Excerpt from publication: "Ellen Tillman has produced a major monograph on the U.S. military occupation of the Dominican Republic between 1916 and 1924. In it she offers a novel account of the powerful national army that the occupying forces created there. Prior to the U.S. invasion, a centralized Dominican military existed only nominally. In the eyes of many U.S. policy makers, this created vulnerabilities for U.S. capital and strategic interests. Drawing heavily on Dominican as well as U.S. archival sources, Tillman demonstrates that remedying this with an effective national army shaped by, and loyal to, the U.S. government was the occupation’s most fundamental objective and enduring consequence..."