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“La Enojosa Cuestión de Emery”: The Emery Claim in Nicaragua and American Foreign Policy, C. 1880-1910

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Michael Gismondi  and
Jeremy Mouat
Michael Gismondi
Affiliation:
Athabasca University, Athabasca, Alberta, Canada
Jeremy Mouat
Affiliation:
University of Alberta, Augustana, Camrose, Alberta, Canada
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Extract

This article will argue that a seemingly trivial dispute between the Nicaraguan government and an American lumber company operating on Nicaragua's Mosquito Coast escalated to become a major source of tension between the U.S. State Department and Nicaragua, as well as a catalyst that drew U.S. banks into Nicaragua. Despite its significance, the convoluted story of this dispute has attracted little scholarly attention. The importance of the Emery claim was widely acknowledged at the time, however. Stories about it appeared in contemporary newspapers and magazines, and it became a topic worthy of discussion by a U.S. Senate hearing. The claim was also connected to José Santos Zelaya's resignation as president of Nicaragua in the autumn of 1909, a gesture that came shortly after he had agreed to settle the Emery claim.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 65 , Issue 3 , January 2009 , pp. 375 - 409
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2009

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References

1 “Boston’s Mahogany Kindlings,” Boston Daily Globe, 4 June 1899, p. 25. Note the similar comments about mahogany by Huxley, Aldous, in Beyond the Mexique Bay (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1934), pp. 28–29.Google Scholar

2 Detail on Emery’s career is from “A Perfect House,” Indianapolis News, 11 November 1878, p. 4; “ Emery George D. ” American Lumbermen: The Personal History and Public and Business Achievements of One Hundred Eminent Lumbermen of the United States (Chicago: The American Lumberman, 1905), Vol. 1, pp. 19–22; “Recent Deaths [obituary of George D. Emery],” Boston Evening Transcript, 9 January 1909, p. 4; and “Developed Mahogany Trade [obituary of Herbert C. Emery, George D. Emery’s son],” Boston Evening Transcript, 14 April 1909, p. 4. On Emery’s initial financial difficulties in Chelsea, see “Business Embarrassments,” New York Times, 20 December 1883, p. 1, as well as the various entries on Emery in the R. G. Dun Collection, in MA, Vol. 86, p. 346, at the Baker Library, Historical Collections Department, Harvard Business School. James Parsons describes the Emery operations as a combination of two earlier concessions in the Mosquito territory, in “The Miskito Pine Savanna of Nicaragua and Honduras,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 45:1 (March 1955), p. 55.

3 Lamb, F. Bruce, Mahogany of Tropical America: Its Ecology and Management (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966), p. 35;Google Scholar the quotation in the text is from Lamb’s article, “Status of Forestry in Tropical America,” Journal of Forestry 46:10 (October 1948), p. 722.

4 “Boston’s Mahogany Kindlings,” Boston Daily Globe, 4 June 1899, p. 25. This passage is part of an extensive description of Emery’s overall operations; the article’s subtitle notes that “Chelsea Concern is the Largest Importer of Mahogany in the World.”

5 Details in this paragraph are taken from the description of logging operations in Lamb, , Mahogany of Tropical America, pp. 35–40.Google Scholar

6 Dennis, Philip A. and Olien, Michael D., “Kinship among the Miskito,” American Ethnologist 11:4 (November 1984), p. 719.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See Vargas, Germán Romero, Historia de la Costa Atlántica (Managua: CIDCA-UCA, 1996)Google Scholar and Vargas, G. Romero, Las Sociedades del Atlántico de Nicaragua en los Siglos XVII y XVIII (Managua: Fondo de Promoción Cultural—BANIC, 1995).Google Scholar For discussion of the split in support for Zelaya by the peoples of the Mosquito Coast, see Offen, Karl, “Creating Mosquitia: Mapping Amerindian spatial practices in eastern Central America, 1629–1779,” Journal of Historical Geography 33:2 (April 2007), pp. 254–282,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Offen, K. H., “The Sambo and Tawira Miskitu: the colonial origins and geography of Mosquito differentiation in Eastern Nicaragua and Honduras,” Ethnohistory 49:2 (Spring 2002), pp. 319–372.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Offen, Karl, “The Geographical Imagination, Resource Economies, and Nicaraguan Incorporation of the Mosquitia, 1838–1909,” in Brannstrom, Christian, ed., Territories, Commodities and Knowledges: Latin American Environmental History in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London: Institute of Latin American Studies, 2004), p. 52.Google Scholar

8 See Dennis, and Olien, , “Kinship among the Miskito,” pp. 718–737;Google Scholar Solórzano, Flor de Oro, “Reincorporación y Saqueo de la Mosquitia,” América Indígena 1–2 (1993), pp. 61–80;Google Scholar Parsons, James, “English Speaking Settlement of the Western Caribbean,” Yearbook of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers 16 (1954), pp. 3–16;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Rózpide, Ricardo Beltrán, “La Mosquitia: Algunas notas documentadas para la historia territorial de esta parte de Centroamérica,” Boletín de la Real Sociedad Geografíca (Madrid), 52 (1910), pp. 438–460;Google Scholar Helms, Mary W., Asang: Adaptations to Culture Contact in a Miskito Community (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1971);Google Scholar and Garcia, Claudia The Making of the Miskitu People of Nicaragua: The Social Construction of Ethnic Identity (Uppsala: Acta Universistatis Upsaliensis, 1996).Google Scholar

9 “Nicaragua—Su Pasado, Su Presente, Su Porvenir,” El Diario Nicaraguense (Granada), 6 November 1895. Geographer Gregory, Derek argues that “space is an effect of practices of representation, valorization, and articulation” in his book, The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq (Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004), p. 19.Google Scholar

10 Sr. Ministro de Hacienda Don Feliz Romero, Informe de la Visita oficial que hizo al Departamento de Zelaya (Managua: Tipografica Internacional, 1906).Google Scholar

11 For representative examples, see Keeley, R., “Nicaragua and the Mosquito Coast,” Popular Science Monthly 5:6 (1894)Google Scholar or the special issue on Nicaragua of the Pan-American Magazine 12:2 (1911). On landscape as a medium of imperialism, see Mitchell, W. J. Thomas, ed., Landscape and Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).Google ScholarPubMed On topographical knowledge, see Hayes, Patricia, “Camera Africa: Indirect Rule and Landscape Photographs of Kaoko, 1943,” in Hartmann, Wolfram, Silvester, Jeremy, and Hayes, Patricia, eds., The Colonising Camera: Photographs in the Making of Namibian History (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1998).Google Scholar Bruce Braun explains how in the Canadian context, government surveys of forests acted as technologies of displacement, “constructing spaces of visibility (and spaces of invisibility) that were at once both partial and of immense social, ecological, and political consequence.” ( Braun, , The Intemperate Rainforest: Nature, Culture, and Power on Canada’s West Coast (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), p. 47).Google Scholar

12 Geographer Karl Offen makes a similar argument in his paper, “The Mythical Landscape: Indians, Nature, and Geography in the Historiography of Eastern Nicaragua,” presented at the Latin American Studies Association, Chicago, Illinois, September 24–26, 1998.

13 Citino, Nathan J., “The Global Frontier: Comparative History and the Frontier-Borderlands Approach,” in Hogan, Michael J. and Paterson, Thomas G., eds., Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 2nd ed.), pp. 194–211 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (cf. Sabin, Paul, “Home and Abroad: The Two ‘Wests’ of Twentieth-Century United States History,” Pacific Historical Review 66:3 (August 1997), pp. 305–335)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schoonover, Thomas, Uncle Sam’s War of 1898 and the Origins of Globalization (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Tucker, Richard P., Insatiable Appetite: The United States and the Ecological Degradation of the Tropical World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 McWilliams, Tennant S., “The Lure of Empire: Southern Interest in the Caribbean, 1877–1990,” Mississippi Quarterly 29 (Winter 1975/76), pp. 43–63.Google Scholar See also Fifer, J. Valerie, United States Perceptions of Latin America 1850–1930: A ‘New West’ South of Capricorn? (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; McWilliams, Tennant S., The New South Faces the World: Foreign Affairs and the Southern Sense of Self, 1877–1950 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1988)Google Scholar; Kaufman, Burton I. “Organization for Foreign Trade Expansion in the Mississippi Valley, 1900–1920,” Business History Review 46:4 (Winter 1972), pp. 444–465 Google Scholar; Baughman, James P. “Gateway to the Americas,” in Carter, Hodding et al., eds., The Past as Prelude: New Orleans 1718–1968 (New Orleans: Tulane University Press, 1968), pp. 258–287 Google Scholar; and Salvatore, Ricardo D., “Early American Visions of a Hemispheric Market in South America,” in Ostendorf, Berndt, ed., Transnational America: The Fading Borders in the Western Hemisphere (Heidelberg: Winter, 2002).Google Scholar

15 Schoonover, , Uncle Sam’s.War of 1898, p. 23.Google Scholar

16 American business people and concession hunters in Central America in the late 1800s were a mix of types, according to one diplomat, who questioned these caballeros de industria who “formulate complaints, present claims of doubtful merit, and call upon the Legation to launch ultimatums at frequent intervals … seeking impossible privileges they can never utilize and piling up embarrassments for their own government as well as for the misguided government, which through illusion or devious means may have been induced to compromise national interests.” Brown, Philip M. “American Diplomacy in Central America,” Proceedings of the American Political Science Association 8 (1911), p. 156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 See Gobat, Michel, Confronting the American Dream: Nicaragua under U.S. Imperial Rule (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Doug Tompson provides a comparative history of Nicaraguan views of the Atlantic coast, in his paper, “Territory, Sovereignty, and National Identity: Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Incorporation of the Atlantic Coast, 1859–1894,” presented at the SECOLAS Annual Meeting, April, 2005.

18 “Zelaya: The Menace of Central America,” The American Review of Reviews 37 (1908), pp. 496–497. The title is misleading since the article portrays Zelaya as a cosmopolitan leader who introduced material reforms, a “strong man” who could potentially play the role of a new Bolivar: “He stands to-day a menace and a promise to all Central America” (p. 496).

19 See “The Nicaraguan Attack on Bluefields,” The Times (London), 27 March 1894, p. 3.

20 Roberto Cabezas to Zelaya, 4 June 1894, File 06811, in Fondo Felipe Rodriguez Serrano, Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua. The text has been translated from the original Spanish by the authors.

21 “La Costa Atlántica por el Ingeniero don José Vitta,” printed in Revista de la Academia de Geografìa e Historia de Nicaragua (Managua) 8:2 (Agosto 1946), pp. 1–46.

22 William Merry to President Joaquin Zavala, 6 February 1882, in Zavala Solis Collection, Tulane University. A sea captain who went on to become Minister to Nicaragua, Salvador, and Costa Rica 1897–1907, and U.S. Minister Plenipotentiary to the region in 1908, Merry lived in Nicaragua from 1866, when he began working for the Central American Transit Company and the North American Steamship Company. In the 1880s and 90s, he was a director of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and represented Nicaragua in the western United States. The Pacific coast’s pioneer mercantile promoter of the Nicaragua Canal, Merry published several pamphlets on the Nicaraguan route, including The Nicaragua Canal: The Gateway between the Oceans (San Francisco: Press of Commercial Pub. Co., 1895). Cf. the entry “Merry, William L.” in the National Cyclopedia of American Biography… (New York: J. T White 1904), p. 310.Google Scholar

23 Ironically, the Seligman Brothers Bank of New York was among those working against the Nicaraguan canal route, although the bank later worked with the Brown Brothers to redesign Nicaraguan finances (in part to recoup the Emery claim). It championed the Panama route in order to recover its substantial financial losses from the De Lesseps bankruptcy. This is clear from the firm’s internal business correspondence: “We naturally are very much interested to see the latter [Panama] Canal completed, inasmuch as it would give us back a good deal of money which we have already put in there, by making the securities we now hold valuable.” —Henry Seligman to Isaac Seligman, 9 November 1899, J. & W. Seligman Papers, Harry W. Bass Business History Collection, at the University of Oklahoma. At this point Seligmans had invested over $700,000 in the abortive Panama project; see Henry Seligman to Isaac Seligman, 24 November 1899; Marshall, Logan, The Story of the Panama Canal (Philadelphia: John C. Winston Co., 1913), pp. 88–90 Google Scholar; and McCullough, David G, The Path between the Seas: The creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977), p. 289.Google Scholar

24 The amended 1898 contract stipulated that Emery would build 50 miles of railway for his own use and that this work would meet various specifications in terms of design, rolling stock, warehouses, water towers, rail bed, rail quality, width of tracks, and so on. The railway would revert to Nicaragua at the end of the 15 year period. The line was to run from Rio Grande to Nuringues, or Laguna de Perlas River. Construction began from camp No. 9 near La Cruz and went towards the Department of Matagalpa. See the copy of 1898 contract in the Certified Copy of the Proceedings of the Court of Appeal between Public Treasury of Nicaragua and Geo. D. Emery Company, 29 May 1907, in Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906–1910, M862, microfilm roll 129.

25 “Se Aprueba un Contrato (Prorroga el contrató de Emery),” Diario Oficial, 22 March 1898.

26 These hearings, which reviewed Emery’s compliance with the contract, were held in February 1903; the decision came on 11 June 1903 (see the Certified Copy of the Proceedings of the Court of Appeal between Public Treasury of Nicaragua and Geo. D. Emery Company, 29 May 1907, in Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906–1910, M862, microfilm roll 129).

27 Zelaya to Spellman, 9 August 1906, in Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906–1910, M862, microfilm roll 128.

28 “El Gobierno y La Compania Emery,” Diario Oficial, 28 December 1906.

29 See Cade to State Department, 21 April 1909, Assets and Liabilities Emery Co., 1 July 1902 at time of formation (the company had gone public that year). The report valued the Chelsea property at $243,219, the Nicaraguan concession at $200,666, two Nicaraguan gold mines, La Leonesa at $107,615 and Viva Siempre at $6,452, and goodwill at $483,241. The total assets were estimated to be $1.9m, with liabilities of $478,000.

30 See Spellman to Estrada, 10 August 1906, in Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906–1910, M862, microfilm roll 128. Spellman listed the number of logs already cut and sitting at various camps at 6,275 logs.

31 “Protest Filed by Nicolay Petersen on behalf of Geo. D. Emery Company, Bluefields, Nic,” in Clancy to Secretary of State, 6 November 1906, Enclosure 7 and Enclosure 60, in Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906–1910, M862, microfilm roll 128. Petersen was Emery’s bookkeeper in Bluefields and a German citizen.

32 Merry to Root, 3 December 1906, in Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 19061910, M862, microfilm roll 128.

33 Merry to Elihu Root, 4 November 1906, 807–16, in Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906–1910, M862, microfilm roll 128.

34 Merry, San Jose, to Elihu Root, 30 November 1906, marked “Confidential,” in Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906–1910, M862, microfilm roll 128.

35 See Healy, David, “A Hinterland in Search of a Metropolis: The Mosquito Coast, 1894–1910,” International History Review 3:1 (1981), p. 35 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Dozier, Craig L., Nicaragua’s Mosquito Shore: The Years of British and American Presence (University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1985), pp. 172–175.Google Scholar Rice argues that after 1903 Zelaya lost the support of other Nicaraguan elites, even Liberals, and that internal fissure among elites undermined his rule; see Rice, M., “Nicaragua and the U.S.: Policy Confrontations and Cultural Interactions, 1893–1933,” PhD thesis, University of Houston, 1993.Google Scholar

36 Penfield to Elihu Root, 5 December 1906,924/49–51, in Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906–1910, M862, microfilm roll 128.

37 Merry to Root, 30 October 1906, emphasis in the original, 924, in Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906–1910, M862, microfilm roll 128.

38 Noyes, Emery Counsel, to Secretary of State Knox, Memorandum about Emery Damages, n.d.. This letter is attached to a memo from Knox to Espinosa, Minister of Nicaragua, 26 March, 1909, and is in Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906–1910, M862, roll 130. Noyes lists the various Emery losses as in excess of one million dollars, mentioning in particular the concession to Caligaris (18 May 1905) of 40,000 hectares within the Emery concession, and the concession to Lomax Anderson (7 February 1906) for which the latter paid $500,000 to log pine within the Emery concession. See the booklet, “Exploitation of Pine Forests on the Atlantic Coast: Concession of Angel Caligaris, Republic of Nicaragua Central-America” (Managua: Tipografía Alemana de Carlos Heuberger, 1922), enclosure, US State Department 1910–1929, 817.6172/3, Frames 654–688. This booklet describes the terms of the concession and its history, including its cancellation by the Mixed Claims Commission.

39 Spellman to Merry, 24 November 1906, in Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906–1910, M862, microfilm roll 129.

40 See Rosenberg, Emily, Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy 1900–1930 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999)Google Scholar, and Gismondi, Michael and Mouat, Jeremy “Merchants, Mining, and Concessions on Nicaragua’s Mosquito Coast: Reassessing the American Presence, 1893–1912,” Journal of Latin American Studies 34:4 (November 2002), pp. 845–879.Google Scholar Cf. the more general argument in Hopkins, A. G. “Back to the Future: From National History to Imperial History,” Past and Present 164 (August 1999), pp. 198–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Magdoff, Harry makes a similar point in “Imperialism without Colonies,” in Owen, Roger and Sutcliffe, Bob, eds., Studies in the Theory of Imperialism (London: Longman, 1972), pp. 144–169.Google Scholar

41 Bacon to Secretary of State, 21 March 1907, in Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906–1910, M862, microfilm roll 129. Emery was allowed to export logs cut prior to 27 July 1906.

42 J. R. Sevilla, Minister Foreign Relations, Nicaragua, to W. Merry, San Jose, 24 November 1906, in Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906–1910, M862, microfilm roll 128. From 1904 until 1909, the financial position of Emery’s company steadily deteriorated. To avoid bankruptcy, Emery sold his own interest to his business associate in London, Samuel Segar. This process is described in the business records of the Segar-Emery Company Ltd. (1904) and its successor, S. Segar Ltd. (1908); see BT 31/10827/82130 and BT 31/18401/97480, respectively, records of the Board of Trade held at the (British) National Archives, Kew, London, as well as in a letter from Emery’s lawyer, Noyes, to Huntington Wilson, 26 April 1909, "Brief History of the Stockholdings of the Geo. D. Emery Firm," in Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906–1910, M862, microfilm roll 130.

43 Merry, Managua, to Elihu Root, 3 December 1906, letter marked “Confidential,” in Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906–1910, M862, microfilm roll 128. The following quotations in this paragraph are all drawn from Merry’s account in this letter.

44 The quotation by Zelaya to “imaginary damages” is from Documentos, “Manifesto del general J.S. Zelaya al pueblo nicaragüense,” in Zelaya, J. S. La Revolución de Nicaragua y los Estados Unidos (Madrid: Imprenta de Bernardo Rodriguez, 1910), pp. 121, 124, 129.Google Scholar

45 James Deitrick to Herbert Hoover, 10 December 1908, in Misrepresentations, Smear Book Series, Box 15, Richey-Hoover Files, “Statements and refutations, Mining-Nicaragua 1908–1932 and undated,” in Herbert Hoover Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa. Emphasis in the original.

46 Merry to Root, 11 December 1906, in Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906–1910, M862, microfilm roll 128.

47 For the offer and its rejection, see Corea to Penfield, 29 January 1907; Emery to Penfield, 2 February 1907; Ryder, Bluefields, to Assistant Secretary of State, 27 February 1907, all in Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906–1910, M862, microfilm roll 128. For details of Emery’s counter-claim, see Noyes, Emery Counsel, to Secretary of State Knox, Memorandum about Emery Damages (n.d., but likely March 1909), in Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906–1910, M862, microfilm roll 130. When he appeared before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in July 1914, Spellman, Emery's manager, faced a barrage of questions as to why the Emery company claimed $2,000,000 in damages; see Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Sixty-third Congress Second Session, on Convention between the United States and Nicaragua (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1914), pp. 481–484.

48 “Nicaragua Agent to Settle Claim,” New York Herald, 4 May 1909.

49 “Recent Deaths [obituary of George D. Emery],” Boston Evening Transcript, 9 January 1909, p. 4. The American consul in Bluefields, Michael J. Clancy, had raised the ownership issue in late 1908. Emery's lawyer insisted that the company remained in American hands and that the change was simply a stock shuffle forced on the company because of losses caused by the Nicaraguan situation; see Penfield to Elihu Root, 28 December 1908, “Re: Segar owner of Emery,” and the attached correspondence. Note also the comments in note 42, above.

50 Scott, Office of Solicitor, to Knox, 13 April 1909, in Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906–1910, M862, microfilm roll 130. Worried that perhaps the State Department might drop out of the picture, Emery's new lawyer (Mr. Noyes) wrote to the Secretary of State, providing an outline of the history of the company's ownership; see Noyes to Secretary of State, n.d., “Brief History of the Stockholdings of the Geo. D. Emery Firm,” in Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906–1910, M862, microfilm roll 130.

51 “Chelsea Loses Emery Plant,” Boston Evening Transcript, April 26, 1909, p.l.

52 See Olivares to Secretary of State, 18 April 1909, in Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906–1910, M862, microfilm roll 130, and “La misión del doctor González,” El Comercio, 16 Abril 1909. Merry regarded Gonzalez as “one of the most competent and cautious counsellors at Law in Central America” and felt that his appointment meant “that the time for evasion in the Emery case has passed,” since Gonzalez could be made to see “that a settlement must be made” (Merry to Knox, 6 May 1908, in Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906-1910, M862, microfilm roll 130). A putative settlement was negotiated several weeks later. The New York Times reported that “A protocol for submission to arbitration of the Emery claim was signed at 8:30 o'clock tonight [May 25] with representatives of the Nicaraguan Government at the home of Secretary of State Knox.” — “Nicaragua to Arbitrate,” New York Times, 26 May 1909, p. 2. The story carried the sub-title, “Knox Forces a Conclusion to the Long-Standing Emery Claim.”

53 “Emery Claim Settled,” The American (Bluefields), 3 October 1909; “Emery Claim Settled,” New York Times, 19 September 1909, pt. 3, 4; “Emery to Get More Than $600,000,” Boston Evening Transcript, 21 September 1909, part 2, p. 16. The agreement was reproduced as an appendix to the Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Sixty-third Congress Second Session, on Convention between the United States and Nicaragua (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1914), pp. 600–602.

54 “Zelaya Blames Dollar Diplomacy for his Troubles,” New York Times 23 Nov. 1913, II: 4: 2.

55 Castellón, José Maria La Famosa Nota Knox (Managua: Ed. Atenas, 1968), p. 8.Google Scholar Castellón, Zelaya's advisor, claimed that by paying the debt out of his own pocket, Zelaya was “consumando con esa cable la ruina de su familia.”

56 Testimony of Mallet-Prevost, lawyer for Brown Bros and Co., before the Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Sixty-third Congress Second Session, on Convention between the United States and Nicaragua (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1914), p. 169. The following quotation in the text is also from this source, p. 171.

57 “Senatorial Inquiry Asked on Nicaragua,” New York Times, 26 June 1910, p. 3; note also Stone's speech in the Senate, Congressional Record: Containing the Proceedings and Debates of the Sixty-First Congress, Second Session 45 (25 June 1910), pp. 9058–9059. When US Marine Smedley Butler—stationed in Nicaragua—read Stone's statement in the press, he told his father that “Senator Stone … puts the case of these American citizens (?) very well but much too mildly. … The whole attitude of our State Department is beyond me, but of course I am simply a hired policeman and am not supposed to understand affairs of state. I can see, with my untrained eyes, however, that were we not living in this town the revolution would be over in a few minutes.” Smedley Butler to Thomas S. Butler, Bluefields, 14 July 1910, reprinted in Venzon, Anne Cipriano, ed., General Smedley Darlington Butler: The Letters of a Leatherneck, 1898–1931 (New York: Praeger, 1992), pp. 87–88.Google Scholar

58 See “Dollar Diplomacy Put up to Senate,” New York Times, 7 June 1911, p. 3; –Taft Urges Treaties,– New York Times, 30 June 1911, p. 5; “Taft Again Urges Treaties,” New York Times, 18 July 1911, p. 2.

59 Rosenberg, , Financial Missionaries to the World, p. 70.Google Scholar

60 The agreement opens by stating that it is between the bankers and the government of Nicaragua, and foliows from the convention of 6 June 1911 between the US and Nicaragua. A copy of the agreement survives in the records of the Corporation of Foreign Bondholders, held at the Guildhall Library in London (see Folder 2, Manuscript Number Ms 34742). It is entitled Treasury Bills Agreement, and is dated 1 September 1911. It was printed by the Evening Post Job Printing Office, New York.

61 Monetary Reform for Nicaragua: Report Presenting a Plan of Monetary Reform for Nicaragua (New York: William R. Ficke, Printers, 1912?), p. 2. “Submitted to Messrs. Brown Brothers & Company and Messrs. J. & W. Seligman & Company by Messrs. F. C. Harrison and Charles A. Conant, 23 April 1912.” Copy in Folder 2, Manuscript Number Ms 34742, Guildhall Library. Conant had set up currency reform in the Philippines, the Mexican Monetary Commissions and introduced Panama currency, while Harrison had earlier worked in India, where he had been Comptroller General of Accounts. For detail on the two men and their role as financial advisors, note the references in Rosenberg, Emily S. “Foundations of United States International Financial Power: Gold Standard Diplomacy, 1900–1905,” Business History Review 59:2 (Summer 1985): pp. 169–202;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Rosenberg, Emily S. and Rosenberg, Norman L. “From Colonialism to Professiorialism: The Public-Private Dynamic in United States Foreign Financial Advising, 1898-1929,” Journal ofAmerican History 74:1 (June 1987): pp. 59–82;Google Scholar Sklar, Martìn J., The United States as a Developing Country: Studies in U.S. History in the Progressive Era and the 1920s (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. the chapter, “Dollar Diplomacy according to Dollar Diplomats: American development and world development,” pp. 78–101; Panini, Carl “Charles A. Conant, Economic Crises and Foreign Policy, 1896–1903,” in McCormick, Thomas J. and LaFeber, Walter eds., Behind the Throne: Servants of Power to Imperial Presidents, 1898–1968 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), pp. 35–66Google Scholar; and Rosenberg, Financial Missionaries to the World, passim.

62 Monetary Reform for Nicaragua, pp. 2–3. The text of the 20 March 1912 law is appended to this document in both English and Spanish, pp. 71–80. Evidence that this law is a response to Harrison and Conant's Monetary Plan can be found in a letter from Harrison and Conant to President Diaz, dated 15 February 1912, reprinted on pp. 69–70.

63 “City Intelligence,” The Times, 26 May 1909, p. 15, col B; according to Seligman Brothers, Nicaragua had the best credit in the Americas.

64 This and the preceding quotation are from an internal Foreign Office Minute on the Ethelburga loan; see FO 371/835—Political—Central America File 286, p. 244. (References to the Ethelburga Syndicate & its Loan occur in the file on pp. 244–45, 246–251, 387–390, 391, 409–414.) The Foreign Office records are held at the (British) National Archives, Kew, London.

65 See Kerevel, Yann “Re-examining the Politics of U.S. Intervention in Early 20th Century Nicaragua: José Madriz and the Conservative Restoration,” Research Paper No. 43, Dept. of Political Science, University of New Mexico, 2006.Google Scholar Relying on Mexican diplomatic sources, Gutiérrez's, Harim B. Una alianza fallida: México y Nicaragua contra Estados Unidos, 1909–1910 (Mexico: Instituto Mora, 2000)Google Scholar describes that country–s support of Madriz, tracing the appeals of Mexican diplomats to Knox and others in the State Department. They characterized Madriz as the civilized alternative to Zelaya, but Knox opted to support the Bluefields rebels.

66 For evidence of the State Department–s role, see Albert Strauss to Fred Seligman, 9 August 1911, Book #11, p. 94; Strauss to Fred Seligman, 15 August 1911, Book #11, p. 156; Strauss to Isaac Seligman, 30 August 1911, Book #11, p. 204 (all in Albert Strauss Correspondence, J. & W. Seligman Papers, the Harry W. Bass Business History Collection, University of Oklahoma).

67 The quotation is from “Bryan Hectored over His Treaties,” New York Times, 18 June 1914, p. 2; see also “Bryan and Bankers Assailed in Senate,” New York Times, 17 June 1914, p. 4. For the text of the resolution authorizing the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to look into the finances of Nicaragua, see “Affairs in Nicaragua,” Congressional Record—Senate, Vol. 51,16 June 1914, p. 10514 (63rd Congress, 2nd Session).

68 Telegram, Minister Jefferson, Managua, to the Secretary of State, 31 December 1916, reprinted in United States Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States … 1916 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1917), p. 917.

69 Telegram from Secretary of State Lansing to Minister Jefferson, Managua, 9 August 1917, reprinted in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States … 1917, p. 1135. A British diplomat watching these events in Managua wrote that “I understand from President of the Republic that New York Bankers backed by State Department refuse to submit Emery claim to Claims Commission on the ground that protected [illegible] differentiate this claim from all others. … President made personal appeal to Mr. Lansing without result to allow this claim to be submitted to Claims Commission or at least for interest to be waived…” (two page telegram, received in London, 25 September 1917; received in Washington 20 September 1917, copy in New York Consulate files, p. 235, in FO 115/2293, (UK) National Archives.

70 Telegram from Secretary of State Lansing to Minister Jefferson in Managua, 6 October 1917, reprinted in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States … 1917, p. 1142. For further detail of the canal fund settlement, see Hill, Roscoe Fiscal Intervention in Nicaragua (New York: Paul Maisel, 1933), pp. 33–34 Google Scholar, & 36, and Rosenberg, , Financial Missionaries to the World, pp. 85–86.Google Scholar

71 Nicaragua telegram no. 7, received 25 September 1917, New York Consulate files, p. 236, in FO115/2293, (UK) National Archives. Note also the comments in the Corporation of Foreign Bondholders, , Thirty-eighth Annual Report, 1911, p. 13, quoted in Rippy, J. Fred “The British Bondholders and the Roosevelt Corollary of the Monroe Doctrine,” Political Science Quarterly 49:2 (June 1934), p. 205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

72 Note the analysis in Abella, Rodolfo Huete Los banqueros y la intervención en Nicaragua (Managua: Tipografía Pérez, 1931), pp. 55–63 Google Scholar, and in Quijano, Carlos Nicaragua: ensayo sobre el imperialismo de los Estados Unidos (Managua: Editorial Vanguardia, 1987), pp. 73–74.Google Scholar

73 See Hill, Fiscal Intervention in Nicaragua, p. 5.Google Scholar For examples of the way in which Nicaraguan issues were before the public during this period, see “Honduran Treaty Lost. Senate Committee Fails to Favor Dollar Diplomacy Plan,” New York Times, 9 May 1912, p. 3; “To Sift Congress Record of Sulzer,” New York Times, 24 August 1913, pp. 1–2; “Sulzer's Guatemala Deal,” New York Times, 17 November 1913, p. 4; “Zelaya Would Aid Concession Inquiry,” New York Times, 15 November 1913, p. 13; “Zelaya Blames Dollar Diplomacy For His Troubles,” New York Times, 23 November 1913, II: 4: p. 2; “Bryan and Bankers Assailed in Senate,” New York Times, 17 June 1914, p. 4; “Bryan Hectored over His Treaties,” New York Times, 18 June 1914, p. 2; “Bryan and Bankers Face Rigid Inquiry,” New York Times, 19 June 1914, p. 14; “Presses Nicaragua Inquiry,” New York Times, 20 June 1914, p. 13; and Valentine, Lincoln G. “Meddling with Our Neighbors,” The Century 90:6 (1915), pp. 801–808.Google Scholar As a number of these references suggest, Nicaragua was frequently discussed by the US Senate.

74 “Nicaraguan Weakness,” New York Times, 15 July 1914, p. 3.

75 See Rear Admiral Kimball to Navy Department, Washington, “Report of Nicaraguan Expeditionary Squadron,” 25 May 1910, in US State Department Papers, microfilm roll 5, Frame 223 (6367/985). Four years later, a letter that Kimball had written to President Madriz in April 1910 made headlines when it was released to the press; see “Admiral Deplored Knox's Orders,” New York Times, 23 January 1914, p. 7.

76 Gismondi and Mouat, “Merchants, Mining, and Concessions on Nicaragua's Mosquito Coast”; see also the critical assessment of Munro–s work in Berger, Mark T. Under Northern Eyes: Latin American Studies and US Hegemony in the Americas 1898–1990 (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995), pp. 36–39 Google Scholar, 43 & 255–256. Cf. Munro, Dana Gardner A Student in Central America, 1914–1916 (New Orleans: Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, 1983).Google Scholar

77 These quotations are all from Young, John Parke Central American Currency and Finance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1925), pp. vi–vii.Google Scholar

78 Schoenrich, Otto Reminiscences of an Itinerant Lawyer (Baltimore: Printed by J. H. Furst Co., 1967), p. 285.Google Scholar

79 See for example Hill, Roscoe R. “American Marines in Nicaragua, 1912–1925,” in Wilgus, A. Curtis, ed., Hispanic American Essays: A Memorial to James Alexander Robertson (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1942), pp. 341–360 Google Scholar, and Hill, , “The Nicaraguan Canal Idea to 1913,” Hispanic American Historical Review 28:2 (May 1948), pp. 197–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

80 Ham, Clifford D. “Americanizing Nicaragua: How Yankee Marines, Financial Oversight and Baseball Are Stabilizing Central America,” The American Review of Reviews 53:2 (February 1916), pp. 185–191.Google Scholar Cf. Lindberg, A. F. “How Nicaragua Brought Order Out of Financial Chaos,” The Annalist (New York), 15 (12 April 1920), p. 504 Google Scholar, an account of what happened in the wake of Schoenrich's Mixed Claims Commission (Lindberg was on the Commission of Public Credit, which resolved the various claims), and Conant, Charles A. “Our Mission in Nicaragua,” The North American Review 196 (July 1912), pp. 63–71 Google Scholar (a detailed justification for the overthrow of Zelaya).

81 Gregory, , The Colonial Present, p. 18.Google Scholar Gregory is here recounting insights drawn from Edward, W. Said's Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).Google Scholar

82 Zelaya, José Santos Refutación al presidente Taft (Paris: Waltener, 1911)Google Scholar. The text has been translated from the original Spanish by the authors.

83 It is noteworthy that even such a careful scholar as Richard Tucker can provide an inaccurate account of the Emery claim; see Tucker, Insatiable Appetite, pp. 351–352.Google Scholar

84 At least one recent book on Nicaragua has been criticized for its over-simplification of the US; see Tulchin's, Joseph S. review of Michel Gobat, Confronting the American Dream: Nicaragua under U.S. Imperial Rule (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), in Hispanic American Historical Review, 87:2 (May 2007), pp. 425–426.Google Scholar

85 In his review of Gobat's, book, Tulchin commented that “Our understanding of U.S. imperialism has come a long way in the past 50 years. … Despite critical voices such as Scott Nearing, the field was dominated by apologists…” (Hispanic American Historical Review, 87:2 (May 2007), p. 425)Google Scholar. For a telling example of the distance between Latin American and North American scholars, see the description in J. Fred Rippy–s autobiography, of his exchange with a bitter Nicaraguan in Mexico during the summer of 1929: Rippy, , Bygones I Cannot Help Recalling (Austin, Texas: Steck-Vaughn Co., 1966), p. 156.Google Scholar

86 Irias, Julián and Espinoza, Rodolfo, Nicaraguan Affairs: Memorial to the Senate of the United States of America. From the land of exile to Nicaraguans (San Jose, Costa Rica: Alsina Press, 1912)Google Scholar; Bolaños, Pio The economical situation of Nicaragua. Intervention of North America and its results, the procedures of the government of Adolfo Diaz (New Orleans, 1916)Google Scholar, translated by Miss Amelia Babin. Representative Spanish-language accounts include Abella, Los banqueros y la intervención en Nicaragua; Quijano, Nicaragua: ensayo sobre el imperialismo de los Estados Unidos; Lau, William, “Proceso de la Intervención Norteamericana en Nicaragua, 1909–1913,” Encuentro (Managua) 36 (Jan-June 1989), pp. 31–60 Google Scholar; Chamorro, Amalia, “El poder político del estado y la intervención extranjera (1909–1933),” Encuentro 36 (Jan-June 1989), pp. 61–88 Google Scholar; Vargas, Oscar-René, La intervención norteamericana en Nicaragua y sus consecuencias, 1910–1925 (Managua: Centro de Investigaciones de la Realidad en América Latina, 1989)Google Scholar; Argüello, Alvaro H. “Incidencias del imperialismo en el proceso político de Nicaragua,” Revista del Pensamiento Centroamericano, 159 (1978), pp. 32–37 Google Scholar; Belli, Humberto, “Un ensayo de interpretación sobre las luchas políticas nicaragüenses,” Revista del Pensamiento Centroamericano 157 (1977), pp. 50–59 Google Scholar; Portocarrero, A. Barahona, “Estudio sobre la historia de Nicaragua,” in Casanova, Pablo González, ed., América Latina: historia de medio siglo (Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1981), vol. 2, pp. 377–423 Google Scholar; and Brignoli, Héctor Pérez Breve historia de Centroamérica (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1985)Google Scholar. Note the mention of the Emery claim in Roman, Jaime Wheelock Imperialismo y Dictatura (Mexico, D.F.: Siglo Veintuno Editores, 1978), p. 107.Google Scholar

87 “To Sift Congress Record of Sulzer,” New York Times, 24 August 1913, pp. 1–2. See also “Sulzer's Guatemala Deal,” New York Times, 17 November 1913, p. 4. See also Wesser, Robert F. “The Impeachment of a Governor: William Sulzer and the Politics of Excess,” New York History 60:4 (October 1979), pp. 407–438 Google Scholar (esp. pp. 430–436). The quotation is from a speech by Sulzer, , Congressional Record: Containing the Proceedings and Debates of the Sixty-First Congress, Second Session, Vol. 45, Part 1, p. 11.Google Scholar

88 “Zelaya Would Aid Concession Inquiry,” New York Times, 15 November 1913, p. 13.

89 “Zelaya Blames Dollar Diplomacy For His Troubles,” New York Times, 23 November 1913, II, p. 2.

90 “Zelaya Released, Seeks Cash on Bonds; Deposed President Will Depart When He Recovers Money He Advanced to Soothe Us; He Paid Emery Claims; Ex-Ruler of Nicaragua, Friends Say, Paid $1,600,00 to Ward Off Our Intervention,” New York Times, 4 December 1913, p. 1; “Gen. Zelaya Sails, Warns Financiers,” New York Times, 25 December 1913, p. 8. Zelaya returned to New York three years later, where he remained until his death in 1919 (see “Back From Spain,” New York Times, 11 June 1916, p. 18; “Zelaya Dies After Long Exile,” New York Times, 19 May 1919, p. 1).

91 “All's Well That Ends Well,” New York Times, 26 December 1913, p. 10.