Between the time the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783 and President Monroe made his 1823 speech promulgating what became the Monroe Doctrine, the world had changed. From 1792 to 1815, Europe was at war. In that period, the U.S. fought the French in the Quasi-War (1798 – 1800), the Barbary Pirates (1801 – 1805 and again in 1815), and the British (1812 – 1815).

During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the U.S. managed to stay neutral. A string of presidents – Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison – successfully kept us out of the wars that raged in Europe.

Diplomatically, remaining neutral was a painful exercise because exercising those rights to trade freely with countries on both sides of the fighting led to the War of 1812. In many ways, our neutrality started a tradition in which U.S. businessmen made lots of money from European wars, e.g. The Crimean War, World War I, and II.

However, it was just not Europe that was at war. The success of the American Revolution inspired people in colonies in the Caribbean, Central, and South America. Much of South America was also in turmoil as French, Portuguese, and Spanish colonies threw off the colonial yoke. Revolutions created what is now Bolivia, Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador, Haiti, and Peru. As we know in 2025, more were to come.

Politically and emotionally, our Founding Fathers supported these revolutions. But that was about it. Militarily, the U.S. was a pigmy even though its small navy had proven itself against the Royal Navy on the Great Lakes as well as in the Atlantic and Pacific. Foreign aid was, well, a foreign concept.

Nonetheless, our Founding Fathers wanted to fire a warning shot across the bow of the Europeans by telling them to stay out of our backyard. None of our Founding Fathers wanted the European powers to regain or maintain control of their colonies in the Western Hemisphere. To them, this was “our” turf.

When Madison made his speech to Congress on December 2nd, 1823, U.S. leaders were afraid European monarchies would, now that Napoleon was defeated, try to suppress independence movements in Central and South America. Oddly enough, the inspiration and background for Monroe’s speech came from Alexander Hamilton’s writings in the Federalist Papers. Hamilton espoused the idea that the U.S. would become a dominant power in what was known as the New World and would act as an intermediary between the new South American countries and the major European powers.

At first, all but one European country rejected what became known as the Monroe Doctrine. The British, seeing the benefits of what was becoming the Industrial Revolution, saw an opportunity to expand its influence through trade. This U.S. policy of non-interference fit right in with the concept of Pax Britannica in which the Royal Navy protected the sea lanes so that every nation could trade with another.

In a way, the Monroe Doctrine also set in motion a policy of isolationism that was followed by a succession of U.S. presidents until 1898 and Spanish American War. This war against Spain was the first time that U.S. troops were deployed outside North America in our history.

1896 cartoon by Gilliam titled Keep off the Monroe Doctrine.

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