Foundations of despotism
Subtitle: peasants, the Trujillo regime, and modernity in Dominican history
By: Richard Lee Turits.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2003
Place of publication: Stanford, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 384
Subjects: Trujillo Molina, Rafael Leónidas, -- 1891-1961; Peasantry -- Dominican Republic -- Political activity; Agriculture and state -- Dominican Republic -- History -- 20th century; Dominican Republic -- History -- 1930-1961
Description: "This book explores the history of the Dominican Republic as it evolved from the first European colony in the Americas into a modern nation under the rule of Rafael Trujillo. It investigates the social foundations of this exceptionally enduring and brutal dictatorship (1930-1961) and, more broadly, the way power is sustained in such non-democratic regimes.".

"The book also explores the massacre of ethnic Haitians in 1937 in the context of this peasant integration, showing how this violence arose out of tensions between local understandings of the Dominican nation in the frontier, a highly transnational and bicultural region, and constructs of a monoethnic nation emanating from the capital and urban cities."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [349]-368) and index.
Table of contents: title: Freedom in El Monte : from slaves to independent peasants in colonial Santo Domingo --; title: Imagining modernity : peasants, property, and the state in the century after independence --; title: Peasant-state compromise and rural transformation under the Trujillo dictatorship --; title: Negotiating dictatorship : landowners, state officials, and everyday contests over agrarian reform --; title: Bordering the nation : race, colonization, and the 1937 Haitian massacre in the Dominican frontier --; title: Taming the countryside : agricultural colonies as rural reform under the Trujillo regime --; title: Memories of dictatorship : rural culture and everyday forms of state formation under Trujillo --; title: Birth of a Dominican sugar empire and the decline of the Trujillo regime