State And Society In The Dominican Republic

This book offers an analysis of the formation of the Dominican state and explores the development of state-society relations since the late nineteenth century. Emelio Betances argues that the groundwork for the establishment of a modern state was laid during the regimes of Ulises Heureaux and Ramï¿1⁄2ï¿1⁄2res. The U.S. military government that followed later expanded and strengthened political and administrative centralization. Between 1886 and 1924, these administrations opened the sugar industry to foreign capital investment, integrated Dominican finance into the international credit system, and expanded the role of the military. State expansion, however, was not accompanied by a strengthening of the social and economic base of national elites. Betances suggests that the imbalance between a strong state and a weak civil society provided the structural framework for the emergence in 1930 of the long-lived Trujillo dictatorship.Examining the links between Trujillo and current caudillo Joaquï¿1⁄2Balaguer, the author traces continuities and discontinuities in economic and political development through a study of import substitution programs, the reemergence of new economic groups, and the use of the military to counter threats to the status quo. Finally, he explores the impact of foreign intervention and socioeconomic change on the process of state and class formation since 1961.

This book offers an analysis of the formation of the Dominican state and explores the development of state-society relations since the late nineteenth century. Emelio Betances argues that the groundwork for the establishment of a modern state was laid during the regimes of Ulises Heureaux and Ramón Cáceres. The U.S. military government that followed later expanded and strengthened political and administrative centralization. Between 1886 and 1924, these administrations opened the sugar industry to foreign capital investment, integrated Dominican finance into the international credit system, and expanded the role of the military. State expansion, however, was not accompanied by a strengthening of the social and economic base of national elites. Betances suggests that the imbalance between a strong state and a weak civil society provided the structural framework for the emergence in 1930 of the long-lived Trujillo dictatorship.Examining the links between Trujillo and current caudillo Joaquín Balaguer, the author traces continuities and discontinuities in economic and political development through a study of import substitution programs, the reemergence of new economic groups, and the use of the military to counter threats to the status quo. Finally, he explores the impact of foreign intervention and socioeconomic change on the process of state and class formation since 1961.

This book offers an analysis of the formation of the Dominican state and explores the development of state-society relations since the late nineteenth century. Emelio Betances argues that the groundwork for the establishment of a modern state was laid during the regimes of Ulises Heureaux and Ramï¿1⁄2ï¿1⁄2res. The U.S. military government that followed later expanded and strengthened political and administrative centralization. Between 1886 and 1924, these administrations opened the sugar industry to foreign capital investment, integrated Dominican finance into the international credit system, and expanded the role of the military. State expansion, however, was not accompanied by a strengthening of the social and economic base of national elites. Betances suggests that the imbalance between a strong state and a weak civil society provided the structural framework for the emergence in 1930 of the long-lived Trujillo dictatorship.Examining the links between Trujillo and current caudillo Joaquï¿1⁄2Balaguer, the author traces continuities and discontinuities in economic and political development through a study of import substitution programs, the reemergence of new economic groups, and the use of the military to counter threats to the status quo. Finally, he explores the impact of foreign intervention and socioeconomic change on the process of state and class formation since 1961.

This study of the political, economic, and sociocultural relationship between the Dominican Republic and the United States follows its evolution from the middle of the nineteenth century to the mid-1990s. It deals with the interplay of these dimensions from each country's perspective and in both private and public interactions. From the U.S. viewpoint, important issues include interpretation of the rise and fall of the Dominican Republic's strategic importance, the legacy of military intervention and occupation, the problem of Dominican dictatorship and instability, and vacillating U.S. efforts to "democratize" the country. From the Dominican perspective, the essential themes involve foreign policies adopted from a position of relative weakness, ambivalent love-hate views toward the United States, emphasis on economic interests and the movement of Dominicans between the two countries, international political isolation, the adversarial relationship with neighboring Haiti, and the legacy of dictatorship and the uneven evolution of a Dominican-style democratic system. The Dominican Republic and the United States is the eleventh book in The United States and the Americas series, volumes suitable for classroom use.

Combining intellectual and social history, Teresita Martinez-Vergne explores the processes by which people in the Dominican Republic began to hammer out a common sense of purpose and a modern national identity at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Hoping to build a nation of hardworking, peaceful, voting citizens, the Dominican intelligentsia impressed on the rest of society a discourse of modernity based on secular education, private property, modern agricultural techniques, and an open political process. Black immigrants, bourgeois women, and working-class men and women in the capital city of Santo Domingo and in the booming sugar town of San Pedro de Macoris, however, formed their own surprisingly modern notions of citizenship in daily interactions with city officials. Martinez-Vergne shows just how difficult it was to reconcile the lived realities of people of color, women, and the working poor with elite notions of citizenship, entitlement, and identity. She concludes that the urban setting, rather than defusing the impact of race, class, and gender within a collective sense of belonging, as intellectuals had envisioned, instead contributed to keeping these distinctions intact, thus limiting what could be considered Dominican.

Composición social dominicana (Social Composition of the Dominican Republic), first published in 1970 in Spanish, and translated into English here for the first time, discusses the changing structure of social classes and groups in Dominican society from the first encounter between Europeans and Natives until the mid-twentieth century. This influential and pioneering book details the struggles of the Dominican people as they evolved from pre-colonial and colonial subjects to sovereign actors with the task of moving a republic forward, amidst imperialist desires and martial ambitions. Juan Bosch, one of the most well-known and best-loved Dominican politicians and scholars, here sets out the important themes that define modern Dominican society. He tackles topics such as the inter-imperialist rivalry between France, Spain, England, and Holland and its subsequent impact on the Caribbean region, as well as the U.S. occupation of the Dominican Republic from 1916-1924. He also discusses the aftermath of political alliances between liberals and conservatives during the birth of the Dominican Republic, the Restoration War fought against the Spanish Crown, the role of the petit bourgeoisie and the hateros (cattle-ranchers) in the formation of a Dominican oligarchy, the emergence of dictator Rafael Trujillo, and the composition of society during his time in power. This translation, introduced and contextualized by leading Dominican Studies scholar Wilfredo Lozano, opens up Bosch’s work for a new generation of scholars studying the Caribbean.

In the early twentieth century, the United States set out to guarantee economic and political stability in the Caribbean without intrusive and controversial military interventions—and ended up achieving exactly the opposite. Using military and government records from the United States and the Dominican Republic, this work investigates the extent to which early twentieth-century U.S. involvement in the Dominican Republic fundamentally changed both Dominican history and the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. Successive U.S. interventions based on a policy of "dollar diplomacy" led to military occupation and contributed to a drastic shifting of the Dominican social order, as well as centralized state military power, which Rafael Trujillo leveraged in his 1920s rise to dictatorship. Ultimately, this book demonstrates that the overthrow of the social order resulted not from military planning but from the interplay between uncoordinated interventions in Dominican society and Dominican responses. Telling a neglected story of occupation and resistance, Ellen D. Tillman documents the troubled efforts of the U.S. government to break down the Dominican Republic and remake it from the ground up, providing fresh insight into the motivations and limitations of occupation.