Introduction

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century the Western Hemisphere appeared far removed from the centre of international relations. Having removed the yoke of European imperialism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (with some exceptions, most notably Canada), the countries of North, Central and South America had played a minor role in the rivalries between the European Powers.

Great Powers

Traditionally those states that were held capable of shared responsibility for the management of the international order by virtue of their military and economic influence.

In retrospect this seems hardly an accident. Already at the turn of the century the United States was, by any economic, geographic or population measure, one of the Great Powers. It had a population of more than 75 million in 1900, a domestic marketplace that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific (and north to Alaska), and an increasingly influential position in the world’s financial markets. A key ingredient in the growth of American power was its ability to utilize, almost

Good Neighbor Policy

A diplomatic policy introduced in 1933 by President Franklin D.

Roosevelt, which was designed to encourage friendly relations and mutual defence among the nations of the Western Hemisphere after decades of American military interventionism.

pan-Americanism

The movement towards commercial, social, economic, military and political co­operation among the nations of North, Central and South America.

Monroe Doctrine

The doctrine declared by President James Monroe in 1823 in which he announced that the United States would not tolerate intervention by the European Powers in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere.

at will, not only its own remarkable material resources but those of its southern neighbours as well. This unquestioned American dominance of the Western Hemisphere in the first half of the twentieth century is the central theme of this chapter. It will highlight the ways in which the United States penetrated deeply into Latin American, and particularly Central American and Caribbean, affairs.

This influence was obvious in two major ways. First, the United States was willing to use its military force — both the navy and the marines — to exercise its will upon, and even run a number of, Latin American countries. Second, the Americans dominated — and ultimately exploited — the Western Hemisphere economically through investment and ownership that effectively made American companies and individuals the key proprietors of Latin American resources.

A third aspect that this chapter will explore is the impact of world events and ideological debates on the specific means by which the United States exercised its dominance. In particular, the chapter will explore how American interventionism, while always present, needed to be justified and modified depending on the mood of the nation and the potential for alienating friends in the rest of the world. In short, while Americans dominated the Western Hemisphere, they would at times go to great pains to justify this dominance by invoking altruistic principles. This was particularly evident during the Democratic administrations of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. For example, in the 1930s, when it was reluc­tant to intervene militarily, Washington looked to other means than ‘gunboat diplomacy' to maintain its dominance, particularly after Roosevelt declared his ‘Good Neighbor' Policy in 1933. The result was a drive to develop joint decision­making under the rubric of pan-Americanism. Yet, as will be argued, the goals of the ‘Good Neighbor' policy and pan-Americanism were ultimately not very differ­ent from those of, say, the overt American interventions that had been launched in the Caribbean during the 1920s.