In an extension of the Monroe Doctrine, the Roosevelt Corollary claimed the right of the United States to intervene in the affairs of its neighbors in the Western Hemisphere if they were unable to preserve domestic order on their own. In an annual address to Congress in 1823, President James Monroe had articulated what became known as the Monroe Doctrine, stating that the United States would not permit European powers to colonize independent nations in the Western Hemisphere. In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt extended the Monroe Doctrine with his own corollary.
Roosevelt used the corollary as a rationale for his intervention in the crisis of the Dominican Republic. Even though revolutionaries had overthrown a corrupt government in the Dominican Republic in 1903, the new government still was unable to make payments on its $22 million debt to European nations. Citing the Roosevelt Corollary, the American administration took control of Dominican customs. Under American receivership, 45 percent of the country’s revenues were distributed to Dominicans and the rest sent to foreign creditors. This arrangement lasted for more than three decades.
Having absorbed Cuba as a protectorate as a result of winning the Spanish-American War of 1898, the United States granted it independence in 1902. But Cuba became independent only after the new government agreed to abide by the Platt Amendment, which gave the United States the right to intervene in the affairs of Cuba if its independence were threatened by any foreign power. In 1906 Roosevelt intervened in Cuba when a rebellion undermined the stability of the country. American troops landed on the island, suppressed the rebellion, and stayed in the country for three years.
As an extension of Roosevelt’s Big Stick diplomacy, the Roosevelt Corollary dramatically altered American foreign policy. It signaled a shift from merely intending to safeguard the Western Hemisphere against European intervention to openly promising U. S. intervention if Latin American countries were unable to keep their domestic affairs in order.
Further reading: Louis A. Perez, Jr., Cuba under the Platt Amendment (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988).
—Glen Bessemer
World History
