A World Safe for Capitalism: Dollar Diplomacy and America's Rise to Global Power

Cyrus Veeser

Columbia University Press, Apr 22, 2007 - History - 190 pages

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 1890s. 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 policy-the 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.

Contents

• Economic Interests and U S Expansion 18921907: 1
• Remapping the Caribbean: 30
• Peasants in the World Economy: 43
• Dictating Development: 58
• The Cash Nexus: 76
• Old Wine in New Skins: 98
• A Reign of Law Among Nations: 110
• A World Safe for Capitalism: 126
• From The Gilded Age to Dollar Diplomacy: 143
• Conclusion: 155
• Notes: 163
• Bibliography: 227
• Index: 239

About the author

Cyrus Veeser is associate professor of history at Bentley College. He won the Bancroft Dissertation Prize for the work on which this volume is based.

Cyrus Veeser, an assistant professor of history at Bentley College, won the Bancroft Dissertation Prize for the work on which this volume is based. He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts.

Bibliographic information

• Title: A World Safe for Capitalism: Dollar Diplomacy and America's Rise to Global Power; Columbia Studies in Contemporary America
• Author: Cyrus Veeser
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2007
• ISBN: 0231235879, 9780231235877
• Length: 190 pages
• Subjects: History / United States / General