The United States occupation of Haiti began on July 28, 1915, when 330 US Marines landed at Port-au-Prince, Haiti, after the National City Bank of New York (now Citibank) convinced US President Woodrow Wilson to take control of the country's political and financial interests. The occupation took place following years of socioeconomic instability within Haiti that culminated in the lynching of Haitian President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam by a mob angered by his executions of political prisoners.
During the occupation, Haiti had three new presidents while the United States ruled as a military regime through martial law, led by Marines and the US-created Gendarmerie of Haiti. A corvée system of forced labor was used by the US for infrastructure projects, resulting in hundreds to thousands of deaths. The occupation ended the constitutional ban on foreign ownership of land, which had existed since the foundation of Haiti.
The occupation ended on August 1, 1934, after President Franklin D. Roosevelt reaffirmed an August 1933 disengagement agreement. The last contingent of Marines departed on August 15, 1934, after a formal transfer of authority to the Gendarmerie of Haiti.
Background
Haitian Revolution and US relations
In the late 18th century, some Haitians fought beside Patriot partisans in the American Revolutionary War. Haiti, originally the wealthiest region in the Americas when it was the French colony of Saint-Domingue, underwent a slave revolt beginning in 1791 which led to a successful revolution in 1804, establishing the Republic of Haiti as an independent nation.
The Haitian revolution frightened slaveholders living in the Southern United States, who feared the successful revolt would inspire violent uprisings elsewhere. Such sentiments strained relations between the US and Haiti, with the US initially refusing to recognize Haitian independence and slaveholders advocating for a trade embargo against the Caribbean nation. The Haiti indemnity controversy – which the Kingdom of France forced upon Haiti through gunboat diplomacy in 1825 due to French financial losses following the revolution – resulted with Haiti using much of its revenue to pay foreign debts by the late 19th century.
The US had long been interested in Haiti following the revolution. In 1868, US President Andrew Johnson suggested annexing Hispaniola, including Haiti. The year prior, the government of Santo Domingo (now known as the Dominican Republic) had requested to be annexed by the United States out of fear of an invasion by its neighbor Haiti. In 1890, US President Benjamin Harrison, on the advice of Secretary of State James G. Blaine, ordered Rear-Admiral Bancroft Gherardi to persuade newly assumed Haitian President Florvil Hyppolite to lease the port of Môle Saint-Nicolas to the US. Commanding the USS Philadelphia, Ghrerardi arrived with his fleet at the capital city of Port-au-Prince to demand the acquisition of Môle Saint-Nicolas. Hyppolite refused any agreement, and The New York Times wrote that the Haitians' "semi-barbaric minds saw in [Gherardi's fleet] a threat of violence." Upon returning to the US in 1891, Gherardi said in an interview with the Times that Haiti would soon experience further instability, suggesting that future governments would abide by US demands.
By the 1890s, Haiti became reliant on importing most of its goods from the US while it exported the majority of its production to France. The Roosevelt Corollary, which instituted an interventionist attitude in US foreign policy towards Latin America, affected relations with Haiti. By 1910, President William Howard Taft attempted to introduce US businesses to Haiti in order to deter European influence and granted a large loan to Haiti to pay off its foreign debt, though this proved to be fruitless due to the size of the debt.
German presence
The US was not concerned with French influence in Haiti, though German influence raised concern. Germany had previously intervened in Haiti, including the Lüders affair in 1897, and had been influencing neighboring Caribbean nations during the previous few decades. Germany had also become increasingly hostile to US dominance of the region under the Monroe Doctrine. In the lead-up to World War I, the strategic importance of Haiti, along with the German influence there, worried US President Woodrow Wilson, who feared a German presence near the Panama Canal Zone.
US concern over German ambitions was mirrored by apprehension and rivalry between American businessmen and the small German community in Haiti, which, although numbering only about 200 in 1910, wielded a disproportionate amount of economic power. German nationals owned and operated utilities in Cap-Haïtien and Port-au-Prince, including the main wharf and a tramway in the capital, and also had built the railway serving the Plain of the Cul-de-Sac.
The German community was more willing to integrate into Haitian society than any other group of European foreigners, including the more numerous French. Some Germans had married into Haiti's most prominent mulatto families of African-French descent, enabling them to bypass the constitutional prohibition against foreigners owning land. German residents retained strong ties to their homeland and sometimes aided German military and intelligence networks in Haiti. They also served as the principal financiers of Haiti's numerous revolutions, floating loans at high interest rates to the competing political factions.
Haitian instability
In the first decades of the 20th century, Haiti remained heavily in debt while also suffering from political instability, to the point where the Wilson administration viewed Haiti as a potential national security threat. Tensions were high between two main groups: wealthy French-speaking mulatto Haitians who represented the minority of the population, and poor Afro-Haitians who spoke Haitian Creole. Various cacos – peasant militias from the Massif du Nord mountain range in the north – were often funded by foreign governments.
Between June and December 1902, a civil war was fought between the government of Haitian President Pierre Théoma Boisrond-Canal and General Pierre Nord Alexis against rebels led by Anténor Firmin, resulting in Alexis claiming the presidency. In 1908. Alexis was forced from power and a series of short lived presidencies came and went: his successor François C. Antoine Simon in 1911; Cincinnatus Leconte in 1911–1912; Michel Oreste in 1913–1914; and Oreste Zamor in 1914. Between 1911 and 1915, the Haitian presidency endured frequent changeover due to assassinations, coups and forced exiles.
American financial interests
Prior to the occupation, Haiti's foreign debt constituted 80% of its annual revenue, though it was able to meet financial obligations, especially when compared to Ecuador, Honduras, and Mexico at that time. In the 20th century, the US had become Haiti's largest trade partner, replacing France, with American businesses expanding their presence in Haiti. Influential Germans within Haiti were regarded as a threat to American financial interests, with businesses ultimately advocating for an invasion of the country.
In 1903, Haitian authorities began to accuse the National Bank of Haiti of fraud. By 1908, Minister of Finance Frédéric Marcelin pushed for the National Bank to work on the behalf of common Haitians, though French officials began to devise plans to reorganize their financial interests. Pierre Carteron, France's envoy to Haiti, wrote following Marcelin's objections: "It is of the highest importance that we study how to set up a new French credit establishment in Port-au-Prince ... Without any close link to the Haitian government."
American businesses had pursued the control of Haiti for years. Beginning in 1909, Frank A. Vanderlip, president of National City Bank of New York (now Citibank), plotted the bank's takeover of Haiti's financial system as part of his larger expansion plans in international markets. Speyer & Co. promoted a stock to Vanderlip to invest in Haiti's national railroad, which held an import monopoly in Port-au-Prince. The Haitian government faced conflict with the bank over the railroad regarding payments to creditors, later leading to the bank seeking to control the entirety of the country's finances. In 1910 Vanderlip wrote to James Stillman, the bank's chairman: "In the future, this stock will give us a foothold [in Haiti] and I think we will perhaps later undertake the reorganization of the Government’s currency system, which, I believe, I see my way clear to do with practically no monetary risk".
From 1910 to 1911, the US Department of State backed a consortium of American investors – headed by National City Bank – to acquire a managing stake of the National Bank of Haiti to create the Bank of the Republic of Haiti (BNRH), which served as both the country's sole commercial bank and its treasury. France also kept a stake in the BNRH.
US officials were not knowledgeable about Haiti and often relied on information from American businessmen. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan fired established Latin American experts upon his confirmation, replacing them with political allies. He initially proposed forgiving the debt of Caribbean nations, but Wilson viewed this idea as too radical. Having little firsthand knowledge of Haiti, Bryan relied on the vice president of National City Bank, Roger Leslie Farnham, for information about the country. Farnham had an extensive background working as a financial advisor, lobbyist, journalist and purchasing agent between the US and the Caribbean, with American historian Brenda Gayle Plummer writing, "Farnham ... is often portrayed by historians as the deus ex machina single-handedly plotting the American intervention of 1915." Throughout the 1910s, Farnham demanded successive Haitian governments grant him control of the nation's customs, its only source of revenue, threatening U.S. intervention when Haiti refused on the grounds of national sovereignty. John H. Allen, the manager of the BNRH, met with Bryan for consultation in 1912, with Allen later sharing an account of Bryan being surprised about Haitian culture and stating, "Dear me, think of it! Niggers speaking French!"
In 1914, with France losing ties to Haiti as it was focused its efforts on World War I, Farnham suggested to the United States Congress that the BNRH's "active management has been from New York." Allen later stated that if the US permanently occupied Haiti, he supported the National City Bank in acquiring all shares of BNRH, believing that it would "pay 20% or better." Farnham persuaded Bryan to have the US invade Haiti during a telephone call on January 22, 1914, arguing that conditions in the country were not improving and that US troops would be welcomed by the civilian population. Farnham also exaggerated the role of European influence, even convincing Bryan that France and Germany – two nations then at war with each other – were plotting in cooperation to obtain the port at Môle Saint-Nicholas. Farnham concluded that Haiti would not improve "until such time as some stronger outside power steps in." US diplomats ultimately drafted plans to take over Haiti's finances, dubbed the "Farnham Plan."
After US officials traveled to Haiti to propose the plan, Haitian legislators denounced their minister of foreign affairs, saying he was "endeavoring to sell the country to the United States" according to a State Department telegram. Due to Haitian opposition to the plan, the BNRH withheld funds from the government and funded rebels to destabilize the country in order to justify US intervention, generating 12% gains in interest by holding onto the funds. On January 27, 1914, President Oreste was deposed in a coup and two generals, Charles and Oreste Zamor, seized control. In response, the USS Montana sent a Marine detachment to Port-au-Prince on January 29 to protect US interests. On February 5, military forces from the French cruiser Conde and British HMS Lancaster also landed troops. These units agreed to leave the city and boarded their ships on February 9.
Allen telegrammed the State Department on April 8, requesting that the United States Navy sail to Port-au-Prince to deter possible rebellions. That summer, the BNRH began to threaten withholding payments to the Haitian government. Simultaneously, Bryan telegrammed the United States consul in Cap-Haïtien, writing that that the US "earnestly desires successfully carrying out of Farnham's plan."