While the United States had long been an active force in the Caribbean, during and after World War II the region received increased attention as a source of potential threats to U.S. security and opportunities for the extension of U.S. political and economic influence. New technologies and Cold War conflict added to and magnified long-standing fears while lending urgency to the United States’ push toward a thoroughgoing hegemony in its “back yard.” The rapid resurgence of the Caribbean tourism industry and the emergence of mass tourism in the West Indies during the postwar period coincided with heightened tensions over Caribbean security. This paper will address the cultural and political consequences of this coincidence. Rather than engaging exclusively in the centralized, strong-arm tactics of “gunboat diplomacy,” the United States adopted what might be called “cruise ship diplomacy,” depending on economic, cultural, and ideological influence as well as preponderant military power to bring the island Caribbean firmly into the American sphere of dominance. Notable exceptions to this dominance - socialist revolutions in Cuba and Grenada and regional Black Power movements - responded to the incursion of tourists and the capital behind tourism’s development. The consumer culture of U.S. tourism in the Caribbean shows that the United States exercised its international power in diffuse and often unorganized ways, and depended upon affluent and middle-class American consumers to engage in internationalized leisure. Postwar leisure practices, the Cold War political economy, and popular discourses surrounding the Caribbean brought leisure travelers into global, regional, and local conflicts.
About the presenterJohn Stuart Hogue
John S. Hogue is an Assistant Professor of History at Bard Early College-Cleveland. He earned a B.A. in History from Kalamazoo College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. His doctoral thesis, “Cruise Ship Diplomacy: Making American Leisure and Power in the Anglophone Caribbean, 1900-1973,” explores the United States’ role in developing tourism in the Caribbean. His teaching and research interests include imperialism, leisure, popular culture, and capitalism.