Platt Amendment

Platt Amendment (1901).In 1901, U.S. Senator Orville Platt introduced an amendment to the U.S. Army appropriations bill specifying several conditions for the American military evacuation of Cuba. The two key provisions of the Platt Amendment, first proposed by Secretary of War Elihu Root, required that Cuba cede territory for American military and naval bases and also grant the United States the right to intervene in the island to preserve order, life, property, and liberty. In Congress, even proponents of Cuban independence like Senators Joseph Foraker and George Hoar supported the amendment, which President William McKinley signed into law on 2 March. In early June, the Cuban Constitutional Convention acceded to American demands, and the amendment came to regulate Cuban‐American relations until it was abrogated in 1934.

The Platt Amendment addressed a fundamental problem for the expanding United States. In 1898, the U.S. government had pledged under the Teller Amendment to withdraw from Cuba once Spain had been defeated in the Spanish‐American War. But after the U.S. military victory, Washington wished to maintain the strategic gains of 1898 and did not trust the Cubans to establish a government friendly to American interests. The Platt Amendment resolved this contradiction by in essence making Cuba a U.S. protectorate. However, the amendment also poisoned Cuban‐American relations and encouraged U.S. expansionism in the Americas in the early twentieth century.
[See also Caribbean and Latin America, U.S. Military Involvement in the.]

Bibliography

David F. Healy , The United States in Cuba, 1898–1902: Generals, Politicians, and the Search for Policy, 1963.
Louis A. Perez , Cuba Under the Platt Amendment, 1902–1934, 1986.

John Lawrence Tone