Theodore Roosevelt and the American empire

If any one man symbolized the new American imperial experiment it was Theodore Roosevelt. Thrust into the presidency in 1901 after McKinley's assassination, Roosevelt welcomed the possibility of exploiting the new opportunities created by the Spanish-American War.

Platt Amendment

Introduced by Orville H. Platt, an American senator (1879-1905), the Platt Amendment to the Cuban Constitution stipulated the conditions for American intervention in Cuban affairs and permitted the United States to lease a naval base in Cuba (Guantanamo Bay). The United States subsequently intervened in Cuban affairs in 1906, 1912, 1917 and 1920. The Platt Amendment was abrogated in 1934, although the United States has retained its naval base in Guantanamo Bay.

In practice, this meant that the Roosevelt administration took the Monroe Doctrine to another level. In late 1903 he engineered the independence of Panama from Colombia, which was followed by a treaty granting the United States the right to a perpetually renewable lease to build and operate the Panama Canal (officially opened in 1914). As a result, the United States acquired a preponderant strategic and commercial position in the Western Hemisphere, particularly in the Caribbean.

In Cuba, where troops remained until 1902, the Roosevelt administra­tion made sure that American interests were guaranteed. In particular, the Cubans were compelled to include in their new constitution the so-called Platt Amend­ment, which gave Washington the right to intervene in Cuban affairs should its ‘independence' be threatened from outside or its internal order be jeopardized.

protectorates

Territories administered by an imperial state without full annexation taking place, and where delegated powers typically remain in the hands of a local ruler or rulers. Examples include French Morocco and the unfederated states in Malaya.

Roosevelt Corollary (to the Monroe Doctrine)

Unveiled by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904, the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine asserted that the United States had the right to intervene in the affairs of an American republic threatened with seizure or intervention by a European country.

open door

The maintenance in a certain territory of equal commercial and industrial rights for the nationals of all countries. As a specific policy, it was first advanced by the United States in the late nineteenth century as a way of safeguarding American economic interests in China.

see Chapter 3

permanent base in Guantanamo Bay. Until Fidel Castro's successful revolution in the late 1950s Cuba effectively remained an American protectorate, despite its nominal independence.

In 1904 Roosevelt made the American dominance over, and right to inter­vene in, the Western Hemisphere open national policy by extending the Platt Amendment beyond Cuba. The so-called Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine stipulated that the United States would act as a ‘policeman' in the Caribbean. American forces would intervene — ‘however reluctantly' as Roosevelt, not devoid of a morbid sense of humour, put it — in cases where Caribbean states were threatened by internal or external dangers. The following year the United States put the Roosevelt Corollary into practice by taking over the finances of the Dominican Republic. In 1912 a similar intervention in Nicaragua was backed up — owing to internal Nicaraguan discontent — by the sending in of American marines. It was the beginning of two decades of American gunboat diplomacy in the Caribbean.

Roosevelt and his successors used two key arguments to justify the extension of direct American control over the Caribbean. First, Roosevelt in particular believed that the threat of German intervention in the Western Hemisphere was real and would jeopardize America's national interests as characterized in the Monroe Doctrine. Equally important, however, American intervention in the Caribbean was tied to its increasing investment in the region. For example, firms such as the United Fruit Company (UFCO) became extensive landowners in Central America while investment in the Cuban sugar plantations grew by about 400 per cent in the decade following the Platt Amendment. Indeed, as was to be the case throughout much of the twentieth century, American security and economic interests were closely tied together in Central America in the years preceding the First World War.

The United States also had strong economic and strategic interests in the Pacific. The American network of bases and acquisitions included — in addition to the Philippines and Hawaii — Samoa, Guam and Midway. However, in contrast to the position in the Caribbean, the United States found that its efforts to project its naval power into the west Pacific and China provoked opposition from a number of rivals, including Britain, Germany, France, Japan and Russia. In particular, the United States faced firm opposition to its attempt to secure a stake in the Chinese market. At the end of the nineteenth century China had been carved into spheres of influence by the rival imperial Powers. As a latecomer to this race and, at least in theory, a ‘conscientious objector' to European-style imperialism, in 1899 Secretary of State John Hay circulated the first ‘open door' note, calling for equal access to the Chinese market. Unfortunately for the image of a ‘different kind of imperialist', however, the United States joined the imperial Powers in suppress­ing the Chinese nationalists during the so-called Boxer Rebellion of 1900.

By the start of the First World War, the United States was a strong regional and an emerging world power. To be sure, the lure of the Chinese market had proved elusive, and while the United States had experienced a series of triumphs in acquiring overseas bases, the profits from such ventures had been small and the liabilities more than a little onerous. At the same time, however, it had been able to secure its hold on the Western Hemisphere and effectively make the Caribbean into an American lake. On balance, as Europe descended into the madness of war, the Americans were powerful, secure and prosperous in their region of the globe. Nor did they have any intention of letting such a position evaporate.