This article re-examines the relationship between United States imperialism in Santo Domingo and the advent of mass Dominican migration to the United States in the early 1960s. There was no coherent imperial plan to displace Dominicans from their homeland. The United States relied on a combination of brutal domination and negotiated consent in its attempts to control politics in Santo Domingo. Knowingly or not, Dominicans capitalized on Washington's desire to present the US as a friend of the Dominican people to wedge their way from the periphery to the centre of the imperial system. However, the rise of migration did not signal the beginning of a new, more egalitarian alternative to imperialism in hemispheric relations. More research is needed about the new system of international inequality that emerged as Dominican migrants moved back and forth between a perpetually reeling Dominican economy and the bleak urban spaces of the United States.

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international migration migration determinant Greater Antilles Atlantic islands historical perspective Dominican Republic Santo Domingo [Dominican Republic] Atlantic Ocean United States imperialism North America Caribbean Islands