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The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine was an "amendment" to the Monroe Doctrine by United States President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909). In effect, the Monroe Doctrine was now used not only for its original purpose of keeping out European hegemony in Latin America but also as an agency for expanding U.S. commercial interests in the region.

This doctrine was a frank statement that the U.S. was willing to seek leverage over Latin American governments by acting as an international police power in the region. Described as a policy of speaking softly but carrying a big stick, the Roosevelt announcement launched an era of the "big stick."

Background

For further details see Second Venezuela Crisis.

Roosevelt was preoccupied with events in what he considered the United States' special sphere of influence: Latin America. Early in his presidency, he was fixated especially on the prospects of penetration into the region by the German Empire. Unwilling to share trading rights, let alone military control, with any other nation, Roosevelt embarked on a series of ventures in the Caribbean and South America that established a pattern of U.S. imperialism in the region that would long outlast his presidency.

Crucial to Roosevelt's thinking was an incident early in his presidency. When the government of Venezuela was no longer able to placate the demands of European bankers in 1902, naval forces from Great Britain, Italy, and Germany erected a blockade along the Venezuelan coast even fired upon coastal fortifications to remind the Venezuelan caudillo of his debt to some of their nationals. At first content to stand by and allow Venezuela to weather this assault, Roosevelt soon became suspicious of German intentions when German ships began to bombard a Venezuelan port. The German naval bombardment set off rumors that Germany planned to establish a permanent base in the region. In 1903, Roosevelt warned the Germans (according to his own later account) that Admiral Dewey and his fleet were standing by in the Caribbean and would act against any German effort to acquire new overseas colonies. Thus, Roosevelt matched threat with threat; the German navy finally withdrew and the Europeans quickly retreated into the safer field of international diplomacy.

The incident helped to persuade Roosevelt that European intrusions into Latin America could result not only from aggression but from internal instability or "irresponsibility" (such as defaulting on debts) within the Latin American nations themselves. This left the United States and President Roosevelt with an even greater determination to shut European imperialism out of the Western Hemisphere.

Announcement of the new "corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine

As a result, he added a new "corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine. In his address to Congress on December 6, 1904, he claimed that the United States had the right not only to oppose European intervention in the Western Hemisphere but to intervene itself in the domestic affairs of its neighbors if those neighbors proved unable to protect U.S. investments in the region on their own. Roosevelt issued his corollary: "Chronic wrongdoing... may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation," he announced in his annual message to Congress in December 1904, "and in the Western Hemisphere 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 tied his policy to the Monroe Doctrine to win public acceptance.

Intervention in the Caribbean

The immediate motivation for the Roosevelt Corollary, and the first opportunity for putting the doctrine into practice, was a crisis in the Dominican Republic. A revolution had topped the corrupt and bankrupt regime of that nation in 1903, but the new regime had proved no better able than the old to placate foreign backers (the new regime was stuck with a $22 million debt to European financiers). Both France and Italy were threatening to intervene on behalf of their nationals.

The U.S. intervened in the dispute between the Dominicans and the Europeans. Using the rationale he had outlined to Congress, Roosevelt seized control over Dominican customs collections and effectively established a U.S. receivership over the nation. The U.S. assumed control of Dominican customs and distributed 45 percent of the revenues to Santo Domingo and the rest to foreign creditors. This arrangement lasted, in one form or another, for more than three decades.

The U.S. not only established a customs receivership in the Dominican Republic but exercised similar control in Nicaragua and Haiti. Two years later, another opportunity arose for intervention in the Caribbean. In 1902, the U.S. had granted political "independence" to Cuba, and only after the new Cuban regime had agreed to the so-called "Platt Amendment" to its constitution, forfeiting to the U.S. its right to prevent any foreign power from usurping U.S. domination over the region. When, in 1906, a series of domestic uprisings seemed to threaten the status quo of the island, Roosevelt concluded that the U.S. must intervene to "protect" Cuba from "disorder." U.S. troops landed in Cuba, suppressed the revolt, and lingered on there for three more years.

Shift to the "Good Neighbor" policy

Roosevelt and later presidents cited the corollary to justify U.S. intervention in (and occupation of) Cuba (1906-09), Nicaragua (1909-11, 1912-25 and 1926-33), Haiti (1915-34), and the Dominican Republic (1916-24). In 1934, however, Franklin D. Roosevelt renounced interventionism and established his "Good Neighbor policy" of lessened military intervention.

Related articles

• History of the United States (1865-1918)
• History of United States imperialism
• The New Imperialism series
  • Origins of New Imperialism
• Dollar Diplomacy
• Good Neighbor policy

• U.S. history of foreign relations