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The Clark Memorandum Myth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Gene A. Sessions*
Affiliation:
Weber State College, Ogden, Utah

Extract

For nearly three decades after the turn of the twentieth century, the United States took upon itself the policing of the Caribbean and Central America. Under an expanded interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine known as the Roosevelt Corollary, American policymakers justified numerous military interventions in those small republics until Monroeism became a synonym in Latin America for imperialism and expansionism. By 1930, this policy of attempted hegemony by force was a failure: Public opinion at home and abroad had opposed the “big stick” concept of hemispheric relations almost from the beginning; the interventions seldom achieved their nebulous goals.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1977

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References

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19 Ibid., ix–xiii.

20 Ibid., xiii–xv. The shallowness of the history in the letter should not draw too much fire. Clark was restricted in space and nothing much had been done on its early history at this date. Perkins had just completed his Monroe Doctrine, 1823–1826.

21 Right to Protect Citizens, 9, 21–22. This is the subject of the only footnoting in the covering letter. Memorandum, xviii–xix.

22 Memorandum, xix.

23 Ibid., xx.

24 Ibid., xix.

25 Ibid., xx–xxiii.

26 Ibid., xxiii–xxiv.

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40 For a good example, see The New York Times, March 4, 1930, 3.

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51 It is fairly clear that Hoover’s policies with regard to Latin American affairs developed in their basics before the Memorandum was written. See Hoover, Herbert, Addresses Delivered During the Visit… to Central and South America, November-December, 1928 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1929)Google Scholar. See also DeConde, AlexanderHerbert Hoover’s Good Will Tour,Historian, 12 (1950), 167181 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Ferrell, , “Repudiation,672.Google Scholar

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