Taking Haiti begins with an intriguing question: “How does a man imagine himself when he is about to pull a trigger?” (p. 3). Mary Renda attempts to answer that question by examining how the culture of American marines was shaped in and by their experience in Haiti and how the occupation of Haiti impacted American culture at home. Renda argues that “the military occupation of Haiti that began in 1915 was no sideshow . . . . It was one of several important arenas in which the United States was remade through overseas imperial ventures in the first third of the twentieth century” (p. 12).
The structure of the book reflects Renda’s dual objectives. Part 1 focuses on the cultural dimensions of the intervention. After briefly covering the occupation itself, Renda examines the paternalistic discourse that shaped it and explores the links between paternalism and violence. In part 2 Renda...
