Open Door / Monroe Doctrine

HIS 187

Previously

Naval power

The Navy and the Pacific Strategy

Pacific Strategy

rland_a |>
  ggplot() +
  theme(
    panel.background = element_rect(fill = "aliceblue", color = NA)
  ) +
  geom_sf(fill = "antiquewhite1", color = "burlywood3") +
  geom_sf(data = st_buffer(rland_a, -6000), linewidth = 0.6, fill = NA, color = alpha("burlywood3", 0.4)) +
  geom_sf(data = st_buffer(rland_a, 6000), linewidth = 0.4, fill = NA, color = alpha(c("lightblue"), 0.7)) +
  geom_sf_text(data = us_places, aes(label = name), color = "chocolate4", size = 3) +
  labs(
    title = "HIS 187---SELECTED US TERRITORIES, 1900",
    caption = my_cap
  ) -> p
p

Pacific / Caribbean Strategy

Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Interest of America in Sea Power (1897).

Scope of the strategy

p

Practically sovereign

To-day the United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition.

Richard Olney, US Secretary of State, 1895

The US at the time of the o.g. Monroe Doctrine

US territory at about 1823

Candid and dignified

It would be more candid, as well as more dignified, to avow our principles explicitly . . . than to come in as a cock-boat in the wake of the British man-of-war.

John Quincy Adams, US Secretary of state, 1823

A man-of-war . . .

Practically sovereign

To-day the United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition.

Richard Olney, US Secretary of State, 1895

Scope of the strategy, 1900

p

Corollaries

. . . in the Western Hemisphere 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.

Theodore Roosevelt, US President, 1904

The inevitable effect of our building the [Panama] Canal must be to require us to police the surrounding premises.

Elihu Root, US Secretary of State, 1905