A World Safe for Capitalism: Dollar Diplomacy and America's Rise to Global Power (Columbia Studies in Contemporary American History)
Based on Veeser's Bancroft Dissertation Prize-winning thesis, this work examines a little-known but important event in the history of U.S. foreign policy. During the early 1890s, the Dominican Republic's finances were controlled by a Dutch company to insure payment of the country's foreign debt. In 1892, a small group of American politicians and financiers formed the Santo Domingo Improvement Society and purchased the right to manage the country's finances. The U.S. government supported the society as a cheap means of protecting American economic and political interests. However, Dominican dictator Ulises Heureaux's exploitation of the society and the imposition of a managed cash-crop farming system led to a decade of social unrest. President Theodore Roosevelt concluded that running foreign policy through a private firm was unsuccessful, which led him to order a U.S. occupation in January 1905. Vesser draws from American, English, French, and Dominican archival materials to present a detailed and well-written account of the early growth of U.S. overseas influence. Highly recommended. Stephen L. Hupp, West Virginia Univ. Lib., ParkersburgCopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.