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The Monroe Doctrine is best described as a restatement of America’s diplomatic stance prior to 1823. President Jefferson had proclaimed virtually the same idea years before Monroe had, but it became Monroe’s message, as memory of the events pertaining to the delivery of this proclamation faded, which was seen to guide American foreign policy in the western hemisphere for the next two centuries. In a sense, it has aptly been believed to declare the principles of US foreign policy in the western hemisphere. However, it needs to be acknowledged as only a facet of this policy. It was an extension of already practiced American policy and political rhetoric rather than any sort of doctrine intending to direct American policy in Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine restated US foreign policy in the interests and for the safety of the United States in regards to Russian and Spanish expansionism at its western and southern borders.
The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 marked the breakup of the Spanish empire in the New World. Between 1815 and 1822 José de San Martín led Argentina to independence, while Bernardo O'Higgins in Chile and Simón Bolívar in VenezuelaThe Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Spanish: Republica Bolivariana de Venezuela "Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela") is a country in northern South America. 1 It borders the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean to the north, Guyana to the east, Brazil to guided their countries out of colonialismColonialism is a system in which a state claims sovereignty over territory and people outside its own boundaries, often to facilitate economic domination over their resources, labor, and often markets. The term also refers to a set of beliefs used to legi. The new republics sought -- and expected -- recognition by the United States, and many Americans endorsed that idea.
But President James Monroe and his secretary of state, John Quincy AdamsFor other people named John Adams, see John Adams (disambiguation). John Quincy Adams Order 6th President Term of Office March 4, 1825 March 3, 1829 Followed James Monroe Succeeded by Andrew Jackson Date of Birth July 11, 1767 Place of Birth Braintree, Ma, were not willing to risk war for nations they did not know would survive. From their point of view, as long as the other European powers did not intervene, the government of the United States could just let Spain and her rebellious colonies fight it out.
The United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a state in Western Europe, usually known simply as the United Kingdom the UK Britain or less accurately as Great Britain . The UK was formed by a series of Acts of Union which united the formerly was torn between monarchical principle and a desire for new markets; South AmericaSouth America is a continent crossed by the equator, with most of its area in the Southern Hemisphere. South America is situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. It became attached to North America only recently, geologically speaking, wi as a whole constituted, at the time, a much larger market for British goods than the United States. When RussiaThe Russian Federation ( Russian: , transliteration: Rossiyskaya Federatsiya or Rossijskaja Federacija , or Russia (Russian: , transliteration: Rossiya or Rossija , is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of eastern Europe and northern Asia. With and France proposed that Britain join in helping Spain regain her New World colonies, Britain vetoed the idea.
The United States was also negotiating with Spain to purchase Florida, and once that treaty was ratified, the Monroe administration began to extend recognition to the new Latin American republics -- Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico were all recognized in 1822.
In 1823, France invited Spain to restore the Bourbon power, and there was talk of France and Spain warring upon the new republics with the backing of the Holy Alliance (Russia, Prussia and Austria). This news appalled the British government -- all the work of Wolfe, Chatham and other eighteenth-century British statesmen to get France out of the New World would be undone, and France would again be a power in the Americas.
George Canning, the British foreign minister, proposed that the United States and the United Kingdom join to warn off France and Spain from intervention. Both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison urged Monroe to accept the offer, but John Quincy Adams was more suspicious. Adams also was quite concerned about Russia's efforts to extend its influence down the Pacific coast from Alaska south to California, then owned by Mexico.At the Cabinet meeting of November 7, 1823, Adams argued against Canning's offer, and declared, "It would be more candid, as well as more dignified, to avow our principles explicitly to Russia and France, than to come in as a cockboat in the wake of the British man-of-war."
He argued and finally won over the Cabinet to an independent policy. In Monroe's State of the Union message to Congress on December 2, 1823, he delivered what we have come to call the Monroe Doctrine. Essentially, the United States was informing the powers of the Old World that the American continents were no longer open to European colonization, and that any effort to extend European political influence into the New World would be considered by the United States "as dangerous to our peace and safety." The United States would not interfere in European wars or internal affairs, and expected Europe to stay out of American affairs.
This explicitly stated intent was contradicted by cooperation with European powers in the repeated re-occupation of various territories of the island of Hispaniola, regions of which were in this period variously known as Santo Domingo and Haiti. Both France and Spain were interested in re-claiming their territories in Hispaniola, or re-exerting their influence, although Spain was more successful in the 19th century. In practice, the Monroe Doctrine sided with whatever side of Caribbean conflicts favoured America's short-term economic interests, rather than definitively drawing a barrier against European interventionism. Another illustrative example was America's encouragement of a muscular British policy in their southern Caribbean colonies such as Guyana.
Although it would take decades to coalesce into an identifiable policy, John Quincy Adams did raise a standard of an independent American foreign policy so strongly that future administrations could not ignore it. One should note, however, that the policy succeeded because it met British interests as well as American, and for the next 100 years was secured by the backing of the British fleet.
On December 2, 1845 US President James Polk announced to Congress that the Monroe Doctrine should be strictly enforced and that the United States should aggressively expand into the West (see Manifest Destiny).
In the early 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt added the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine which asserted the American right to intervene in Latin America.
In 1930 the Clark Memorandum was released, concluding that the Doctrine did not give the United States any right to intervene in Latin American affairs when the region was not threatened by Old World powers, thereby reversing the Roosevelt Corollary.
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