When the U.S. Invoked the Monroe Doctrine

by Mark Sonnenblick

[Print version of this article]

• 1823: Monroe Doctrine proclaimed

• 1825-26: Bolivar’s Panama Congress

President John Quincy Adams, author of Monroe’s message, dispatched two delegates to a conference of American nations called in Panama by the British-run “liberator,” Simon Bólívar. Bólívar’s agenda would have made Spain’s former colonies into British protectorates, but the Monroe Doctrine aided Latin republicans to foil Bólívar’s plot.

• 1833: Malvinas Islands

The Monroe Doctrine was not invoked in response to the first major overt violation of its principles, because the traitorous administration of President Andrew Jackson was an active participant. In 1831, the U.S.S. Lexington reacted to Argentine efforts to enforce sovereignty over whalers operating in and around the Malvinas by physically devastating the Argentine settlement. Argentina broke relations with the United States and pressed fruitless claims for reparations. Secure they could mock the Monroe Doctrine with impunity, the British grabbed the battered “Falklands.”

• 1838: French Intervention into Mexico

France blockaded Mexico’s main port from 1837 to 1839 to collect debt claims. In 1838 the House of Representatives unanimously passed the resolution of Rep. Caleb Cushing (Mass.) quoting Monroe’s message and questioning “the ulterior views and designs of the French government with regard to the Mexican Republic.”

• 1838-45: British and French Blockade of Argentina

In 1838 British and French fleets jointly occupied the Plate River (in Argentina) to attempt to overthrow the Rosas government of Argentina and make Uruguay a British protectorate. The United States repeatedly protested in the name of the Monroe Doctrine.

• 1842-48: Texas

President Tyler’s 1842 message to Congress threatened “war between the United States and Great Britain” should Britain not stop its project for controlling the proxy republic of Texas. On Dec. 2, 1845, a statement by President Polk strongly reiterated the Monroe Doctrine and extended it to cover all “European interference” in the American republics. But Polk’s use of the Monroe Doctrine as cover for the expansion of slavery caused many in Congress to question its use.

• 1842-45: California

U.S. Commodore Thomas Jones briefly occupied Monterrey in the name of the Monroe Doctrine to preempt a British conspiracy to assure, in the words of British Minister Pakenham, “that California, once ceasing to belong to Mexico, should not fall into the hands of any Power but England.” The Monroe Doctrine was also invoked by Secretary of State Buchanan on the same question in 1845.

• 1844: Oregon

A House of Representatives committee report on British plans to extend Canada to Oregon stated that the Monroe Doctrine “has deservedly come to be regarded as an essential part of the international law of the New World.” President Polk stated, “Let a fixed principle of our Government be not to permit Great Britain or any other foreign power to plant a colony or hold dominion over any portion of the people or territory of either [American] continent.”

• 1848: Yucatan Indian Rebellion

From its colony in Belize, the British armed the Indians of Yucatan and encouraged them to rebel against the local government. The United States feared Britain could take over Yucatan and then Mexico. The United States intervened with military force to help crush the rebellion. Polk stated, “the transfer of dominion or sovereignty either to Spain, Great Britain or any other power” would not be tolerated under the principles enunciated by President Monroe.

• 1841-48: Mosquito Coast

In 1848 several Britons raised a crude Union Jack on the Caribbean coast of Central America and claimed most of that coast in the name of the “Kingdom of the Mosquito Indians.” In 1845, Nueva Granada (now Colombia) appealed for the United States to invoke the Monroe Doctrine, which it did in 1847 and 1848.

• 1861: Spanish Re-annexation of Santo Domingo

With the United States locked in civil war, Spain landed troops in Santo Domingo and declared the Dominican Republic again part of Spain. Lincoln’s representative in Spain, William Preston, protested, “There is no doctrine in which my government is more fixed than in its determination to resist any attempt of an European power to interfere for the purpose of controlling the destiny of the American republics or reestablishing over them monarchical power….” Preston later threatened Spain with war. Spain withdrew just as the Union won the Civil War.

• 1861-67: Habsburg Monarchy in Mexico

In late 1861, French and British troops landed in Mexico on the pretext of collecting debts. Lincoln immediately sent messages explaining the principles of the Monroe Doctrine to the European governments. Congress approved a resolution supporting the Monroe Doctrine as U.S. policy by a 109-0 vote.

• 1864: Spain Reclaims Peruvian Islands

On the grounds that Spain never recognized Spanish America’s independence, Spain seized Peru’s Guano Islands. Lincoln protested, leading to a Spanish promise to withdraw, not to recover any part of its former colonies, and to recognize the Monroe Doctrine.

• 1884: French Base in Haiti

Secretary of State Frelinghuysen objected to plans for Haiti to sell France a naval base on straits between Haiti and Cuba. France backed down rather than “expose us to confront the redoubtable Monroe Doctrine…. You shall not have, at least at this time, an occasion to apply it against us.”

• 1889: Pan American Conference

Secretary of State James Blaine finally fulfilled his dream of uniting the American republics for peace and mutual economic development. The Pan American Union continentalized the Monroe Doctrine and set up the framework for Organization of American States and the Rio Treaty of 1947.

• 1902: Calvo Doctrine

British and German gunboats attacked Venezuela and blockaded its harbor to collect debts. Argentine Foreign Minister Luis Drago extended the Monroe Doctrine, “a doctrine to which the Argentine Republic has heretofore solemnly adhered, to mean that the public debt cannot occasion armed intervention nor even the actual occupation of the territory of American nations by a European power….”

• 1904: Roosevelt Corollary

Teddy Roosevelt, a tool of the British Morgan bankers, responded that, in order to prevent European intervention to collect debts, “the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power….” Roosevelt thereby turned the Monroe Doctrine on its head. It has never recovered its original meaning.