Monroe Doctrine

US President James Monroe.

US ecretary of State John Quincy Adams, the author of the Monroe Doctrine.

The Monroe Doctrine was a foreign policy of the United States that was proclaimed in 1823 by US President James Monroe but had been the idea of Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. It stated that no European power could colonize any more of the Americas or the rest of the Western Hemisphere.

In particular, most of the Spanish Empire in South America had recently become independent because of the Napoleonic Wars against France. Having won the Peninsular War, Spain wanted its empire back, which the Monroe Doctrine warned that the United States would resist. The United Kingdom agreed because it wanted to trade with the newly-independent countries and so it helped enforce the Monroe Doctrine by its powerful Royal Navy.

Monroe Doctrine Media

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  Proclamation of the Chilean Declaration of Independence on February 18, 1818

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  Victor Gillam's 1896 political cartoon depicting Uncle Sam standing with a rifle between the Europeans and Latin Americans

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  Surrender of the Spanish Army at the Battle of Tampico in 1829

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  French intervention in Mexico, 1861–1867

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  Political cartoon depicting Theodore Roosevelt using the Monroe Doctrine to keep European powers out of the Dominican Republic.

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  1903 cartoon: "Go Away, Little Man, and Don't Bother Me". President Theodore Roosevelt intimidating Colombia to acquire the Panama Canal Zone

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  A map of Middle America showing the places affected by Theodore Roosevelt's Big stick policy.

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  U.S. Marine posing with dead Haitian revolutionaries durign the United States occupation of Haiti

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  American servicemen in Greenland during World War II