Caliban and the Yankees: Trinidad and the United States Occupation. HOWARD NEPTUNE, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

Abstract

On September 2, 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt authorized the transfer of 50 World War I-era U.S. destroyers to Britain, in exchange for 99-year, rent-free leases of several British bases in the Western Hemisphere. In a message to Congress, the President hyperbolically described the agreement as an "epochal and far-reaching act of preparation for continental defense in the face of grave danger . . . the most important action in the reinforcement of our national defense that has been taken since the Louisiana Purchase."