American Experience

Historian Walter LaFeber on the Roosevelt Corollary

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WALTER LAFEBER: When Roosevelt goes into Santo Domingo in 1904-1905, he has to provide some kind of public justification. I don't think it's just a justification. I think Roosevelt really sincerely believed that what he was doing was right and that it was in line with American historic precedent.

But what he says in a message to Congress is that the United States has the right to exercise international police power, and that particular message becomes known as the "Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe Doctrine."

The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 said, as President Monroe issued it in that year, that Europeans should stay out of Latin America, that the Americas were essentially an American preserve. People should stay out of Latin American affairs. What Roosevelt says in 1904 and 1905 is to say, the United States should get into Latin American affairs. He essentially turns the Monroe Doctrine on its head and says the Europeans should stay out, but the United States has the right, under the doctrine, to go in in order exercise police power to keep the Europeans out.

It's a very neat twist on the Monroe Doctrine, and, of course, it becomes very, very important because over the next 15 to 20 years, the United States will move into Latin America about a dozen times with military force, to the point where the United States Marines become known in the area as "State Department troops" because they are always moving in to protect State Department interests and State Department policy in the Caribbean. So what Roosevelt does here, by redefining the Monroe Doctrine, turns out to be very historic, and it leads the United States into a period of confrontation with peoples in the Caribbean and Central America, that was a really important part of American imperialism.

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