MONROE DOCTRINE

From a historians perspective, President James Monroe's proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine—consisting of three paragraphs in his annual message to Congress of December 1823—was perhaps one of the most important moments in nineteenth-century American diplomacy. At the time, however, its significance was not obvious. Within just a few years, it had been largely forgotten, and it would not be taken up again until the 1840s, when it was first referred to as the "Monroe Doctrine."

President Monroe and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams crafted the doctrine as the American response to recent European developments. In the spring of 1823 French troops, authorized by the Holy Alliance of European monarchs, had entered Spain to topple the three-year-old constitutional government and restore King Ferdinand VII to absolute rule. It seemed likely that the Holy Alliance would continue to support Ferdinand by providing military and financial assistance to help him resubjugate his rebellious American colonies. Some Americans even worried that the allies' wars against republican government would eventually extend to the United States. In August, the British foreign secretary, George Canning, proposed to the American minister in London, Richard Rush, an Anglo-American declaration opposing any allied assistance for Spain against its colonies and disavowing any interest in acquiring Spain's colonies for themselves. Over the same months, moreover, evidence mounted that Russia intended to extend its colonial presence along the Pacific Coast of North America.

Rush's report of Canning's proposal reached Washington in early October and formed the principal topic for often-divisive cabinet discussions during November. Historians have offered various explanations of the divisions within the cabinet over the appropriate response to the European developments and the British proposal, ranging from conflicting assessments of the real danger to competing aspirations in the approaching presidential election of 1824. According to Adams's diary (the only internal account of the cabinet meetings), President Monroe and Secretary of War John C. Calhoun leaned toward accepting the British proposal in some form because they genuinely feared an allied assault upon Spanish America. Adams, in contrast, pressed for a unilateral response that would preserve American freedom of action, both in the current crisis and in the future. By taking its stand in the message to Congress rather than through a joint statement with Great Britain, the administration adopted, at least publicly, a position more consistent with Adams's views.

The Monroe Doctrine included three key points. In a section that was directed primarily at Russia, it asserted that the Western Hemisphere was closed to further colonization. Two other paragraphs warned that the European powers should not interfere in New World affairs and pledged that the United States would not interfere in European affairs. By responding to the European threat and the British proposal unilaterally, the administration avoided either entangling the United States with Great Britain or foreswearing future expansion at Spain's expense, particularly in Cuba. It also preserved the diplomatic position enjoyed by the United States in the New World as the only established nation that had formally recognized the independence of the rebellious colonies.

Monroe's message was wildly popular at home and among the new nations of Spanish America. But it was largely ignored in Europe, where quiet Anglo-French diplomacy had already defused the crisis even as Monroe's cabinet debated its response. While European developments never required a decision about whether and how to make good on the doctrine, some of the Spanish American governments viewed it as a new pledge of American commitment on their behalf and called upon the administration for assistance. Colombia, and later Mexico, hoped to use Monroe's message to leverage military support—probably aid rather than ships or troops out of the United States—as well as diplomatic support. They pointed to the continuing Spanish denial of their independence and, in the case of Colombia, to French diplomatic pressures. Monroe and Adams quickly and quietly backed off from their bold stance as they responded to these calls for assistance. When Adams's secretary of state, Henry Clay, referred to Monroe's "memorable pledge" in diplomatic correspondence regarding Mexico, he triggered a fierce backlash in Congress. By the end of Adams's presidency in March 1829, the doctrine had been abandoned.

Scholars have differed over the significance of the Monroe Doctrine in the minds of those who shaped it, describing the doctrine as little more than an attempt to curry favor with American voters; one element of a complex and flexible response to international developments; or a bold blueprint for American empire in the New World. Ultimately, it neither prevented a European invasion nor checked British influence in Spanish America nor established American dominance in the New World. It did, however, testify to a deep fear that the spread of European influence, institutions, and principles in the New World would threaten the United States.

See alsoAdams, John Quincy; Monroe, James .

bibliography

Combs, Jerald A. "The Origins of the Monroe Doctrine: A Survey of Interpretations by United States Historians." Australian Journal of Politics and History 27 (1981): 186–196.

Lewis, James E., Jr. The American Union and the Problem of Neighborhood: The United States and the Collapse of the Spanish Empire, 1783–1829. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

May, Ernest R. The Making of the Monroe Doctrine. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975.

Perkins, Dexter. The Monroe Doctrine, 1823–1826. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1927.

James E. Lewis Jr.