Imperialism revised: Military, society, and U.S. occupation in the Dominican Republic, 1880-1924

This dissertation examines the historical implications of World-War-One-Era armed occupations through a study of the U.S.-created constabulary in the Dominican Republic during the military occupation of 1916-1924, and a contextualization of those years in the wider context of Dominican history. Through this historically under-studied case, I demonstrate the negotiations and compromise that, over the course of a long occupation, both revised the approaches of U.S. occupying forces and changed occupied society--fundamentally reshaping Dominican social class and regional power relationships through the military, unifying a heavily regional society, and polarizing society between military and civilian. The occupation took place during a time of rapid modernization in the Dominican Republic and drastically changing U.S. foreign policy methods, opening the way for its events and character to play a central role in the development of both. This study combines an analysis of U.S. and Dominican government and popular sources, including international communications, military records and newspapers from both countries, and private letters, to demonstrate the complex dialogue through which the new Dominican military and political system came into being. This dissertation takes back to its origin the question of what happens in U.S. military occupations meant to export democracy, examining the interplay and give and take between the occupied and occupiers, and the ways in which the end results were an evolution of something new, built of compromise. The society and military that emerged on the other side of the occupation was the result of a creative and ever-evolving dialogue between opposing forces, an evolution that led to a product distant from the plans of occupiers, but also distant from the plans of resisters, one that fundamentally reshaped Dominican power relationships and societal structure by the occupation's end.