Lecture, Session 13

From Colonialism to Imperialism - Migration, Remittances and Development

19th-century Elite Society

The high class of 19th century social hierarchy was socially and culturally wedded to values and institutions of metropolitan powers.  This created a continuing pattern of economic dependency on foreign suppliers.  Consumption of foreign commerce led to the spread of of foreign language, schooling in metropole, and marriage to foreigners.  In turn, this lowered the elites' perception of their own countries.  And as a consequence, the elites ushered their own countries along paths of underdevelopment.  Additionally, this discouraged nationalist developments.

However, there occurred a movement of negritude in both the Caribbean and France.  This was a reaction to the experience of American racists imposing their prejudices in the Caribbean.  In a movement to betray the elites, followers reacted by emulating their African heritage. Peasants' African customs, beliefs, etc. were celebrated. Ethnological studies were established.  There was a push to recognize creole and patois as languages (Creole was indoctrinated as a national language in 1961).

"Class" was defined by many characteristics.  Among them: consumption, education, religion, occupation, and race.  Race did not propel these inequalities.  Mintz stresses this.  In fact, the same individual could be classed as white or elite in different Caribbean countries.  It was possible for individuals in the Caribbean to join, or compete with, the elite class by means of education, wealth, and political power.  Nevertheless the upper crust tended to be light-skinned; the lowest rungs tended to be dark. 

US involvement in the late 19th century

By the 19th century, the United States is a major trading power in the Caribbean.  It becomes a major supplier of food staples, while Europe is still the major buyer and seller of luxuries.  In the last decade of 19th century, Americans achieve naval hegemony.  They took over Panama in 1903 (canal completed in 1914).  After this was complete, foreign capitalists would float loans to corrupt, unstable governments at exorbitant rates.  The government would eventually default.  In response, foreign powers would use financial pressure to persuade for their diplomatic interests. 

Recolonization

Economic domination of US firms preceded and was secured by successive military occupations or recolonization.  In this, the U.S. guaranteed foreign commercial interests.  The core powers agreed that Americans would police and protect their commercial interests. Subsequently, the investments in question were typically highly speculative and hardly ever secure.

Case-Study: McDonald Contract -- An American entrepreneur had a wild scheme to develop the banana trade for export.  The corrupt Haitian government needed foreign business and currency.  It agreed to a concession of 1/4 of the arable lands to build a railroad, as well as to the 12 miles on either side of the railway for banana production.  In turn, the government agreed to be a business partner and to guarantee the loan for railway construction.  The project was financed by NYCity Bank--financer of many Caribbean investments.  The peasants' lands were stolen from them.  In reaction, the peasants revolted (though the scheme failed).  The government defaulted on payments and the military intervened to force the government to keep paying.

Missionary zeal

Secured in the concept of a missionary vision was the idea of manifest destiny.  In this, the missionaries were "well-meaning"; they wished to impose better political habits on native populations.  They believed that the way to cure evils and troubles in the Caribbean was to spread the American gospel of public schools, good roads, modern sanitation, internal order, and baseball.  They wanted to make Cubans, Dominicans, etc. as much like Americans as possible. Americans maintained that sugar could be grown more efficiently and cheaply on large plantations, connected to centralized processing (though this was disproven by research).  In all actuality, a 1935 study in Puerto Rico showed that small farms produced cane at $4.79 compared to $5.60 on large plantations.

Islands under U.S. administration

Under the U.S. administration, the government imposed financial order.  They took over customs and the government bank.  They secured the interests of American trade and business over competitors.  They rewrote Haitian laws forbidding foreign ownership of lands and created a sugar empire.

The government supplied colossal investment capital.  30% of Cuba's investment, 90% of the Dominican Republic's and 50% of Haiti's was provided by the United States.  In this sugar construction, railways were key to the concentration of large-scale production. 

Case-study: United Fruit -- United Fruit was established at the turn of the century (formerly Boston Controlled shipping, production and circulation).  It controlled properties in the Caribbean, Central and South America, Europe, and the U.S.  It grew to be a gigantic empire, supplying 65% of the world's bananas, and using 40% of the railways in South and Central America.

Migration to Cuba

The first important wave of migration to Cuba followed a revolt by native labor, when between 1200 and 1500 Haitians migrated (Lundahl 1983:122).  The rates of migration steadily increased through the mid-twenties, with an annual recruitment by United Fruit and General Sugar of more than 20,000 workers.  

About one-third of the workers remained permanently in Cuba (Lundahl 1983:101).  

The flow to Cuba ended abruptly during the depression in the early thirties when the United States shifted its sugar production to the Pacific and Puerto Rico.  In 1938 over 8,000 Haitian workers were repatriated, exacerbating an already dire employment problem (Lundahl 1983:106).

The Occupation of the western portion of Hispaniola (Haiti) coincided with--and outlasted--the intervention on the eastern side.  Between 1916 and 1924, the American Marines occupied the Dominican Republic.  While the country was under U.S. political control, the American-owned sugar industry greatly expanded.  Haitian workers provided the bulk of the labor.  Wages in the Dominican Republic descended to little more than the rate across the border.  As a contemporary Dominican observer commented on the 20 to 30 cents-a-day labor, "the cheap imported seasonal labor digs a pit of subsistence wages at the feet of the Dominican workers in the interest of the sugar business" (cited in Lundahl 1983:122).  Lundahl (1983:119) guesses that between 1916 and 1925 at least 150,000 Haitians crossed the border which had become a "veritable osmosis."  The role of the United States policy in fostering the undocumented flow is plain once this estimate is compared with numbers of documented Haitian migration across the border.

Source: (Cited in) Lundahl (1983:119).

The huge and vulnerable Haitian population were easy  scapegoats during the subsequent depression of the Dominican sugar industry.   In 1937, between 15,000 to 25,000 Haitian migrants were rounded up and slaughtered.  Despite this atrocity and the dreadful conditions there, which are regularly deplored by human rights organizations, the Dominican Republic ultimately became the unwelcoming "host" to the second largest population of diaspora Haitians.