Expeditionary· Banana Wars
Dominican Republic Initial Landing 1916 - Capt Wise's Provisional Battalion
The first step of the eight-year Dominican occupation.
In early May 1916, as a political crisis touched off by the president's resignation threw the country into turmoil, Captain Frederic Wise led a provisional Marine battalion ashore at Santo Domingo, occupying Fort San Gerónimo and the old Ozama fortress that commanded the capital. The landing was peaceful, secured under a brief truce rather than by fighting, and met no resistance. It was the beginning of what would become a full military occupation lasting until 1924, as more Marines came ashore and the force expanded under new command to take control of the country. The quiet seizure of the capital's forts in May 1916 gave little hint of the hard counter-bandit war that would follow in the eastern provinces, but it was the foundation on which the whole occupation was built, the Marines' first lodgment in a country they would hold for the better part of a decade.
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Record no. 513