In this lecture, we will consider the growing presence and influence of the United States of the America in the Caribbean region, which was part of its increasingly active role in the Americas as a whole. As will be seen, 1898 was a crucial year at the dawn of the ‘American century’.

Suggested reading

Ayala, César J., ‘The American Sugar Kingdom, 1898-1934’ in Stephan Palmié and Francisco A. Scarano (eds), The Caribbean: A History of the Region and its Peoples (Chicago, 2011), pp. 433-444.

Heuman, Gad, The Caribbean (London, 2006), chapter 13.

Higman, Barry W., A Concise History of the Caribbean (Cambridge, 2011), chapter 6.

Knight, Franklin W., ‘Cuba’, in Franklin W. Knight and Colin Palmer (eds), The Modern Caribbean (Chapel Hill, 1989), pp. 169-184.

LaFeber, Walter, The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad since 1750 (New York, 1989).

Langley, Lester, The Banana Wars: United States Intervention in the Caribbean, 1898–1934 (Chicago, 1988).

McPherson, Alan, A Short History of US Interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016).

Maingot, Anthony, The United States and the Caribbean (London, 1994).

Martínez Vergne, Teresita, ‘Politics and Society in the Spanish Caribbean during the Nineteenth Century’, in Franklin W. Knight and Colin Palmer (eds), The Modern Caribbean (Chapel Hill, 1989), pp. 185-202.

Martínez-Fernández, Luis, ‘The Rise of the American Mediterranean, 1846-1905’ in Stephan Palmié and Francisco A. Scarano (eds), The Caribbean: A History of the Region and its Peoples (Chicago, 2011), pp. 373-384.

Mintz, Sidney W., Three Ancient Colonies: Caribbean Themes and Variations (London, 2010), pp. 134-181.

Moya Pons, Frank, History of the Caribbean: Plantations, Trade, and War in the Atlantic World (London, 2007), chapter 18.

Munro, Dana, Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy in the Caribbean, 1900–1921 (Westport, CT, 1964).

Perez, Louis, ‘Intervention, Hegemony, and Dependency: The United States in the Circum-Caribbean, 1898–1980’ Pacific Historical Review 51 (1982), pp. 165-194.

Randall, Stephen. J. and Graeme Mount, The Caribbean Basin: An International History (London: 1998), esp. chapters 1-3.

Richardson, Bonham C., ‘Plantations and their People to 1900’ in The Caribbean in the Wider World, 1492-1992: A Regional Geography (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 78-105.

Silvestrini, Blanca G., ‘Contemporary Puerto Rico’, in Franklin W. Knight and Colin Palmer (eds), The Modern Caribbean (Chapel Hill, 1989), pp. 147-167.

Smith, Joseph, The Spanish-American War: Conflict in the Caribbean and the Pacific, 1895-1902 (Harlow, 1994).

Traxel, David, 1898: The Birth of the American Century (New York, 1998).

Whitney, Robert, ‘War and Nation Building’ in Stephan Palmié and Francisco A. Scarano (eds), The Caribbean: A History of the Region and its Peoples (Chicago, 2011), pp. 361-372.

Zumoff, J. A., 'Black Caribbean Labor Radicalism in Panama, 1914-1921', Journal of Social History 47: 2 (2013) pp. 429-457.