Importance of Cuba to the Monroe Doctrine

Today’s installment concludes The Monroe Doctrine,
our selection from his article by Alfred Thayer Mahan in Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 16 published in 1905.

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Previously in The Monroe Doctrine.

Time: 1823
Place: Washington, D.C.

It is vain, therefore, to argue narrowly concerning what the Monroe Doctrine is, from the precise application made of it to any one particular emergency. Nor can there be finality of definition, antecedent to some national announcement, formally complete, which it is to be hoped will never be framed but which, if it were, would doubtless remain liable to contrary interpretations, sharing therein a fate from which neither the enactments of legislatures nor the bull of a pope can claim exemption. The virtue of the Monroe Doctrine, without which it would die deservedly, is that, through its correspondence with the national necessities of the United States, it possesses an inherent principle of life, which adapts itself with the flexibility of a growing plant to the successive conditions it encounters. One of these conditions of course is the growing strength of the nation itself. As Doctor Johnson ungraciously said of taxing Americans for the first time, “We do not put a calf to the plough: we wait till he is an ox.” The Monroe Doctrine, without breach of its spirit, can now be made to bear a burden to which the nation a hundred years ago was unequal.

For these reasons it is more instructive, as to the present and future of the Monroe Doctrine, to consider its development by successive exhibitions in the past, than to strive to cage its free spirit within the bars of a definition attempted at any one moment. Such an attempt the present writer certainly will not make. The international force of the proposition lies in its evolution, substantially consistent, broadening down from precedent to precedent, not in an alleged finality.

The aversion manifested by the Government of the War of Independence toward any attempted restoration of French do minion in Canada, may be justly considered a premonition of the Monroe Doctrine, anticipatory of the ground taken by both Monroe and Canning against a transfer of Spanish colonies to any other European power. At the earlier period no remonstrance was raised against such transfers of West India Islands, which occurred frequently during both that war and those of the French Revolution and Napoleonic period. The cession of Louisiana by Spain to France, in 1801, excited the keenest susceptibilities. How far resistance might have been carried it is bootless to surmise; the inoperativeness of the transaction did not permit the full consequences to develop. Objection, however, appears to have turned upon the more immediate and special motive of the substitution of a strong power for a weak one, in control of an artery of trade essential to our people, than upon the formulated dogma that American territory was not matter for political exchange between European states. Moreover, it needed no broad maxim, wide-reaching in application, to arouse popular feeling, and guide national action, in a matter of such close and evident importance. Repulsion was a matter of instinct, of feeling, which did not need to give account of itself to reason. The Louisiana question laid its hand at once upon the heart of the nation. It concerned the country, not the hemisphere and in essential principle did not lead out beyond itself, pointing the way to further action. It had finality.

The real stepping-stone by which national interest advanced to hemispheric considerations was Cuba. From every circumstance this island was eminently fitted to point the way of the future; to be the medium, and to mark the transition, from a strictly continental policy to one that embraced the hemisphere. It possessed in a very high degree the elements of power, from its position, size, and resources, which involved immense possibility for development of strength. Its intrinsic value was, therefore, very great but further, while it had relations to our continental territory only less important than the lower course of the Mississippi, it nevertheless did not belong to the continent, to which the Jeffersonian school of thought, in power from 1801 to 1825, would strictly confine national expansion. The point where a powerful navy would be needed to maintain the integrity of the national possessions marked the limit of advance in the theory of Jefferson. Nevertheless, to him also, minimizing possibly the need of a fleet to ensure access over so narrow a strip of sea, “the addition of Cuba to our confederacy is certainly exactly what is wanted to round our power as a nation to the point of its utmost interest.” To prevent its falling as yet into the hands of any other European power, he expressed to Monroe in 1823 his approval of entering with Great Britain into a joint guarantee to preserve the island for Spain, for this, he argued, would bind the most dangerous and most suspected power. On subsequent information, however, that Great Britain had stated positively she would not acquire for herself any Spanish colony under the present distress of Spain, he retracted this opinion; for why, said he, by engaging in joint guarantee, concede to her an interest which she does not otherwise possess? Before this, however, Great Britain had offered to assure the island by her own sole action, on condition of Spain acknowledging the independence of her continental colonies; thus, constituting for herself the interest from which Jefferson would have debarred the consent of the United States. To such a point, anxiety for American ends and consciousness of American lack of organized strength would then carry a practical statesman of keen American instincts. To join with a European state in guaranteeing an American interest was not yet an anachronism. A like anxiety and a like consciousness were responsible for the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, which proved so fertile a source of diplomatic contention and national ill-will in later days. Monroe’s Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, the contemporary and survivor of Jefferson, had clearer views and stronger purpose. Recognizing in Cuba an importance to the United States scarcely inferior to any part of the then existing Union, he held that there were still numerous and formidable objections to territorial dominion beyond sea. The aim of his policy, therefore, was that Spain should retain Cuba but when he succeeded Monroe in the Presidency in 1825, having received the suggestion of a joint guarantee by Great Britain, France, and the United States upon condition of Spain acknowledging the independence of the Spanish-speaking continent, he replied merely that the matter would be held under advisement, and followed this in 1826 by an express refusal —- “We can enter into no stipulations by treaty to guarantee the islands.” At the same time, it was clearly stated that “the United States would not consent to the occupation of Cuba and Porto Rico by any other European power than Spain, under any contingency whatever.”

This ends our series of passages on The Monroe Doctrine by Alfred Thayer Mahan from his article in the book Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 16 published in 1905. This blog features short and lengthy pieces on all aspects of our shared past. Here are selections from the great historians who may be forgotten (and whose work have fallen into public domain) as well as links to the most up-to-date developments in the field of history and of course, original material from yours truly, Jack Le Moine. – A little bit of everything historical is here.

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