imperialism at the turn of
the century and a clear description of Dominican society and the
political system at that time." -Political Science Quarterly

BRUCE CALDER, University of Illinois, the author of Politics of Spirit,wrote a new introduction to this book.