In July 1915, after political unrest and the mob murder of Haiti's president Vilbrun Guillaume Sam, United States marines invaded Haiti. Prior to the occupation peasants had staged uprisings to resist moves by US investors to appropriate their land and convert the style of agriculture in the area from subsistence back to a plantation-like system—the idea of going back to anything like the plantation system faced fierce resistance. Haitians had been afraid that US investors were trying to convert the economy back into a plantation-based one since US businesses had been amassing land and evicting rural peasants from their family land. Rural Haitians formed armies that roamed around the countryside, stealing from farmers and raping women. The motivation of the US occupation of Haiti was partly to protect investments and to prevent European countries from gaining too much power in the area. One stated justification for the occupation had been the practice of enslaving children as domestic servants; however the US then reinstituted the practice of forced labor under the "corvée" system.