Haiti and the Uses of America ― Post-u.s. Occupation Promises

"The dominant narrative about US-Haitian relations is that US power relative to Haiti has always been imbalanced in favor of the US, and has negatively impacted Haitian society in numerous ways. In Haiti and the Uses of America, Chantalle Verna challenges this tendency to view Haiti as always a victim, and she argues that Haitians have been central players whose histories have not only been shaped by inter-American and international affairs, but who have also played a role in shaping those affairs. In the years following the US occupation of Haiti (which lasted from 1915-1934), the Haitian elite struggled to define the relationship Haiti would have with the United States moving forward. Working with archival records, oral histories, and public and private records, Verna shows that these two decades following the US occupation but before the Duvalier dictatorship were a time of transition between eras, and that the Haitian elite then had a cosmopolitan outlook that helped shape the future role of Americaninvolvement in Haitian affairs. Rather than banning all foreign ties with the Americans, the Haitian leaders instead encouraged cooperation between the nations, especially at first on a cultural front, but extending to diplomatic issues as well, to re-introduce the two nations to one another as contemporaries, opening themselves to collaboration on projects of shared interest. Haiti and the Uses of America demonstrates that favorable ideas about what role the US could play in Haiti shifted from existing on the margins of Haitian society to circulating more centrally among Haiti's educated urban elite"--