The Paradox of Education and Empire: U.S. Occupation of the Dominican Republic, 1916-1924

'The Paradox of Education and Empire' investigates the execution of education policies aimed at modernizing the Dominican Republic during the U.S. occupation from 1916 to 1924. Simultaneously employing top-down and bottom-up perspectives, I draw on archival sources from both the U.S. and the Dominican Republic to study the role of local education officials and parents in the school reforms. I find that Dominican parents, teachers and administrators, rather than U.S. officials in the military government, were central to the application of the education policies. They decided which changes to institute in accordance with their own timelines and implementation strategies. Accordingly, the reforms were also severely limited when these local actors began to oppose them. By studying the shift from Dominican collaboration to resistance, I contribute to debates about the potential for agency and negotiation within U.S. imperial structures and reveal the paradox of using schools as a vehicle for imperial expansion. In doing so, this dissertation makes three critical interventions: the first is a revision of the historiography of the U.S. occupation of the Dominican Republic by centering education as a way to investigate Dominican responses to the U.S. military government. The second is to de-center the United States within histories of U.S. informal empire by focusing on non-American actors who supported its expansion. Finally, I contend that despite goals to indoctrinate Dominican subjects through schools, Dominicans challenged and repurposed them, thereby exposing the limits to U.S. imperial policies.