Concessions as a Modernizing Strategy in the Dominican Republic

In the late 1800s, Latin American modernizers faced major obstacles to economic growth. In the Dominican Republic, elites embraced concessions as a policy to attract foreign capital to infrastructure, industry, and cash-crop agriculture. In contrast to Mexico, where concessions were public and impersonal but failed to create viable firms, Dominican concessions were public, yet corrupt, formally opposed to monopoly, yet prone to convey exclusive privileges. Dominican modernizers recognized that concessions created “monopolies that are always a hateful tyranny,” yet found no better way to attract investment. Only after the United States took control of Dominican finances in 1905 were the “burdensome” contracts canceled as an “impediment to future progress.”