Convened for the centenary of the July 1915 landing, this roundtable brings Bellegarde-Smith, Dupuy, Fatton and Renda together, with St. Jacques and Sommers moderating, to ask what left Haiti open to occupation and what nineteen years of American rule bequeathed.

Much of the exchange concerns the nineteenth century. Dupuy describes a ruling class split between the old affranchi proprietors and a newer black landed group, an indemnity paid to France, Boyer's failed attempt to force cultivators back onto plantations, and the resulting opening for foreign commercial and financial capital. Renda reads the same refusal of plantation labour as an achievement, pointing to the lakou, to ritual practice, to storytelling and music as things peasants built instead.

The participants then connect the racial arguments that justified intervention, including the charge that Haitians could not govern themselves or cultivate their land, to present-day talk of failed states and humanitarian protection. They close on deforestation and its consequences.