American Imperialism's Undead boldly and powerfully uncovers the crucial, if unintentional, role the United States’ imperialist occupation of independent Haiti played in the rise of radical anticolonialism throughout the Atlantic world in the first half of the twentieth century. With outstanding scholarship and searing prose, Dalleo shows how the U.S. occupation of Haiti has been systematically disavowed not only, as one might expect, in mainstream historiography but in a field of Haitian revolutionary studies eager to construct an unambiguous narrative of revolutionary liberation. A pivotal and long-overdue contribution.
American Imperialism's Undead works to challenge the obfuscation of this seminol moment in Haitian, US-American, and circum-American history. Dalleo argues, compellingly and convincingly, that to not attempt an understanding of the occupation is, in fact, to deeply misunderstand regional realities throughout the twentieth century.
" American Imperialism's Undead boldly and powerfully uncovers the crucial, if unintentional, role the United States’ imperialist occupation of independent Haiti played in the rise of radical anticolonialism throughout the Atlantic world in the first half of the twentieth century. With outstanding scholarship and searing prose, Dalleo shows how the U.S. occupation of Haiti has been systematically disavowed not only, as one might expect, in mainstream historiography but in a field of Haitian revolutionary studies eager to construct an unambiguous narrative of revolutionary liberation. A pivotal and long-overdue contribution. "—Nick Nesbitt, Princeton University, author of Caribbean Critique: Antillean Critical Theory from Toussaint to Glissant
"Dalleo (English, Bucknell Univ.) seeks to close a gap in the historical record regarding the US occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934. Citing what he describes as a "silence," Dalleo argues in the introduction that the amnesia surrounding Haiti’s colonial history "makes U.S. imperialism possible"; he claims that today’s Haiti is a direct result of the occupation and its aftermath in the century since.... Dalleo examines the rise of primitivism, at once "othering" and highlighting Haiti’s Afrocentrism, and he also considers audience reception and the popular fetishizing of Caribbean culture by English, US, and Caribbean writers. The chapters devoted to Claude McKay, Alejo Carpentier, and George Padmore are especially interesting.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. "—author of CHOICE
" American Imperialism's Undead works to challenge the obfuscation of this seminol moment in Haitian, US-American, and circum-American history. Dalleo argues, compellingly and convincingly, that to not attempt an understanding of the occupation is, in fact, to deeply misunderstand regional realities throughout the twentieth century. "—author of Caribbean Quarterly
"Dalleo’s inquiry has a contemporary, ‘real-world’ significance thatresonates in the very bones of the project. The book does exactly the kind ofnation-language-busting, transnational, and transcolonial work that all scholarsof the Global South should endeavour to make foundational to their ownresearch projects. It is the kind of work that recognises the undeniable impactof North Atlantic imperialist ventures while thinking deeply about the localand regional engagements that reconfigure, resist, and otherwise inflect suchneocolonial agendas. "—author of Caribbean Quarterly
"With skillful research and probing analyses, Dalleo shows the difference a focus on the occupation makes as he reveals the lively cross-fertilizations that shaped Caribbean and African diasporic thought in the middle decades of the twentieth century. American Imperialism’s Undead establishes the defining role played by the occupation in Caribbean self-fashioning and in the emergence and evolution of anticolonialism between 1915 and 1950. "—author of New West Indian Guide
"Accessible and lucid, erudite and timely, archivally immersive and conversant in multiple subfields, American Imperialism’s Undead sets a high bar for what that future work might look like. "—author of Clio
