we can get through some big things. these challenges today i don't think are as serious as those. so if we come together and work in good faith we can get through it. and i think with conservative principles leading the way. >> host: thanks. >> guest: thank you. >> c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was greater as a public service by america's cable-television companies and brought you today by your cable or satellite provider. >> host: now joining us on booktv is james hudson, author of this book, "bankers and empire: how wall street colonized the caribbean." professor, what was your goal with this book?

>> guest: i think there was a number of goals. in the first place was to excavate the international origins of wall street, to excavate the international origins of wall street into come to look at those origins in the west indies which i think was a kind of critical and for file testing ground for wall street internationalization. at the same time i was interested in trying to understand to some degree, is there a relationship between wall street's history and the international field and some of its contemporary practices? is a way that one can trace something of a genealogy through the 20 century from that. i look at which is of 1873-1933 up until the present. what with the terms of that genealogy and affect international expansion?

and in that i think a couple things emerged for me. when it's a critical relationship that institutions come wall street institutions including what's now citigroup, jpmorgan chase, had to u.s. imperialism in the 20 century, how the institutions really grappled with the question of international expansion through legal practices, through their attempts to sometimes travel regulations, sometimes extend regulations to support international capital iq relation. finally to also understand what is the relationship between the history of capitalism through wall street through banking institutions and its relationship, its relationship to the development, expansion generation of ideas of race and racism, especially as they

impinge on and affect the sovereignty of caribbean people, people in haiti, dominican republic, cuba, panama, nicaragua, et cetera. >> host: winded wall street become wall street? >> guest: i think wall street, i would argue wall street really became wall street in the early 19th century. early days of usage is all wall street and new york city as one of a number of capitals of capitals in the united states, as commercial. baltimore was a significant presence for a good time. boston, new orleans. but by the end of the 19th century increasingly capital becomes concentrated in wall street, the number of financial and insurance firms are concentrated in wall street. and it becomes really the kind

of entrepreneurial floor for the commercial development of the u.s. west. then restar we start talking abe kind of expansion of american commerce oversees much of it is going to wall street. different historians might locate the genealogy of wall street not just as a place but as a kind of idea, the kind of signifier of american capitalism might trace it to different moment but for me it begins towards the end of the 19th century at a moment when wall street is turning overseas, turned to look at overseas markets, turning to look at as i said the caribbean but also latin america, what was interest in the caribbean? >> guest: multiple interest in the caribbean. there was a sense of needing to use financial means towards political ends on the part of the state department. there was the sense of early

history of dollar diplomacy which as your viewers will know, the idea substituting bullets for dollars in terms of foreign relations. that became important to the kind of work of roosevelt and taft. so banking institutions were very important in terms of the organization of central banks in the caribbean. they're very important terms of the organization of currency system in the caribbean. these organizations was critical to the state department to goal of political stability in the caribbean region, which was increasingly important in the context of both come in the context of world war i as frozen the context of the opening of the panama canal and the need to protect the naval lines and the passages, commercial passages between the atlantic and the pacific. beyond that there are of course

the purely financial and commercial interests that the u.s. banks come wall street had in the caribbean region. these different island to island, colony to colony but, of course, sugar was one of the most important ones with the institutions like the citibank and later chase involved in the financing of sugar plantations throughout the region. there was an interest in the financing of caribbean sovereign debt which was really, in the first part of the 20th century was, the debt was held by jpmorgan as well as fire and company here but later became very, very important to institutions like the citibank and like the chase cochise became the largest lender to cuba by the end of the 1920s. beyond this questions of sovereign debt there was also something the question of, on

one level commercial banking, the financing of trade but also what we might call personal banking. there was a movement in the 20s, especially by citibank to set up branch banks in the caribbean which would serve as middle-class customers. so just the opening of competent interest deposits was a kind of new and revolutionary thing in the caribbean and something that the bankers were quite surprised to find was very profitable for them, the korean people want to save, they wanted to put the money in banks and he wanted to get the small and out of the money at the became a very, very important kind of marketing practice on the part of wall street. it's a monopoly of interest on the part of wall street. >> host: what was the impact of gender on some of these nations, haiti, nicaragua, cuba? >> guest: again, it really differs from country to country. if you look at haiti and

nicaragua, for instance, these are two countries that are seen as in the worst possible sense, exemplars of the failures of dollar diplomacy. the kind of role of u.s. bankers in haiti led to the landing of u.s. marines and the development of a 19 year military occupation lasted from 1950-1934. it led to i think something that in some ways intangible to many u.s. audiences mightily to the extinguishment of sovereignty, the transfer of the kind of financial and economic control to wall street, and also led to thousands of deaths of haitian citizens by u.s. marines. it's not necessarily that one sees baker's going in with their guns but there with the ones that were advising the state department on u.s. policy. they were the ones that were

treating the financial systems that created some of the chaos in haiti that led to military occupation. similar things could be said about nicaragua. the consequences for cuba were the development or the support of first of all the shop is dictatorship by the 1920s. the 19 twister he was democratically elected in 1925 on a platform of progress and reform -- chavez turkey was a populist leader. he about he wouldn't take any more, that or that cuba wouldn't contract any further debt. but he also said that he will protect the interests of wall street once elected. he did more to protect the interest of also invented to cuban people and he immediately began to figure out how the cuban government could avoid the platt amendment which restricted the ability of the cuban

government to take on more debt. he went against that, contracted with the chase manhattan bank for millions and millions of dollars of sovereign debt that cripple the cuban economy,, especially during an era where sugar prices remained depressed. as cuba took on more debt, as a borrowed more and more from chase, the repression of the cuban people became worse and it eventually led to a real conflict in cuba which we saw, subsequent cuban governments suggesting that the debt itself was odious, that it was contracted by an illegal regime. and that led to a real sense of animosity towards wall street, that a think lasted for many years, perhaps up to the cuban revolution in 1959. so in terms of the actual

consequences across the region, i think in the first instance we can say the consequences are the complete erosion of caribbean sovereignty. these are sovereign nations that sadly did not have control over their own destinies. in different ways we see that the consequences where the violence of u.s. military occupation, the military violence of u.s. marines in these countries to quote-unquote has a fight caribbean populations. with that violence came forms of u.s. racism of jim crow that were exported into the caribbean region. then at the end of the day, many of the bankers were involved in forms of financial reform, many professed to want to expand agriculture to help develop the school systems and things like this. none of these mounted too much and most of the investments into the caribbean were seen as profits or repatriated back to

wall street. >> host: so in your view is exploitation if there were to use? >> guest: i think it's a very fair word to use, yeah. i think it is and i think, what i'm trying to argue in the book is that exploitation ensues. the modes of that exploitation were very complex, and, but that's also not necessarily always the top ten vision of what happened. it's not necessarily all-knowing bankers going into cuba or haiti or nicaragua, that they make a republic and acting as puppet master. there's always pushed back from caribbean people, on another level there's modes of negotiation were craving elites are trying to get something from wall street. there's also a sense that as much as many bankers were very deliberate in their activities in the caribbean, they also did what you know what they were doing. they were using new financial instruments. they were trying to develop,

they're trying to reform legislative practices that governed relations between states and government relations between banks and states. it's a history there was also marred by aphasia. when i sugar crisis in cuba in the early 1920s, the citibank invested so much money in cuban sugar that when the prices bottomed out at almost destroyed the bank. and so it led to the resignation of firings of many citibank executives. in the case of 80, while there was, citibank was a huge presence, the negative publicity around the u.s. occupation of 80 in the 1930s, that was brought to the american public, brought to the attention of the american public, there was a kind of backlash against the bankers, development of what the

historian refers to as anti-banking discourses. exploitation absolutely i think is the word to use, but we can't use any kind of clean and easy sense. >> host: peter james hudson, you also write about entity called the matc which was what? >> guest: the matc is a north american trust company. it was founded and i think 1898 by a number of midwestern bankers. the principal banker was a figure by the name of samuel miller jarvis who have made tremendous amounts of money working as a banker involved in western mortgages. he was basically taking capital from england and set up a mortgage brokerage that was filtering capital from england in the northeast into the west.

by the end of the 19th century, under very suspicious circumstances he had collapsed the naacp. it filed for bankruptcy. he left the west and did that in new york city and then suddenly in july of 1898 finds himself on a boat having to santiago cuba in for the united states has declared sovereignty over the republic, it was very u.s. occupation cuba has officially begun. he uprisings that the argo and opens up the first north american banking institution in cuba which is the north american trust company. the activity of the north american trust company start and a very slow fashion. they are kind of involved in remitting money back from american soldiers back to the families at home. they were trying to introduce currency, u.s. currency to the island. they are trying to develop a

system of telegraphic transfers the money and move about the island. but they are also trying to become the kind of primary player in cuban government finances. they want to control the taking of customs revenues, the money generated by the poor and the also looking to displace the old spanish banks to become cuba's central bank. there's a lot of controversy around them. many observers at the time see them as a kind of corrupting influence whose activities are really based on patronage. but that actually soon collapse. they don't collapsed but they dissolve and a reform of the company was sedition which is the bank of cuba which becomes the de facto cuban government bank. the north american trust company is one of these institutions

that many historians, special many cuban historians have talked about in the cuban context but they haven't necessarily, i think before my bookpeople haven't traced their history back to the u.s. west from the west to the west indies and also extended the work of samuel miller jarvis to the bank of cuba into the dominican republic where he then sets up another bank which also has come is attached with a lot of controversy is attached to it. i think one of the main things i felt with the north american trust company and the history of samuel miller jarvis is he's an individual, kind of a quite brilliant entrepreneur who is able to really see places where capital will soon move to. he understands, he sees the west before becomes the west and is able to profit from it. he sees cuba before becomes the haven of american businesses and

is able to profit for that. .. questions of sovereignty, the sovereignty are weak, legal regimes are weak, yeah, it's difficult to say whether they're legitimate businessmen.

>> professor hudson, you said that a lot of the bankers were advising the federal government on foreign policy. did wall street in this move, did it have the false faith in credit and support of the federal government? >> absolutely not. i think there's times when the federal government wanted to restrain them and there's times -- there's times of absolute collusion. one of aknock oats concerns roger farland who was instrumental and going back, but he becomes the defacto adviser to the u.s. state department. members are going back to the citibank and state department.

but you also see by the 1930's specially and coming to power of roosevelt, he -- this context of the depression and context of the banking crisis and in the context of great animosity among the u.s. public towards and says, this needs to stop, he's trying through new deal legislation, he's trying to restrain the bankers and their activities in the caribbean and i think the congressional hearings on banking and currency under the guys of the lawyer fernando, has access to the city banks records and records of other banks in the legal office of shermin and sterling and really for the first time somebody goes in and get

history, archaeology of all -- exploring banking practices in the caribbean. the federal government wants work to try to restrain activities of wall street. >> basically we are talking about the early 20th century right now. >> yeah. >> are these banks still prevalent and infrastructurial in the caribbean and what's the legacy. >> first i would say that the current influence in the caribbean, the legacy is less one of u.s. banks than it is of canadian banks. one of the that i think so i found in my research was the canadian banks specially the world bank of canada but also the bank of novascocha were

biggest competitors to u.s. institutions in the early 20th century. and cuba throughout the region, the world bank of canada has more branches than citibank. they always competed for deposits in cuba. when the -- when the cuban revolution there was a negotiated settlement with the castro government on behalf of the canadian banks. the u.s. banks had to get out and the canadian banks had to work something out. we see in the caribbean, the canadian banks are still prevailing specially in former british colonies of jamaica, et cetera, et cetera. the retreat from caribbean, though you see citibank returned to haiti after many years, the

larger legacy was less of the actual presence of wall street and of u.s. bankers in the caribbean than their understanding of what this history meant for them to the present and if you look at the kind of corporate biographies of citibanks, you understand that they looked at the 1920's and -- 1910's, 1920's of expansion when they were able to create new financial institutions and financial instruments that would -- were largely unregulated by the government and go out into the world and make money as they wanted to. after the 1930's, they were restrained. what you see in histories of citibanks, you need to get back to this era of unregulated

expansion where you can collapse investment functions and move across national boundaries and where we can basically do what we want without sovereign -- either pesky sovereign caribbean nations and the u.s. breathing down our necks. there's an attempt, a sense of wanting to move back into those markets but there's also a bit of a shift in terms of how they look at those markets. it's less about branch expansion than the development of off-shore investment vehicles in places like the caman islands and panamá. >> whenever i traveled in the region, i see see the bank of

nova scotia. >> u.s. bankers were trying to figure out how they could control caribbean markets, at one point the stock of citibank said why won't we just simply purchase nova scotia, that way we don't have to go and start a branch. it wasn't a plan that came to fruition but it gives you a sense of how powerful and important the canadian banks were at the time. look, what happened with the canadian banks is there's a fairly stable and regularly canadian banking industry, banks were chartered by the

government, there's only three or four banks, radical expansion of state banking and national banking in the united states and the canadian bankers, first of all, had experience in international expansion within canada itself when you think about the movement of institutions like the bank of nova scotia from halifax to toronto. they had already developed a sense of how do you congresser -- conquer space, basically. they had the experience overseas . furthermore, the canadian

bankers were working in intercolonial mode which is the sense that they were going to do the work in the british colonies that england itself wasn't going to do, the caribbean territories were sceded to canadians, at the same time, the canadian banks recognizing that there was -- they said it was an advantage for us, we will go into cuba, we will go into jamaica and receiver as surrogates of u.s. capital. in cases like the world bank of canada, they actually set up an

office on wall street, you know, so they could be in that mix, but then served wall street interest to some degree in the region and at one point, i can't remember the exact date, at one point chicago business interest and capital purchased a huge chunk of the world bank of canada to -- to use them. i think it was a mutual use but to use them for capital expansion. this is why you'll see the presence of banks there, long historical legacy of canadian banks in the region. >> peter james hudson, professor of african-american studies in ucla and author of this book, bankers and empire, how wall street colonized the caribbean. this is book tv on c-span2. >> you're watching book tv on c-span2, television for serious readers, here is our prime time line-up. at 7:15 eastern, book tv follows

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