A Concise History of the (In)Famous Doctrine that Gave Rise to the American Empire President James Monroe's 1823 message to Congress declaring opposition to European colonization in the Western Hemisphere became the cornerstone of nineteenth-century American statecraft. Monroe's message proclaimed anticolonial principles, yet it rapidly became the myth and means for subsequent generations of politicians to pursue expansionist foreign policies. Time and again, debates on the key issues of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century foreign relations—expansion in the 1840s, Civil War diplomacy, the imperialism of 1898, entrance into World War I, and the establishment of the League of Nations—were framed in relation to the Monroe Doctrine. Covering more than a century of history, this engaging book explores the varying conceptions of the doctrine as its meaning evolved in relation to the needs of an expanding American empire. In Jay Sexton's adroit hands, the Monroe Doctrine provides a new lens from which to view the paradox at the center of American diplomatic history: the nation's interdependent traditions of anticolonialism and imperialism.

This book demonstrates that during the early twentieth century, the Monroe Doctrine served the role of a national security framework that justified new directions in United States foreign relations when the nation emerged as one of the world’s leading imperial powers. As the United States’ overseas empire expanded in the wake of the Spanish-American War, the nation’s decision-makers engaged in a protracted debate over the meaning and application of the doctrine, aligning it to two antithetical core values simultaneously: regional hegemony in the Western Hemisphere on the one hand, and Pan-Americanism on the other. The doctrine’s fractured meaning reflected the divisions that existed among domestic perceptions of the nation’s new role on the world stage and directed the nation’s approach to key historical events such as the acquisition of the Philippines, the Mexican Revolution, the construction of the Panama Canal, the First World War, and the debate over the League of Nations.

Each chapter features a timeline of events in the history of U.S. involvement in that country and a list of suggested readings on the country and its relationship with the U.S. A glossary explains key terms used throughout the book. Comparative tables and charts put inter-American relations in perspective. A selection of editorial cartoons from the 1980s offers biting commentary on U.S. relations with its Latin American neighbors. Designed to meet the information needs of high school and college students and the general public, this reference work provides both historical perspective and timely analysis of current problems confronting the U.S. and its neighbors to the south.