The Metropolitan Connection: Foreign and Semiforeign Elites in Haiti, 1900-1915
Author(s)
Plummer, Brenda Gayle
Abstract
This essay seeks to demonstrate that trade relations, conducted by elites that were culturally and socially wedded to the values and institutions of the metropolitan powers, created a pattern of economic dependency and cultural limitation in Haiti that has persisted into the contemporary period. These commercial relations, and the character and activities of the traders involved, have not been accorded full scholarly recognition. Although the social and political role of elite groups in Haiti has been studied by numerous social scientists, the commercial aspects of class privilege require more historical examination.
