Most of the merchants Haitians called Syrians were Lebanese Christians who had left the Ottoman Empire around the turn of the century. Plummer follows them into the middle of a contest between the great powers over the Haitian market.

American diplomats wanted influence but had no business community on the ground; they found their instrument in these traders, who soon ordered directly from New York and Chicago and carried cheap American goods to peasant buyers. Their success displaced Haitian merchants and eroded the commercial base of the elite, which pressed successive governments to expel them or bar foreigners from retail trade.

Every such attempt failed. Washington intervened on the traders' behalf, prodded by textile manufacturers and merchants' associations, and the ambiguity of Syrian nationality kept the question alive past the end of the occupation. Plummer's point is that a small and harassed minority was blamed for a drama other people had written.