Author: Cyrus Veeser

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2007-04-22

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 0231235879

"A rich and insightful analysis of the political economy of dollar diplomacy."-Emily S. Rosenberg, Macalester College A World Safe for Capitalism unravels a little-known incident a Wall Street corporation's takeover of the foreign debt, national railroad, and national bank of the Dominican Republic in the 1890's. Working with the republic's tyrannical president, the American firm tried to turn self-sufficient peasants into cash-crop farmers, with disastrous results. By 1904, the company's narrow pursuit of profit clashed with Theodore Roosevelt's goal of making the United States a great power, thus triggering a sweeping new policyùthe Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Praised by Diplomatic History as "a model of globe-trotting multiarchival research," this exciting history covers events in New York, Washington, Santo Domingo, Brussels, and London. "A major contribution to the fields of U.S. economic and diplomatic history as well as Dominican history."-Journal of American History "Veeser joins an emergent historiography, which emphasizes the reception of US hegemony by local elites."-American Sudies International "Meticulously researched and carefully argued, Veeser's book challenges conventional wisdom and offers a persuasive interpretation of the origins of Dollar Diplomacy."-H.W. Brands, author of T.R.: The Last Romantic "A detailed and well-written account of the early growth of U.S. overseas interest"-Library Jouranl "Veeser disrupts the simplistic notion of foreign policy as window dressing for the...class interests of finance capitalists."-Business History Review "A significant chapter in the development of the practices of economic intervention that marked Washington's emergence as the dominant force in global capitalism in the twentieth century."-Hispanic American Historical Review