June 26,1924, U.S. troops pulled out of the
Dominican Republic. American occupation of the island nation began in 1916, following years of political intervention in the republic. The Dominican Republic had achieved independence from Spain in 1844. On the heels of its victory in the Spanish-American War, the U.S. began to take a more active role in the affairs of Caribbean and Latin American nations which it deemed fell within its sphere of influence. The Dominican Republic's proximity to the Panama Canal, then under construction, heightened its strategic importance
By the early 1920s, public opinion in the United States began to turn against the occupation of the Dominican Republic and neighboring Haiti. President Woodrow Wilson, who had authorized invasions of both nations, was succeeded in March 1921 by Warren Harding, who had campaigned against the U.S. occupation of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Dominicans elected a new president, Horacio Vásquez Lajara, in March 1924, and national sovereignty was restored upon his July inauguration.2
Decades earlier, the U.S. Congress had considered annexing the Dominican Republic. The text of the congressional debate on the issue, as well as the proposed treaty of annexation, and articles from New York City newspapers on the topic can be found in Annexation of San Domingo, an 1870 pamphlet included in African American Perspectives, 1818-1907. Also available is the text of the Senate debate, published under the title, Debate in the United States Senate on the Resolutions of Hon. O. P. Morton, Authorizing the Appointment of a Commission to Examine into and Report upon the Condition of the Island, ca. 1871.
Find more information on the Dominican Republic in the following collections:
- The American Life Histories Collection contains the personal account of a Marine (George F. Gaynor) stationed in Santo Domingo and Santiago in 1924 during the U.S. occupation of the Dominican Republic.
- For a brief overview of the history of the Dominican Republic, see Dominican Republic, A Country Study, part of the Library of Congress Country Studies.
- Search across all American Memory collections on Hispaniola or Dominican Republic to find documents relating to the history of the Dominican Republic. Or, search specifically within the George Washington Papers, 1741-1799 to read several references to eighteenth-century slave insurrections on the island of Hispaniola.
- The collection Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920 includes several photographs of Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic.
- Search the Today in History Archive on Haiti to find several features on the Dominican Republic's neighboring country.
