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1866-1913: Diplomacy and
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Categories:Seward and the Purchase of Alaska
Blaine and Pan-Americanism
Venezuela Boundary Dispute
Annexation of Hawaii
War With Spain
Open Door Policy With China, 1899-1900
Teddy Roosevelt and World Order
Dollar Diplomacy
President-elect Garfield named James G. Blaine, his former rival for the Republican presidential nomination, to his cabinet as Secretary of State. Blaine took office in March1881. As Secretary, Blaine continued his long interest in Latin America, "first, to bring about peace and prevent futile wars in North and South America; second, to cultivate such friendly commercial ties with all American countries as would lead to a large increase in the export trade of the United States." He sought exclusive U.S. control over any canal to be built in the Central American isthmus, a goal finally realized in the 1901 Hay-Pauncefote treaty with Great Britain. He sought to keep Hawaii as "part of the American System," although Hawaii was not annexed until 1898. He tried and failed to resolve the 1879-1883 War of the Pacific between Chile, Peru and Bolivia. President Garfield’s assassination in July 1881 elevated Chester Arthur to the presidency, and since Arthur belonged to a different wing of the Republican party than "the plumed knight," Blaine’s days in the cabinet were numbered. After Arthur canceled a planned Pan American Congress, Blaine resigned as Secretary of State in December 1881. When Benjamin Harrison was elected President in 1888, he invited Blaine to become Secretary of State once again. In 1889, a Pan American Congress was finally convened in Washington. Blaine followed up by campaigning tirelessly for arbitration treaties with Latin American nations and for Congressional authority to negotiate trade agreements on the basis of reciprocity. Blaine’s "spirited foreign policy" also included settlement of a dispute with Germany and Great Britain over the Samoan Islands, long-running negotiations with Great Britain over the right of Canadian vessels to hunt seals in the Bering Sea, and resolution of serious disputes with Chile and Italy over the murder of American citizens. Blaine’s major accomplishment in his second tenure as Secretary was the promotion of closer political and commercial relations between the United States and the nations of Latin America. But even here these good feelings began to deteriorate with rising jingoism in the United States, which stirred latent Latin American suspicions of the "Colossus of the North." Whether because of worsening relations with President Harrison, deteriorating health, or ambition to again secure the Republican nomination for the presidency, Blaine resigned in June 1892. James G. Blaine, "the man from Maine," died in January 1893 at age 63.
During the period 1909-1913, President William Howard Taft and Secretary of State Philander C. Knox followed a foreign policy characterized as "dollar diplomacy." Taft shared the view held by Knox, a corporate lawyer who had founded the giant conglomerate U.S. Steel, that the goal of diplomacy was to create stability and order abroad that would best promote American commercial interests. Knox felt that not only was the goal of diplomacy to improve financial opportunities, but also to use private capital to further U.S. interests overseas. "Dollar diplomacy" was evident in extensive U.S. interventions in the Caribbean and Central America, especially in measures undertaken to safeguard American financial interests in the region. In China, Knox secured the entry of an American banking conglomerate, headed by J.P. Morgan, into a European-financed consortium financing the construction of a railway from Huguang to Canton. In spite of successes, "dollar diplomacy" failed to counteract economic instability and the tide of revolution in places like Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and China.
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