The First Century of the Monroe Doctrine

It may be advantageous to retard that which must ultimately prevail and at all events men who head the movements of nations are not able at once to abandon the traditions of the past, and conform their action to new ideas as yet unassimilated by their people.

Continuing The Monroe Doctrine,
our selection from his article by Alfred Thayer Mahan in Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 16 published in 1905. The selection is presented in five easy 5-minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in The Monroe Doctrine.

Time: 1823
Place: Washington, D.C.

The case of the United States is now stronger but it is not clearer. Correlatively, the admission of its force by others has been progressive; gradual and practical, not at once or formal. Its formulation in the Monroe Doctrine has not obtained the full legislative sanction even of the country of its origin; and its present development there rests upon successive utterances of persons officially competent to define, but not of full authority to commit the nation to their particular expressions. So, too, international acquiescence in the position now taken has been a work of time, nor can there be asserted for it the final ratification of international agreement. The Monroe Doctrine remains a policy, not a law, either municipal or international but it has advanced in scope and in acceptance. The one progress, as the other, has been the result of growing strength — strength of numbers and of resources. Taken with position, these factors constitute national power as they do military advantage, which in the last analysis may always be resolved into two elements, force and position.

In the conjunction of these two factors is to be found the birth of the Monroe Doctrine and its development up to the present time. It is a product of national interest, involved in position, and of national power dependent upon population and resources. These are the permanent factors of the Monroe Doctrine and it cannot be too strongly realized by Americans that the permanence of the doctrine itself, as a matter of international consideration, depends upon the maintenance of both factors. To this serious truth record is borne by history, the potent mother of national warning and national encouragement. That the doctrine at its first enunciation should not at once have obtained either assent or influence, even in its most limited expression, was entirely natural. Although not without an antecedent history of conception and occasional utterance by American statesmen, its moment of birth was the announcement by Monroe and it had then all the weakness of the new-born, consequent upon a national inadequacy to the display of organized strength which had been pathetically manifested but ten years before. After the destruction of the rule of Spain in her colonies, except in Cuba and Porto Rico, Great Britain remained the one great nation besides the United States possessed of extensive territory in America. She also was the one state that had had experience of us as an enemy, and known the weakness of our military system for offensive action. What more natural than that she should have welcomed the first promulgation of the doctrine, in its original scope directed apparently merely against a combination of Continental powers, the purposes of which were offensive to herself, and yet failed to heed a root principle which in progress of time should find its application to herself, contesting the expansion of her own influence in the hemisphere, as being part of the European system and therefore falling under the same condemnation? Yet even had she seen this, and fully appreciated the promise of strength to come, it was to be expected that she should for the meantime pursue her own policy, irrespective of the still distant future. It may be advantageous to retard that which must ultimately prevail and at all events men who head the movements of nations are not able at once to abandon the traditions of the past, and conform their action to new ideas as yet unassimilated by their people.

There is then this distinguishing feature of the Monroe Doctrine, which classifies it among principles of policy which are essentially permanent. From its correspondence to the nature of things, to its environment, it possessed from the first a vitality which insured growth and development. Under such conditions it could not remain in application at the end of a half–century just what it had been in terms at the beginning. Apprehended in leading features by American statesmen, and by them embraced with a conviction which the people shared — though probably not fully understanding — it received from time to time, as successive exigencies arose to invoke assertion, definitions which enlarged its scope; sometimes consistently with its true spirit, sometimes apparently in excess of evident limitations, more rarely in defect of them.

But from the fact of Great Britain’s existing territorial possessions in America, and from her commercial preëminence and ambitions, to which territorial acquisition is often desirable, it was also in the nature of things that with her successive contentions should arise. If not a balance of power, such as had distracted Europe, at least opposing scales existed from the first; connected, not perhaps with the European system as a whole, but certainly with a most important component of that system. Moreover, the strength of Great Britain in America, relatively to the United States, was not American strength, but European strength. It was therefore unavoidably invidious to the sentiment breathed in the Monroe Doctrine, and much more so when the United States was weak than when she became strong.

From these circumstances, it has been through discussion with Great Britain chiefly that the doctrine, marking the advance of the sentiment, has progressed from definition to definition, no one of which is final in an authoritative sense, because in no case clothed with full legislative sanction, but possessing, nevertheless, the weight which attaches to the utterances of those who both by personal ability and official position are recognized as competent interpreters. Such enunciations, ex cathedra, have the force of judicial decisions, accepted as precedents to a degree dependent upon the particular person or upon subsequent general acceptance. Not in every case have the positions of American administrations in this matter been indorsed by their successors or the public.

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