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Great Britain, The United States, and the 1909–1910 Nicaraguan Crisis*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
Extract
Victory over Spain in 1898 provided the United States with the opportunity to pursue the various options that imperial status now offered. Indeed, under the influence of the strategic precepts of an Alfred Thayer Mahan, the messianic expansionism of a Josiah Strong, the extended frontier concept of a Frederick Jackson Turner, and the now seemingly obtainable economic aspirations of a James G. Blaine, North Americans looked to their newly established imperial arena with anticipation and confidence. It would be the adjacent circum-Caribbean region, for the most part, where the United States government would attempt to create the appropriate climate for the attainment of its strategic, economic, and altruistic goals. Acquisition of the Canal Zone in 1903 served in particular to focus U.S. attention on the isthmus. Accordingly, whenever revolutionary violence erupted in Central America, the United States government more often than not took vigorous action to ensure the survival or emergence of governments and factions which were supportive of North American interests.
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- Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1997
Footnotes
*
An earlier version of this study was presented as a paper at the 1993 meeting of the Southern Historical Association. The author would like to express his thanks to commentators Mark T. Gilderhus and Michael Krenn, as well as to this journal’s referees, for their helpful criticism.
References
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12 Carden to Grey, July 30, 1908, F.O. 371/407, PRO.
13 The Foreign Office List and Diplomatic and Consular Year Book for 1916 (London, 1916), p. 505; The London Times, October 18, 1915.
14 For an excellent overview of the structure and personnel of Taft’s Department of State, see Scholes and Scholes, The Foreign Policies of the Taft Adminstration, pp. 5–27.
15 James Bryce to Grey, May 25, 1909, F.O. 371/609; Bryce to Grey, May 30, 1909, F.O. 371/609, PRO. The Central American treaties that Huntington Wilson referred to were the result of the 1907 Washington Conference sponsored by the United States and Mexico. In the treaties the Central American nations, among other things, agreed to maintain peaceful relations with one another. Although not a signatory, the United States had supposedly lent its moral authority to the pacts.
16 Ibid.
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19 Avebury to Hardinge, June 7, 1909, F.O. 371/609, PRO.
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22 Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States (Washington, 1914), pp. 455–457.
23 Sperling’s minute on Bryce to Grey, December 20, 1909, F.O. 371/610, PRO.
24 Walter Langley’s minute on Carden to Grey, December 22, 1909, F.O. 371/835.
25 Admiralty to Commander of H.M.S. Shearwater, December 18, 1909, F.O. 371/610, PRO.
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28 Carden to Grey, January 26, 1910, F.O. 371/835, PRO.
29 Carden to Grey, March 16, 1910, F.O. 371/835; Louis Mallet’s minute on Carden to Grey, March 16, 1910, F.O. 371/835, PRO.
30 Bryce to Grey, March 23, 1910, F.O. 371/835; Orme Garton Sargent’s minute on Bryce to Grey, March 23, 1910, F.O. 371/835; Sperling’s minute on Bryce to Grey, March 23, 1910, F.O. 371/835, PRO. James Bryce to Philander C. Knox, March 15, 1910, Decimal File 817.00/816; Knox to Bryce, March 18, 1910, 817.00/816, Record Group 59, Records of the Department of State, National Archives, Washington, D.C. (hereafter Department of State records will be cited by decimal file number).
31 Carden to Grey, March 16, 1910, F.O. 371/835, PRO.
32 Sperling’s minute on Carden to Grey, March 16, 1910, F.O. 371/835, PRO. On numerous occasions Foreign Office personnel would wistfully recall the previous Department of State regime of Elihu Root. In the estimation of the Foreign Office, Root’s conduct of foreign policy was both diplomatic and wise, attributes that appeared to be sorely lacking in the current group of U.S. policy makers, especially in their elaboration of Central American policy. For an example of this view, see Bryce to Grey, December 20, 1909, F.O. 371/610, PRO.
33 Grey to Bryce, April 7, 15, 1910, F.O. 371/835, PRO. William Phillips to the Secretary of State, April 7, 1910, 817.00/870 and Phillips to the Secretary of State, April 15, 1910, 817.00/903.
34 Sands, William F., Our Jungle Diplomacy (Chapel Hill, 1944), pp. 129, 131.Google Scholar
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39 Walter Langley’s minute on Carden to Grey, December 22, 1909, F.O. 371/835, PRO.
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42 Carden to Grey, April 16, 1910, F.O. 371/835; Sperling’s minute on Carden to Grey, April 16, 1910, F.O. 371/835, PRO.
43 Admiralty to Foreign Office, June 3, 1910, F.O. 371/835, PRO.
44 Sargent’s minute on Admiralty to Foreign Office, June 3, 1910, F.O. 371/835, PRO.
45 Sperling’s minute on Admiralty to Foreign Office, June 3, 1910, F.O. 371/835, PRO.
46 Sir Francis A. Campbell’s minute on Admiralty to Foreign Office, June 3, 1910, F.O. 371/835, PRO.
47 Grey’s minute on Admiralty to Foreign Office, June 3, 1910, F.O. 371/835, PRO.
48 Grey’s minute on Carden to Grey, June 5, 1910, F.O. 371/835, PRO.
49 Admiralty to Foreign Office, July 9, 1910, F.O. 371/836, PRO.
50 Carden to Grey, June 9, 1910, F.O. 371/836, PRO.
51 Sperling’s minute on Carden to Grey, June 9, 1910, F.O. 371/836, PRO.
52 Grey’s minute on Carden to Grey, June 9, 1910, F.O. 371/836, PRO; Bryce to Knox, June 24, 1910, 817.00/1085; Munro, Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy, p. 185; Minister of State to the Spanish minister in Guatemala, June 22, 1910, Correspondencia, Guatemala, Legajo 1609, Spanish Foreign Ministry Archives, Madrid (hereafter cited as SFMA). The Madriz government subsequently requested the good offices of Spain, but the Spanish, like the British, were reluctant to involve themselves in the controversy.
53 Carden to Grey, June 9, 1910, F.O. 371/836, PRO; Consul Thomas R. Moffat to the Secretary of State, July 7, 1910, 817.00/1137; The Spanish minister in Washington to the Minister of State, July 9, 1910, Correspondencia, USA, 139, 1482, SFMA. From Washington the Spanish minister referred to “rumors” which indicated that the Madriz government was looking for “protection against the United States … and was offering an island to a European government for a coaling station on the condition that the European power would intervene in the Nicaraguan affair.”
54 Adolfo Díaz and the Conservatives are usually pilloried for selling out Nicaragua’s patrimony to the United States in 1914. The Liberals, however, are not exactly blameless in this regard given the efforts of both Zelaya and Madriz to negotiate these very same rights away to foreign powers. For the Zelaya government’s canal rights flirtation with Germany and Japan, see Schoonover, Thomas D., The United States in Central America, 1860–1911: Episodes of Social Imperialism and Imperial Rivalry in the World System (Durham, 1991), pp. 136–141.Google Scholar
55 Grey’s minute on Carden to Grey, June 9, 1910, F.O. 371/836, PRO.
56 Campbell’s minute on Admiralty to Foreign Office, July 9, 1910, F.O. 371/836, PRO.
57 Munro, , Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy, pp. 185–186.Google Scholar
58 Godfrey Haggard to Grey, August 23, 1910, F.O. 371/836, PRO.
59 Mallet’s minute on Haggard to Grey, August 23, 1910, F.O. 371/836, PRO.
60 Sargent’s minute on Haggard to Grey, August 23,1910, F.O. 371/836,PRO.
61 Grey’s minute on Haggard to Grey, August 23,1910, F.O. 371/836, PRO.
62 Grey’s observations, made in September of 1910, were cited in Edward H. Leslie’s minute of December 11, 1911 on Carden to Grey, November 30, 1911, F.O. 371/1056, PRO.
63 In February of 1911 Lionel Carden endeavored to challenge the policy of Anglo-American accommodation in Central America by calling for a vigorous British press campaign to protest against “U.S. policy … directed towards obtaining special advantages for American trade and enterprise which unfairly handicaps British interests.” Sir Edward Grey, however, informed Carden that “opposition to the United States government will only provoke it to further interference.” For this information, see Carden to Gerald Sidney Spicer, February 17, 1911 and Spicer to Carden (n.d.), F.O./371/1055, PRO.